yers died, how I met a friend at the doorstep, and talked with him?"

"An' I went down the road a bit an' waited. It was mortial dark, an' I heard you talkin', talkin', with bits o' silence between."

"But you saw him, Larry?"

"Oh, ay; I saw him right enough. A big dark man in the night."

"Yes, yes, Larry. If any one told you you didn't see him, what would you say?"

"I'd say I seen him all the same."

"You're a good boy, Larry, a very good boy," said Mary, passing her hand kerchief across her lips. "Now, run with the bag. And here's a penny for you for yourself. You won't forget you saw him, will you, Larry?"

KATHARINE TYNAN.

were

From Chambers' Journal. CURIOSITIES OF EARLY ART SALES. The days are still comparatively recent in which matters of art considered of very slight importance, and the collector or virtuoso was regarded as an eccentric being possibly harmless but hardly worthy of serious attention. Thus Lord Macaulay views Horace Walpole's passion for curiosity hunting with something like derision when he writes of him as returning from the recreation of making laws and voting millions "to more important pursuits-to researches after Queen Mary's comb, Wolsey's red at, the pipe which Van Tromp smoked during his last sea-fight, and the spur which King William stuck into the flank of Sorrel." Now, however, when our point of

view

has somewhat

changed, and when illustration of the social life of past times is welcome from whatever quarter it may chance to come, we regret that the details of early art sales and of their frequenters are so meagre. The habit of making collections of pictures and other works of art dates practically from the reign of Charles I. The Earl of Arundel,

called by Walpole "The father of vertu in England," rivalled the king in the extent of the treasures which he had gathered together during his travels on the Continent, among them being the busts and statues known as the "Arundel Marbles."

The Duke of Buckingham, again, bought of Rubens his collection of paintings and other works of art, which went to decorate York House in the Strand. The age which witnessed the beginnings of art collecting also saw the commencement of the art sales. The dispersal of the pictures of King Charles I. was spread over three or four years. When Parliament resolved to sell the royal collection, agents from many foreign princes and amateurs from all parts of Europe were eager to participate in the biddings. The Spanish ambassador is said to have bought so many paintings and other articles of value that eighteen mules were required to carry them from Corunna to Madrid. Another purchaser of fame was Cardinal Mazarin. Raphael's Seven Cartoons were, at the instance of Cromwell, purchased for the nation at a cost of £300. The Duke of Buckingham's collection was removed by his son to Antwerp during his banishment, and was sold there by auction. The contents of Sir Peter Lely's gallery were sold by auction, as we learn from Horace Walpole, the sale lasting forty days, and realizing a very large sum. Catalogues now begin to lend their aid to the purchaser, an early example informing us of a sale to take place "at the two white posts against the statue at Charing Cross," referring most probably to the name of an inn in that neighborhood. No person was to bid less than sixpence at a time. The vicinity of Covent Garden in Lon

don has ever been the chosen resort of auctioneers, and here at the close of the seventeenth century we find a certain Edward Millington established at the "Vendu next Bedford Gate, Charles Street. Covent Garden." In announcing the sale of the of General

goods

Doushfield, he added that his sales would be continued every Friday following, “during the gentries' stay in town," and held out as a further inducement "a curious invention of lights whereby the pictures may be seen as well as by day"-the usual hour for auctions at this period being four o'clock.

Sale by inch of candle was formerly very common, and at one time was prescribed for the sale of goods imported by the East India Company. Whoever last bid before the light expired had the lot knocked down to him. Pepys mentions an instance of this custom in his diary for 1662: "After dinner we met and sold the Weymouth successe and Fellowship hulkes, where pleasant to see how backward men are at first to bid, and yet when the candle is going out how they bawl and dispute afterwards who bid the most first. And here I observed one man cunninger than the rest, that was sure to bid the last man and to carry it, and in giving the reason he told me that just as the flame goes out the smoke descends, which is a thing I never observed before, and by that we do know the instant when to bid last."

As recently as the year 1892, some land belonging to the parish charities was disposed of in this way at the village of Corby, near Kettering. In what were called dumb biddings, the price was put under a candlestick, and it was agreed that no bidding should avail if not equal to that. One of the most interesting of early sales was that of the collection of the great antiquary and amateur, the Earl of Oxford, who bequeathed his library and manuscripts, called the "Harleian Miscellanies," to the British Museum. The announcement brought together a large assemblage of persons of rank and fashion, among the buyers being George Vertue and Horace Walpole, the latter purchasing in addition to a picture by Holbein and many coins "a Roman deep copper dish with a cupid painted on it," for which he gave two guineas. George Vertue, the engraver and disciple of Sir Godfrey Knel

