feelings,—­these books, with the exception of those retained by some of Elia’s personal friends, were, after Mary Lamb’s death, purchased by an enterprising New-York bookseller, and shipped to America, where Lamb has ever had more readers and truer appreciators than in England.  The arrival in New York of his “shivering folios” created quite a sensation among the Cisatlantic admirers of “the gentle Elia.”  The lovers of rare old books and the lovers of Charles Lamb jostled each other in the way to Bartlett and Welford’s shop, where the treasures (having escaped the perils of the sea) were safely housed, and where a crowd of literati was constantly engaged in examining them.

The sale was attended by a goodly company of book-collectors and book-readers.  All the works brought fair prices, and were purchased by (or for) persons in various parts of the country.  Among the bidders were (I am told) Geoffrey Crayon,—­Mr. Sparrowgrass,—­Clark, of the “Knickerbocker” magazine,—­that lover of the angle and true disciple of Izaak Walton, the late Rev. Dr. Bethune,—­Burton, the comedian,—­and other well-known authors, actors, and divines.  The black-letter Chaucer—­Speght’s edition, folio, London, 1598,—­the identical copy spoken of by Elia in his letter to Ainsworth, the novelist—­was knocked down to Burton for twenty-five dollars.  I know not who was the fortunate purchaser of “The Works of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle,”—­an especial favorite of Lamb’s.  Neither do I know the name of the buyer of “The Works of Michael Drayton.”  They brought twenty-eight dollars.  A number of volumes (one of them my correspondent opines was “The Dunciad,” variorum edition) were bought by an enthusiastic lover of Elia who came all the way from St. Louis on purpose to attend this auction.  The English nation should have purchased Lamb’s library.  But instead of comfortably filling an alcove or two in the British Museum, it crossed the Atlantic and was widely scattered over the United States of America.  Will it ever be brought together again?  Ah, me! such things do not happen in the annals of books.

‘Tis no wonder that the old blind scholar, Bardo de’ Bardi, in George Eliot’s grand story of “Romola,” knowing as he did the usual fate of private libraries, manifested a constant fear that his noble collection of books would be merged in some other library after his death.  Every generous soul must heartily despise Tito Melema for basely disposing of Bardo’s library for lucre.  There are plenty of good people, however, who would uphold him in that transaction.  Indeed, do not most of us with unseemly haste and unnatural greed dispose of the effects of our deceased friends and relations?  The funeral is hardly over before we begin to get ready for the auction.  “I preserve,” says Montaigne, “a bit of writing, a seal, a prayer-book, a particular sword, that has been used by my friends and predecessors, and have not thrown the long staves my father carried in his hand out of my closet.”  If the essayist lived in these days, and followed the customs that now obtain, he would send the sword and the staves, along with the other useless and (to him) worthless tokens and remembrancers of the dead and gone Montaignes, to the auction-room, and cheerfully pocket the money they brought.