Charles Lamb counsels those who would enjoy true peace and quiet to retire into a Quaker meeting; and if our sentimental readers (and for such only is this paper written) would find wherewithal to feed and pamper their melancholy, let them follow the mercenary flags, and become haunters of auctions,—­let them attend the sales of the effects of their deceased friends and acquaintances,—­let them see A’s favorite horse, or B’s favorite country-seat, or C’s favorite books and pictures knocked down, amid the laughter of the crowd and the smart sayings and witty retorts of the auctioneer, to the highest bidder,—­and they will be sadder, if not wiser, men than they were before.  Such scenes should have more effect on them than all the fine sermons on the vanities and nothings of life ever preached.  Sir Richard Steele, in his beautiful paper, in the “Tatler,” on “The Death of Friends,” says, in speaking of his mother’s sorrow for his father’s death, there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport that made pity the weakness of his heart ever since; and perhaps it is owing to the impressions I received at the first auction I ever attended that I am now an inveterate sentimentalist.

How well I remember that auction!  Looking back “through the dim posterns of the mind” into the far-off days of my childhood, I see, among other things, the large and comfortable mansion—­it was the home of plenty and the temple of hospitality—­in which I passed some of the goldenest hours of my boyhood.  But the finest play has an end, and the sweetest feasts and the merriest pastimes do not last forever.  Very suddenly, indeed, did my visits to that happy home cease.  For my good friends of the “great house”—­the dearest old lady and the kindest and merriest old gentleman that ever patted a little boy on the head—­were both seized (oh, woe the day!) by a terrible disease, and died in spite of all that the great doctor from Boston did to cure them.  The last time I entered the dear old house was on a beautiful balmy summer morning; the birds were singing as I have never heard them sing since, and all Nature seemed as glad and exultant as if death, misfortune, and auctioneers were banished from the world.  I found there, in place of the late kind host and hostess, a crowd—­so they seemed to me—­of rude and coarse-minded people; and I saw the hateful red flag of the auctioneer hanging over the door.

An eagle in a dove-cot, a fox in a barn-yard, a wolf among sheep, is mild, merciful, and humane, when compared with the flock of human vultures that had invaded this once happy residence, and were greedily stripping it of all that the taste and the wealth of its late occupants had furnished it with.  Should I live to be a thousand years old, I do not think I should forget the unladylike proceedings of sundry old women at that auction.  With what a free and contemptuous manner they examined the fine old furniture, and handled the fine old china, and coolly rummaged and ransacked every nook and corner, and peeped and pried into every box, chest, and closet that was not locked!  And their tongues, you may be sure, were not idle the while!