rica. 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.

Thackeray had been dead but a few weeks when a scene similar to the one
he has so truthfully described in the seventeenth chapter of "Vanity
Fair" occurred at his own late residence. The voice of "Mr. Hammerdown"
was heard in the house, and the rooms were filled with a motley crowd of
auction-haunters and relic-hunters, (among whom, of course, were Mr.
Davids and Mr. Moses,)--a rabble-rout of thoughtless and unfeeling men
and women, eager to get an "inside view" of the home of the great
satirist. The wine in his cellars,--the pictures upon his walls,--the
books in his library,--the old "cane-bottomed chair" in which he sat
while writing many of his best works, and which he has immortalized in a
fine ballad,--the gifts of kind friends, liberal publishers, and
admiring readers,--yea, his house itself, and the land it stands
on,--passed under the hammer of the auctioneer. O good white head, low
lying in the dust of Kensal Green! it matters little to thee now what
becomes of the red brick mansion built so lovingly in the style of Queen
Anne's time, and filled with such admirable taste from cellar to roof;
but many a pilgrim from these shores will step