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

account) the butt for Injustice and Tyranny to shoot their arrows at ; and the lightest misfortunes of his life are those which he ascribes to his own peculiar Evil Luck, unaided by the malice of his brethren of mankind. I have heard that at the High School he never was permitted to rise above the booby-form; a circumstance which Peter as cribes entirely to the partiality of the masters of that seminary, and appeals to all who know him if the thing does not speak for itself. At college he was treated with the same gross injustice; for his mien, and the happy correspondence of a long miserable visage that seemed to qualify him for an undertaker's man, was an inexhausti

regarding the seceder with a look of offended importance, seemed to await the restoration of silence in order to resume his task. This was an imprudent manoeuvre on the part of Dr Dunder: an orator should always beware of quitting possession of the floor, even for a moment, when he perceives that his audience become impatient. The feelings of decorum and complaisance, wearing gradually more and more feeble, are at length barely sufficient to prevent the rudeness of actual interruption, and by no means adequate to repress the disposition (of the audience to hustle the speaker off the stage should he give them an opportunity of bursting in at any pause in his lecture. Accordingly, the words of our Co-ble source of pun and fun to the thin Proryphæus were no sooner uttered, than two or three voices, enquired, who was Peter Grievance, and what was he doing below stairs?

"Prosing, as we are doing above," was the reply ;" and as to who he is," continued the speaker, again laying down his hat,for, to do him justice, he is as fond of haranguing as Dr Dunder himself as to who he is, I thought there had not been a man in Edinburgh whom he has not talked into a fit of the blue devils. What he is depends partly on what he has been, and that would take some time to tell you." **Let us hear him-let us hear him," was repeated from different corners; for, as Dr Dunder was observed to handle, recover, and present his notes, as if in order to resume his silenced fire, we were, to our shame be it spoken, all anxious to put him hors de combat.

"Peter, then," replied his acquaintance, "since you will have him, is one of those unfortunate beings who have been, during their whole life, (according to their own

fessor of Humanity; and the learned Professor of Greek used to say more cruel things to him in that Ethnic language than Peter (having respect for his memory) chuses to repeat. As he was convinced,, from these circumstances of melancholy experience, that the constitution of our academy affords no fair play for genius, Peter exchanged it for the stern school of arms, and tried successively the sea and land service. During six months service on board the Ajax, he found himself at first excessively sea sick, which he imputes part-. ly to the wretched and unhealthy birth in which the midshipmen are stowed, and partly to the pertinacious and brutal obstinacy of the captain, who kept the sea (watching a French squadron) during a heavy gale of wind. When the malady to which he was thus wilfully subjected had something abated, he found that the tyrannical rules of the service were calculated to drive all gentlemen out of that line, in order that ministers might dispose of naval appointments: to their own creatures exclusively. In the

vedly to the high eminence which they have somehow attained, for Peter can safely aver, that he made little or no progress while under their tuition. I pass over the narrow escape which he made of being remitted to his studies, upon his first private examination, previous to assuming the honours of the gown,-a difficulty which was only averted by a kind-hearted examinator, who enlarged to his brethren on the noted example of a repulsed candidate for the toga having hanged himself, in the acute feeling of his disappointment. At the bar, the arts of his contemporaries (commonly called hugging) for securing the good-will and custom of the agents, together with the partiality of the

army he was equally unfortunate; and if his authority can be received, there is no doubt that the fatal expedition to Saint Domingo had for its secret motive the pur pose of vacating, by means of the yellow fever, the ensigncy held in the regiment of infantry by Peter Grievance, gentleman. But he will explain the secret springs of that unhappy affair when his political memoirs shall be made public. Mankind, and especially those who possessed any influence on his fortunes, appearing thus to be engaged in a combination against Peter, he resolved, nevertheless, not to be awanting to himself, but, relying on his own exertions, determined to break the measures instituted against him by his secret and pow-judges for their own peats, or protegeés, erful enemies, by the sale of his commission. In the course of this transaction he was cheated of ten days' pay, whether by the address of the agent or pay-master he is at a loss to assert positively, but inclines to believe they understood each other, and divided shares on the profit of the fraud. To qualify himself, I suppose, to meet the arts of imposition, by which he had already been such a sufferer, Mr Grievance resolved to apply himself to the law, for which profession his father had originally destined him. But I perceive," said our friend, interrupting himself, and looking at Dr Dunder, who was impatiently tapping his papers with the case of his spectacles, "I perceive I interrupt business."

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sons, nephews, and cousins, in the nineteenth degree, prevented any one who came to the bar with the fair, manly, and inde pendent views of Peter Grievance, from squeezing his way forward among the sordid crowd. of dependents and sycophants. In the meanwhile Mr Grievance, senior, a person only remarkable for having quarrelled with every living soul in the parish of Dolour, which he honoured with his residence, and for never in his life having expressed himself satisfied with the weather which Heaven was pleased to send, was removed to a place where we sincerely hope he finds nothing to complain of. He left his son a competent estate, encumbered only with fifteen law suits (ganging pleas,

By no means," replied the company, every one of them) in which he was engapray go on with Peter."

"Mr Grievance, gentlemen," resumed the historian of that unhappy person," was not more fortunate in his legal than he had been in his classical studies. He is of opinion, that the professors of municipal and civil jurisprudence, have risen most undeser

ged with the Minister, the Doctor, the Exciseman, the Trustees on the Roads, the Collector of Cess, cum plurimis aliis. These have afforded to his heir an ample fund of vexation, in which, perhaps, gentlemen, any of you whose chance it is to have been litigants, may be better disposed to sympa.