The employment of a spear, as the signal of an auction sale, is supposed to have arisen from the fact, that the only articles, originally sold, in this manner, were the spoils of war. Subsequently, the spear--_hasta_--came to be universally used, to signify a _sale at auction_. The auction of Pompey's goods, by Cæsar, is repeatedly alluded to, by Cicero, with great severity, as the _hasta Cæsaris_. A passage may be found, in his treatise, _De Officiis_, ii. 8, and another, in his eighth Philippic, sec. 3--"Invitus dico, sed dicendum est. Hasta Cæsaris, Patres Conscripti, multis improbis spem affert, et audaciam. Viderunt enim, ex mendicis fieri repente divites: itaque hastam semper videre cupiunt ii, qui nostris bonis imminent; quibus omnia pollicetur Antonius." I say it reluctantly, but it must be said--Cæsar's auction, Conscript Fathers, inflames the hopes and the insolence of many bad men. For they see how immediately, the merest beggars are converted into men of wealth. Therefore it is that those, who are hankering after our goods and chattels, and to whom Antony has promised all things, are ever longing to behold such another auction, as that. The auctioneer's bell, in use, at the Hague, in 1760, was introduced into Boston, seventy-seven years ago, by Mr. Bicker, whose auction-room was near the Market. Having given some offence to the public, he inserted the following notice, in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, Monday, April 18, 1774--"As the method, lately practised by the Subscriber, in having a Person at his Door, to invite Gentlemen and others to his public Sales--has given Dissatisfaction to some (Gentlemen Shopkeepers in particular) to avoid giving Offence for the future, he shall desist from that Practice, and pursue one (as follows) which he flatters himself cannot fail giving universal Satisfaction, as he sincerely wishes so to do. The Public are most earnestly requested to remember (_for their own advantage_) that, for the future, Notice will be given, by sounding a Bell, which he has purchased for that Purpose, which is erected over the Auction Room Door, near the Market, Boston, where constant Attendance is given both early and late, to receive the favors of all such who are pleased to confer on their _Much obliged, Most Obedient, and very humble Servant_, M. Bicker." Albeit there is no less bickering or dickering here now, than of yore, yet Bicker and his bell have gone, long ago, to the "receptacle of things lost upon earth." The very name is no more. Haydn says, the first auction in Britain was about 1700, by Elisha Yale, a Governor of Fort George, in the East Indies, of the goods he had brought home with him. That Mr. Haydn must be mistaken is manifest, from the citation from Pepys, who speaks of auctions, by inch of candle, as early as 1660; and not then as a novelty, but the first of the kind that he had witnessed.