We have to return thanks to Mrs Dunder, X., Christopher Corduroy, Polephilus, and Q. E., for their contributions. We should be further indebted to Polephilus were he to favour us with a version in English verse of the French epigram sent us.

THE

SALE-ROOM.

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

of nature, on a principle whose operation | the vast theatre of Agrigentum, enjoying in things of less importance was perpetu- the whole amusement of a dramatic exhially before their eyes. The oracles of Del-bition, without feeling any want of either phi and Dodona, so long as their authority scenery, actors, music, or dialogue, apwas believed in, worked not unfrequently plauding and hissing as the imaginary pertheir own accomplishment; and were con- formance pleased or displeased him. Nay, sulted by designing princes, who, possesswe have read somewhere or other of a pering themselves the best possible reasons for son, whose whole life was coloured by the incredulity, were willing to make use of the strength of his imagination. He had carconfidence, and resolution, and earnestness ried his powers of self-deception to such a of desire, which they well knew a favoura- pitch of perfection that he considered himble response could not fail to create in the self as Lord of all the land within view of instruments of their ambition. And, in like his house, paid high premiums for the inmanner, the fond presages and prophetic surance of merchandise which did not bedreams of a doting nurse, have, without long to him, and got drunk every night doubt, more than once pointed the way to upon hornfulls of small-beer, in the belief, the after greatness of her bantling. (like a bona fide Lord Peter,) that he was quaffing Chateau-Margout, or Champaigne. The tale which we have at first coined, af ter we have told it a hundred times, begins to appear true. The Quack becomes in the end a convert to himself, and swallows his own nostrums; witness the well known story of a late celebrated High-German Doctor who went so far as to lose his nose out of an improper confidence in the authority of a forged letter in one of his own advertisements. Don Quixote has always appeared to us the most moderate of all caricatures. Cervantes himself, before he had finished writing it, seems to have become almost as mad as his hero. Dr Spurzheim, we have no doubt, is a believer in his own doctrines, and would never think of choosing a wife on any other ground

But even when the strong desire to be does not manifest its power by any external change in the mode of being, the fancy of the wisher sometimes comes to his assistance, and supplies, with a lavish hand, the deficiencies in the realities of existence. There is an admirable history in the Arabian Nights of one Abon Hassan, who be. came somewhat in this way convinced that convinced that he was Caliph, and went through all the forms and duties of his office with great gravity, to the infinite amusement of the real Haroon al Rasheed and his court. Not even the teeth of Mesrour, the chief of the black eunuchs, could bite him back to a knowledge of his true condition; and when he awoke in his own bed, he began, to the great displeasure of his wife, to call about him for Soul's Torment, Cluster-of-than the shape of her skull. pearls, Morning-star, and Moon-face, as if he had been the actual Lord of a thousand sultanas. Aristotle, in his book De Mira-mercial town at no great distance. The bilibus Auscultationis, gives an account of another visionary of this sort, who was found one morning sitting by himself in

These observations have been suggested to us by the following letter from a com

strange species of insanity which it commemorates is by no means uncommon in the city, where the novi komines very fre

quently illustrate the vanity of human wishes, by making that the prime object of their ambition, which is in fact the only one of the external distinctions with which all their riches can never invest them.

SIR,

the wonderful affection he soon began to entertain for this author, entirely giving up all other reading, and sitting in his backshop studying coats of arms and crests, when he should have been attending to customers or balancing his accounts. This was remarked by a neighbour of his, a hatter, from the Highlands, who, it seems, is the proper chief of his clan, although his great-grandfather was cheated out of his birthright by the management of his greatgreat-grandfather's second wife, who ma naged to get the estate settled on her own children, the marriage of his own greatgreat-grandmother, who was cook in the family, having been kept secret, and all the witnesses being dead. My uncle was at first contented with being a patient listener to all the puffing stories of this Highlander, whom he considered as one of the most no. bly-descended men in the world. But by degrees he began to lay claims to gentility for himself; and being, by the hatter's interest, admitted into a club of respectable tradesmen, who call themselves the Genealogical Society, and spend most of their evenings in adjusting questions of pedigree among themselves, he there got acquainted

To the Conductor of the SALE-ROOM. January 26, 1817. I hope you will be so good as to insert this letter in the first number of your paper, as I have no expectations, except through your means, of seeing my poor uncle's judgment restored to him, and an end put to the ridicule which his late strange behaviour has drawn upon him and our whole family. My uncle, whose un happy condition is the cause of my trou bling you at present, is the elder brother of my late father. My grandfather was a very respectable tailor in this town, and gave his sons a good education, by means of which they both met with considerable success in life. My uncle, in particular, arrived some years ago at the dignity of the magistracy, and has bought several substantial tenements in this neighbourhood, which have, in the main, turned out very good purchases. But all his educa.with a celebrated antiquarian, by name tion, as you will shortly perceive, has not been sufficient to hinder him from falling into one of the strangest delusions that ever entered into a man's head. It is now about six years since I left this country, being obliged to spend some time in the West Indies in the way of my business, so that it is only of late, that, on my return home, I have been fully informed as to my uncle's real case. From all that I can hear, very shortly after I left Scotland, he had, somehow or other, fallen in with a book called Nisbett's Heraldry; and the first strange symptom that appeared, was

Moses M'Crae, a glover, who suggested to. him an idea which has given a new colour to his existence ever since. Our family name of Corduroy had, as I always supposed, been bestowed on some of our forefathers on account of their being instru mental in introducing the use of that parti cular kind of stuff in the neighbourhood; but Mr M'Crae hinted that the name ought, in his opinion, to be written Cœur du roy, and that, in all probability, my uncle was the male representative of some ancient. branch of the house of Douglas, as Cœurdu roy means a king's heart, and the Dou