One day I found him making scarabaei out of bits of agate and lapis lazuli.

"Who gave you an order for these," said I."Well, sir, I don't rightly know his name; but he was a furriner." "Was the name Signor---- ?" "That's it, sir." Then I set off straight to Sotheby's where I knew the Signor's Egyptian antiquities were soon to be sold, and duly forewarned the auctioneer of these forgeries.

I need not detail how at the sale he put buyers on their guard, exposing the fraud, and condemning the peccant scarabaei to extinction.

I wonder how many Grecian bronzes and copper Buddhas have been cast in Birmingham! * * * * * Yet another old friend for many years, so far literary in that he was a sculptor, is to be recorded in Joseph Durham: it was he who, more than thirty years ago, modelled in life and made in marble after death my beautiful three-year old daughter, little Alice, epitaphed in my poems.
Of Durham's nobleness of character I can here give a charming trait.

I used to go about once a week--sometimes less often--to Alfred Place to see how Durham was getting on with the statue (a sleeping infant), and one day, to my astonishment, I perceived that instead of any progress having been made in the work, it had, miraculously to me, retrograded; not half so near completion as it was last week.