The whole advertising system of mock auctions, like that, connected with the kindred impostures of quackery and patent medicines, furnishes a vast amount of curious and entertaining reading; and affords abundant scope, for the exercise of a vicious ingenuity. I have heard of a horse, that could not be compelled, by whip or spur, to cross a bridge, which lay in the way to his owner's country residence--the horse was advertised to be sold at auction for no fault but that his owner was _desirous of going out of the city_. No. CXL. Few things are more difficult, than shaving a cold corpse, and making, what the _artistes_ call _a good job of it_. I heard Robert New say so, forty years ago, who kept his shop, at the north--easterly corner of Scollay's buildings. He said the barber ought to be called, as soon, as the breath was out of the body, and a little before, if it was a clear case, and you wished the corpse "_to look wholesome_." I think he was right. Pope's Narcissa said-- "One need not sure be ugly, though one's dead." There is considerable mystery, in shaving a living corpse. I find it so; and yet I have always shaved myself; for I have never been able to overcome a strong, hereditary prejudice, against being taken by the nose. My razor is very capricious; so, I suppose, is everybody's razor. There is a deep and mystical philosophy, about the edge of a razor, which seems to have baffled the most scientific; and is next of kin to witchcraft. A tract, by Cotton Mather, upon this subject, would be invaluable. The scholar will smile, at any comparison, between Pliny the elder and Cotton Mather. So far, as respects the scope of knowledge, and power of intellect, and inexhaustible treasures, displayed in Pliny's thirty-seven books of Natural History, one might as well compare Hyperion to a mummy. I allude to nothing but the _Magnalia_ or _Improbabilia_; and, upon this point of comparison, Mather, witchcraft and all fairly fade out of sight, before the marvels and fantastical stories of Pliny. In lib. xxviii. 23, Pliny assigns a very strange cause, why _aciem in cultris tonsorum hebetescere_--why the edge of a barber's razor is sometimes blunted. The reader may look it up, if he will--it is better in a work, _sub sigillo latinitatis_, than in an English journal. I have often put my razor down, regretting, that my beard did not spread over a larger area; so keenly and agreeably has the instrument performed its work. It really seemed, that I might have shaved a sleeping mouse, without disturbing his repose. After twelve hours, that very razor, untouched the while, has come forth, no better than a pot-sherd. The very reverse of all this has also befallen me. I once heard Revaillon, our old French barber, say, that a razor could not be strapped with too light a hand; and the English proverb was always in his mouth--"a good lather is half the shave."