hours, utterly unmindful of the time of sale, and oblivious of the efforts of his clerk to call his attention to the lateness of the time. Baker, Leigh, and Sotheby, all of York Street, Covent Garden, were also eminent in this branch of the trade; but the prince of book-auctioneers was James Christie, whose powers of persuasion were rendered doubly effective by a quiet, easy flow of conversation, and a gentle refinement of manners. At the close of the century, the booksellers’ trade sales were held at the Horn Tavern, in Doctors’ Commons, and were preceded by a luxurious dinner, when the bottle and the jest went round merrily, and the competition was heightened by wine and laughter. Tegg, to retake the thread of our story after this digression, started with a very poor stock, consisting of shilling political pamphlets, and some thousands of the _Monthly Visitor_. At Worcester, however, he purchased a parcel of books from a clergyman for ten pounds, but when the time for payment arrived the good man refused to accept anything. At Worcester, too, it was that he held his first auction. “With a beating heart I mounted the rostrum. The room was crowded. I took £30 that first night, and in a few days a knife and fork was provided for me at many of the houses of my customers. God helps those, I thought, who help themselves.” With his wife acting as clerk, he travelled through the country, buying up the duplicates at all the gentlemen’s libraries he could hear of, and rapidly paying off his debts. This led him to return to his shop in Cheapside, but his ardent desire for advancement involved him again in difficulties. “One day I was called from the shop three times by the sheriff’s officers (a few years afterwards I paid a fine of £400 to be excused serving sheriff myself). Bailiffs are not always iron-hearted. I have met with very kind officers; some have taken my word for debt and costs, and one lent me the money to pay both” (O rare bum-bailiff! why is not thy name recorded?).