Country neighborhoods are rarely rich in events, and of these, few can rival a great auction. It is not alone in the interests of barter and gain thus suggested, but in the thousand new channels for thought thus suddenly opened,--the altered fortunes of him whose effects have come to the hammer; his death, or his banishment,--both so much alike. The visitor wanders amidst objects which have occupied years in collection,--some the results of considerable research and difficulty, some the long-coveted acquisitions of half a lifetime, and some--we have known such--the fond gifts of friendship. There they are now side by side in the catalogue, their private histories no more suspected than those of them who lie grass-covered in the churchyard. You admire that highly bred hunter in all the beauty of his symmetry and his strength, but you never think of the “little Shelty” in the next stable with shaggy mane and flowing tail; and yet it was on _him_ the young heir used to ride; _he_ was the cherished animal of all the stud, led in beside the breakfast-table to be caressed and petted, fed with sugar from fair fingers, and patted by hands a Prince might have knelt to kiss! His rider now sleeps beneath the marble slab in the old aisle, and they who once brightened in smiles at the sound of his tiny trot would burst into tears did they behold that pony! So, amidst the triumphs of color and design that grace the walls, you have no eyes for a little sketch in water-color,--a mill, a shealing beside a glassy brook, a few trees, and a moss-clad rock; and yet that little drawing reveals a sad story. It is all that remains of her who went abroad to die. You throw yourself in listless lassitude upon a couch; it was the work of one who beguiled over it the last hours of a broken heart! You turn your steps to the conservatory, but never notice the little flower-garden, whose narrow walks, designed for tiny feet, need not the little spade to tell of the child-gardener who tilled it. Ay, this selling-off is a sad process! It bespeaks the disruption of a home; the scattering of those who once sat around the same hearth, with all the dear familiar things about them!