ged being left in the hands of Branscombe, pear from before the public in the darkness

which covered our approach, lay down the parts of Alexander of Macedon and the Seven Champions of Christendom, which we had got up for their amusement, strip ourselves of our white tunics and visors, and leave the Sale-Room, unenlivened save by the tap of our respectable publisher's hammer.

Richardson, and the other good-natured | brokers of tickets, who judiciously talk to every customer, with the same confidence and the same success, of the great probability of his obtaining the 20,000l. prize. If, therefore, all avenues to rank, fortune, and fame, are overcrowded by Hope, who, like a master of ceremonies at his annual ball, takes care to issue tickets for ten times the On the other hand, should the discern. number that the place can accommodate, ing public (then, in our eyes, doubly diswhy should we not thrust ourselves forward cerning) descry merit, or find amusement, in the press, and put in our claim to the lite- in our lucubrations, we shall endeavour to rary distinction which so many hope for and supply them weekly with a few pages of sofew obtain ? ، Faint heart," said our grand- | useful discussion, curious information, or mothers, "never won fair lady." "Never innocent mirth. This promise our publisher venture never win" was the adage of our has endeavoured to persuade us was far too fathers, when they allowed Scotland's super- low-coloured, and he took the trouble to fluous population to be used up, and her (very produce about a round dozen of similar anfar from superfluous) cash to be wasted in nunciations, the bloom of which did indeed the desarts of Darien. Hope, with some put to shame our modest statement. "Whip assistance from a sober-minded, mercantile ping the cream," he said, "from these, we sort of person, called Assessment, (regular in would find no difficulty in concocting such most things, but especially so in his annual a syllabus (Query, syllabub ?) as could not visits) paves our streets, builds our churches fail to sweeten the palate of criticism." We and our theatres, bridges our vallies, and le- sate down in conclave with a heavy heart, vels our hills; and why then should Hope | concluding, that the three-fourths of the innot stimulate the publication of the Sale- troductory paper, whether we termed it No. Room? If Disappointment should prick us I. or No. II., which we had already comoff, after her elder sister, or parent, (we are pounded, must be necessarily thrown aside not sure which relation they bear to each as useless. Upon examining the papers, other) hath pricked us on, we will e'en put however, there seemed so close a resemour folly in our pocket, and sit quietly down blance in style and arrangement, that we with our shame and the odd hits. We give were half persuaded there is some person this intimation to the public in policy as in the literary world who lives by writing well as in fairness, that criticism may be at the introductions to periodical works, and least disarmed of that motive for severity who, finding the ricketty babes which he which arises from the pleasure of making christened died fast, and were soon forgotten, its stings felt. And, therefore, we once e'en permitted himself to grow lazy and more promise, that, like a band of repulsed repeat the same topics, in nearly the same guisards, whom a churlish domestic has style, on every new occasion; 'as Claudero, threatened with the police, we will disap- ofpoetical memory, used, in our early days,

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to visit every new.married pair within the | royalty of Edinburgh with the same epithalamium on their happy union, names and places of abode being alone altered. According to this established formula, we ought to have opened our first parallel upon the public by lamenting the decay of taste and genius (modestly intimating thereby some hope that we are the persons to be looked to for their revival,) and assuring our readers of our fixed determination to unite eloquence with reason, and instruction with entertainment.-We should then have boasted our connection with most eminent literary characters of the age, and the countenance which they were likely to afford us in consequence,-professed our determination (in the established phrase, introduced out of respect to our wooden walls) to steer clear of this Scylla and of that Charybdis; to be wise and witty, generally speaking, at the same moment; but, at least, never to lay aside our cloak of wisdom, save in order to assume the harlequin jacket of wit, or, in plain terms, never to be silly and dull in the same paper. And, having thus professed our power to prepare an intellectual banquet to which poets and philosophers might sit down with rapturous expectation, we ought, as is not unusual for such proem, to have concluded with the stale apology which an under-bred mistress of a family makes for her elaborate dinner, that forsooth our respect for the public is such, that we question, after all our exertions, if we can present any thing worth the digestion of that venerable body.

ing by how many different manœuvres the words of the same sentence may be marched, countermarched, dispersed, and reassembled in new formations, we began to look upon each other, and "roll our eyes which witnessed huge dismay." The most conscientious asked, if we could with honour, or honesty, promise what there was no chance of our being able to perform; and the more prudent remarked, that, if we did, we should take nothing by our imposition, since detection would attend it as close as the thunder upon the flash of light ning. On the other hand, to break through all rules, and to disoblige at the very outset our publisher, who stood at the bottom of his trap-stair clamouring for copy, as if to stun our scruples by his importunity, were things not to be thought of.

In this dilemma the Coryphæus of our number, un cieux routier, an experienced stager, who, having lived in almost all classes of society, has learned the art of walking easy through life, and having watched all the chances of Fortune's game, has seldom omitted striking the ball at the rebound, if he missed it while in the air, said, with his characteristic indifference, "Egad, gentlemen, since the trick of the scene requires this mummery of profession and promise, do not let us baulk old custom. For saving our credit, we will e'en tack the requisite formula, of which we have made an abstract, to that which we had previously written, and thus, like Lion in the Midsummer Night's Dream, appear on the stage half actors half real persons, half-monster halfhuman. As for our reception, I know the Having thus, in our publisher's phrase, public well: it is neither ill-natured nor "skimmed the cream" of these prelimi- fastidious, although as fickle and capricious nary advertisements without any advan as a fine lady. Much of our fortune detage, except some opportunity of remark-pends on the manner in which the many.

No. II.]

THE

SALE-ROOM.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1817.

A Periodical Paper, published weekly at No. 4, Hanover-Street, Edinburgh.

Dunder) under whose dictation our Second Number opened with the following motto and proemium :

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

OUR Conclave assembled on the Monday | gravest of our number, (the worthy Doctor succeeding our first publication with the intention of preparing a second Number. In order to facilitate our labour, we have engaged in our service a scribe possessing the pen of a ready writer, long the acting clerk of a deceased council of eminence, and against whose manuscript we never heard any objection, excepting that no human being could read it but one compositor in a celebrated session printing-house, who, in his better days, had been Blind Inspector, as it is called, or Decypherer of illegible Directions, to the Post-Office. This trifling inconvenience we were fortunately able to remove, by subjecting our amanuensis to a course of three lessons from the Professor who announces to the public his talents for teaching the whole art of calligraphy within that brief period of tuition. This course of study having proved as successful as could reasonably be expect ed, our worthy secretary was placed before his desk of green cloth, and was brandishing his goose-quill at the direction of the

"The above verse of an abstruse author must sound new in the ears of those to whom classical learning hath not yielded her last and most coy retreat, and therefore forms a fitting prelude to a discourse in which we propose to discuss the most recondite doctrines of ethics or moral philosophy."-Here the Doctor cleared his voice with an important hem, censured our scribe, for having terminated ethics with an x,-a short-hand process by which one letter was made to do the duty of three, and then proceeded :

"We trust, within the compass of this short Essay, to remove the doubts which have so long hung, like mists over a winter sea," (here the Doctor looked about him for applause)" around doctrines, the distinct