72 fne arts. "Jan. ii. 



?nd It is to bq Loped, Knox's collections now sold, 

 may still find their way to the public. This is the sera 

 for great doings in England, while the pagodas and 

 lacks of rupees are flowing into our island, and before 

 we are quite smothered by Burks and Bifliops, and all 

 taste extinguiihed, but that for royalty and boxing, for 

 f itts aiid cockfighting. 



Mr Tafsie, that wonderful pupil of nature improved 

 ty art, in modelling and sculpture, has lately made 

 a confiderable stay in Scotland to visit his relations 

 at Glasgow, where, and at Edinburgh, he has model- 

 led several portraits of eminent persons, and taken 

 imprefsions of curious gems, not yet executed in 

 paste. This extraordinary man, who has done more 

 •than any man in Europe, by the multiplication oi fac 

 similies of the beautiful gems of antiquity, to improve 

 the taste of the middling ranks of people in Britain, by 

 making them cheaply acquainted with the ftores of claf- 

 sic elegance in sculpture, has now verified above fifteen 

 thousand originals of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman jyl:, 

 ^vhereofnear twelve thousand were purchased for the ca- 

 binet of the Czarina, and deposited in a cabinet for her 

 imperial majesty by Mr Rafpe, who wrote a catalogue ex^ 

 plaining the nature of the various emblems and subjects, 

 %vhich has been lately publifhed for the use of collec- 

 tors, and the instruction of the curious. These ancient 

 Greek and Roman sculptures, convey many useful lef- 

 sons of morality and politics, as well as gratify the 

 eye of the virtuoso. I fhall exemplify this observa- 

 tion, by the description of a seal now lying before me, 

 the original of which is, I believe, in the collection of 

 the grand duke of Tuscany. 



To the first blu'h of remark, it exhibits no more 

 than a portrait of Alexander of Macedon, preposterous- 

 '}v, but commonly called the Great, on account of his 



