On July 3rd, 252 lots were sold in Wellington Street for £415 18s. Sixteen important letters of Mr. Gladstone sold for £4 10s., and I secured several very interesting Disraeli letters at prices varying from 15s. to 21s. At this sale Disraeli letters went as low as 2s., 3s., 5s., and 7s. A fine series of Thomas Carlyle letters varied in price from £2 2s. to £8 15s. The Sir Arthur Vicars' sale of heraldic and genealogical MSS. (July 27th-28th) excited some interest. The 671 lots brought a total of £1,571 10s. The sale of November 16-17, 1908, was of more than ordinary interest, and the 334 lots of which it was made up realised £1,007 9s. Amongst the interesting MSS. disposed of were—

£s.d.
Robert Burns, 34 lines of verse25100
Queen Henrietta Maria, A.L.S.(n.d.)2000
Keats, original assignment of poems5000
Cotton Mather A.L.S., October 10, 17203800
Schiller A.L.S., January 27, 179110100
Swift A.L.S. (short), June 1, 173714150

The season of 1909 opened with the Stoddart Sale of historical MSS. (February 22nd-23rd). In this sale 404 lots brought £510 6s. The fine A.L.S. of Mrs. Siddons, now in my collection, fetched £12 5s., or £2 less than it did thirty years ago. The price of Nelson letters was well maintained, a small collection of them, with portraits and sundry relics, fetching £145. A letter to Lady Hamilton, dated March 23, 1801, although covering only half a page, went for £31. On March 1st (a one-day's sale) 201 lots brought £798 2s. 6d. A short letter of Keats sold for £25 10s., two A.L.S. of James Wolfe for £35 10s., and a fine holograph letter of Raphael Sanzio d'Urbino for £41. A series of MSS. relating to the American War of Independence (including four letters and documents signed by Washington) was purchased by Messrs. Maggs for £40. I have already alluded to the sale of June 9th-10th, from which the Windham correspondence was withdrawn. The remaining 524 lots realised no less than £2,145 10s. 6d. A series of twenty-four Nelson letters and other MSS. relating to him was purchased by Mr. Sabin for £121, a very low price considering that fourteen letters of Lady Hamilton went with the others, as well as Nelson's original will and seven codicils, from which eight signatures had been removed! Mr. Quaritch, at this sale, gave £275 for the correspondence of John Robinson, Secretary of the Treasury, 1770 to 1782, which included 194 letters from George III. These MSS. have an important bearing on both American and British history, and ought to have been acquired by the nation along with the Windham papers. A one-day's sale on July 22nd, consisting of only 269 lots, realised £1,113 14s. 6d., and another on December 17th, composed of 269 lots, brought a total of £1,318 6s. A rise in price at both these sales was very marked. In the first a song of Burns (2 pp.) fetched £57, and two unpublished letters of Lord Byron £17 10s. and £28 respectively. £20 was paid for some notes of Goethe in pencil, and £40 for a 2 pp. 8vo letter of Shelley. It was in the latter that the twenty-four letters of Beethoven were sold for £660. On the same day Mr. Cromwell gave £31 for an exceedingly interesting letter addressed to the Genevan Senate, signed by Oliver Cromwell.

On the 28th of January of the present year (1910) 264 lots realised £742 13s. 6d. It was on this occasion that £50 was given for an 8½ pp. 8vo letter of Charlotte Brontë. It is doubtless a high price, but only just before Mr. Sabin paid £17 10s. for a letter of Mr. R. Waldo Emerson to Thomas Carlyle (October 7, 1835), and Mr. Quaritch gave £56 for a 2 pp. 4to letter of George Washington to S. Powell (May 25, 1786). Within a few days no less than £81 was expended on a blue Hawaian postage-stamp, in Leicester Square. About a quarter of that sum gave Mr. Sabin, on February 28th, a long holograph poem of Frederick the Great addressed to Algarotti, beginning with the lines:—

My trembling timid pen
Presents its first attempt
To the rigid public censor,
To assure it against attacks
May Minerva guide it.

The cost of the Hawaian "specimen" would have sufficed to buy both the poem of the Prussian King and Charlotte Brontë's touching confession that the "only glimpses of society she ever had were obtained in her vocation of governess," and her earnest appeal to the necessity of a creed.

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