snuff-box of Xerxes and
the boot-jack of Themistocles should be offered for sale. These
antiquities seem scarcely less desirable, or less likely to come into the
market, than the scissors, pistols, and field-glass of Fernando Cortes.
An original portion of the Tables of the Law (broken on a familiar
occasion by the prophet), Hannibal's cigarette case, a landing net (at
one time in the possession of Alcibiades), a piece of chalk used by
Archimedes in his mathematical demonstrations, the bronze shoe of
Empedocles, the arrow on which Abaris flew, and the walking-stick, a
considerable piece of timber, which Dr. Johnson lost in Mull, may all be
reposing in some private collection. Collectors do get very odd things
together. Poor M. Soleirol had quite a gallery of portraits and
autographs of Moliere, and a French mathematician, about a dozen years
ago, possessed an assortment of apocryphal letters from almost every one
mentioned in history, sacred or profane. The collection of Mr. Samuel
Ireland was like this, and an English student possessed autographs of
most of the great reformers, carefully written by an ingenious swindler
in contemporary books. The lovers of relics are apt to be thus deluded,
and perhaps we should not regret this, as long as they are happy. But
they should be very careful indeed when they are asked to buy Alvarado's
spear, though probably it is extant somewhere, as it certainly is in the
catalogue. It is a question of caution in the purchaser.

CURIOSITY HUNTING.

What will people not collect in this curious age, and what prices will
they not pay for things apparently valueless? Few objects can seem less
desirable than an old postage-stamp, yet our Paris correspondent informs
us that postage-stamps are at a premium in the capital of taste and of
pleasure. A well-known dealer offers 4 pounds 15_s_. for every Tuscan
stamp earlier than 1860, and 16 pounds for particularly fine examples.
Mauritius stamps of 1847 are estimated--by the purchaser, mind--at two
thousand francs, and post-marks of British Guiana of 1836, from five
hundred to a thousand francs. Eighty pounds for a soiled bit of paper,
that has no beauty to recommend it! Probably no drawing of equal size
from the very hand of Raffaelle or Leonardo would be priced nearly so
high as these grubby old stamps. Yet the drawing would be not only a
thing of art, beautiful in itself, but also a personal relic of the
famous artist whose pe