ler, was an indefatigable collector of notes on British art, and these form the basis of Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting in England." The sale was effected by Mr. Christopher Cock at his house in the Piazza, Covent Garden (now the Tavistock Hotel), destined to be for long associated with the history of auctions. It formed part of the mansion once tenanted by Sir Peter Lely, and continued to be famous as Langford's salerooms, and then as those of George Robins. Here Hogarth exhibited his "Marriage à la mode" to the public gratis. The sale of this great artist's pictures at his house, "The Golden Head" in Leicester Fields, presented many peculiar features. One of the conditions was that on the last day of sale, a clock (striking every five minutes) should be placed in the room, and when five minutes after twelve had struck the first picture mentioned in the sale book was to be deemed sold, the second picture when the clock had struck the next five minutes, and so on till the whole nineteen pictures had been sold. Hogarth's celebrated "March of the Guards to Finchley" was disposed of by means of a raffle. A large number of chances were subscribed for, those which remained over being given to the Foundling Hospital. One of these latter winning the prize, the picture was forthwith handed over to the governor of that institution. It is interesting to note that the six paintings of the "Marriage à la mode" were sold at this time for one hundred and twenty guineas, and half a century later realized one thousand. Dr. Richard Mead was one of the most remarkable figures of this period, and his collection of books, coins, statuary, and drawings was the largest formed in his time. Pope was among his patients, and has commemorated his tastes in the lines:

Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,

And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.

This physician, who possessed a mu

seum at the back of his house in Great Ormond Street, is said to have been professionally consulted by Watteau, who painted two pictures for him in memory of his visit. The sale of this collection was affected by Abraham Langford, who was also something of a playwright. There is a long and grandiloquent epitaph on him in St. Pancras churchyard. Some of the verses tell us how "His Summer's Manhood" was "open, fresh, and fair,"

His virtues strict, his manners debonnaire, His autumn rich with wisdom's goodly

fruit

Which every variegated appetite might

suit.

Close by in King Street were to be found the salesrooms of Hutchins, and of Paterson, to whose son Dr. Johnson stood as godfather and for who'n he wrote letters of recommendation to Sir Joshua Reynolds. These two salerooms were constantly filled by eager purchasers of prints and pic tures. Some of their frequenters we know, such as the bibliographer Isaac Gosset the younger, whose deformity subjected him to the coarse gibes of his opponent, Michel Lort. Besides Gough, the editor of Camden's Britannia, were to be seen Caleb Whitefoord, a wine-merchant of literary tastes, who is the hero of Wilkie's picture, "The Letter of Introduction," and many others whose names are now forgotten. The sale of the collection formed by the Chevalier D'Eon is chiefly interesting on account of the personal characteristics of this extraordinary individual, once the French ambassador at the court of St. James's, who habitually disguised himself as a woman. The question of his sex often proved the subject of bets, and until his death was never set at rest. An auction of his effects took place at Chapman's Rooms in Cornhill, "next Tom's Coffee-House." Some years later a sale was announced at Christie's of "furniture, swords, trinkets, jewels, and all the wearing apparel constituting the wardrobe of a Captain of Dragoons and a French

Lady." Works of art at this period would appear to have been rapidly rising in value, for Horace Walpole, writing to his friend Sir Horace Mann in 1770, tells us of the rage for English portraits: "I have been collecting them," he writes, "for about thirty years, and originally never gave for a mezzotinto above one or two shillings. The lowest are now a crown, most from half-a-guinea to a guinea. Scarce heads in books not worth threepence will sell for five guineas. Two thousand pounds were given for a picture by Guido, and the price of old paintings had tripled or quadrupled in a single lifetime."

We hear much at this time of the famous auctions of James Christie the elder, whose first sale took place in December, 1766, at rooms in Pall Mall formerly occupied by the print warehouse of Richard Dalton. Here the Royal Academy of Arts held its exhibitions for several years. Mr. Christie afterwards moved next door to Gainsborough who lived in the west wing of Schomburg House in Pall Mall. His ingenuity in describing articles put up for sale is well illustrated by a story told of him in connection with the disposal of the effects of John Hunter the surgeon. When, in the sale, he came to a mask Hunter had used to keep his face from stings in his observations on bees, he was fairly posed; and after turning the lot round and round came out with "a most curious and interesting article, a covering for the face used by the South Sea Islanders when travelling, to protect their faces from the snowstorms." Passing mention may here be made of the abortive sale of M. Desenfans' collection of pictures, which were ultimately bequeathed by the owner, a French picture-dealer, to Sir Francis Bourgeois, and were in turn left by him to Dulwich College, together with a sum of money wherewith to erect a gallery. In 1794, the whole of Sir Joshua Reynolds's gallery of paintings was sold by order of his executorsone of whom was Edmund Burke-by Mr. Christie "at his rooms, late the