young man-whom nobody knew—but who has
since got to be rather better known. There is
a crowd of solicitor interest, of agricultural,
metropolitan, local, and other divergent interest,
who are all furnished with the topographical
memoir, and contend for lots with a savage
competition. It is hard not to admire the
professional manner in which judicial auctioneer
does his work, for all the world as though he
had been bred to it: falling into the correct
cadences of suspension, of pathetic entreaty,
of remonstrance, and often one last lingering
appeal of suspension, all conveyed without
any vulgar iteration. There is something so
piquant in this notion of a judge flourishing his
hammer and inviting bids, that it is to be
regretted the function should have since been
delegated to meaner hands. Finally, we find that
judicial auctioneer, who has all this time been
working briskly through Knocakilty,
Drumbunnion, and other euphonious denominations,
is now "declaring the purchaser" for the last
lot, and has left the Incumbered Nobleman without
a rood. The family castle of Tumbletowers,
an awe-inspiring mass of turrets and battlements,
which, with its fittings and decorations,
was said to be contracted for at some fifty
thousand pounds, was included in the last lot,
and absolutely did not swell the price one
shilling. To be sure, the builder's little
account had never yet been settled, and it was
likely that his heirs and assignees walking nearly
last in the procession of incumbrancers, might
come in for a thousand or so of his bill. But it
has been remarked that, somehow, a cruel blight
waits upon these noble but unpaid-for tenements,
which by the unhappy law of incumbered
sales scarcely swell the price by a few pounds.
The rich demesne lands are purchased at good
figures, and the noble but unpaid-for mansion is
thrown in.

An inflexible strictness, reaching almost to
the casuistical, marks all the dealings of the
judicial auction-room. A sort of code peculiar
to itself has gradually grown up. Once the
mystic solemnity of "declaring the purchaser"
has been gone through, the sale is decreed
eternally. Bidders, napping for an instant—
whispering or inattentive—have, within a
second after that final declaration, been known to
offer thousands over the price—and have been
eternally refused by the incorruptible Medes
sitting aloft upon their rostrum.

The tradition of that first inaugurative sale
still survives. The name of the earliest victim
should surely descend with a certain notoriety.
He who was thus exposed mercilessly to the fury
of the Jacobins was called, surnominally, Balfe
—baptismally, James—and the first morsel cast
to the hungry executioners was all that and
those the lands, tenements, and hereditaments
of Southpark, in the County of Roscommon.
The day of immolation was Friday, February
the twenty-second, eighteen hundred and fifty;
the price fetched, equivalent to some three-and-
twenty years' purchase. A notable day.
Bidding was at first a little languid, owing to the
novelty of the thing, and the chief
commissioner, a Baron of the Exchequer, gently
remonstrated. "We are not," said he, "about
to adopt the phraseology of the auction-room,
and say, 'Going, going!' at every fresh bid."
The remark of another commissioner brought
the thing home to each spectator in a startling
manner: "The purchaser can have his
conveyance executed, sealed, and delivered this very
day!" "And," added the third commissioner,
a little facetiously, "it will be satisfactory to
him to know that a very small box indeed will
hold the conveyance!" A small box! They were
as yet scarcely familiar with their tools and
machinery; for the printed form of conveyance barely
fills twenty lines, or half a page of duodecimo
print. By-and-by, it was expanded into a single
skin of parchment, which even included a map.

No wonder that this unworthy spirit of
abbreviation should be resented. From Irish
Chancery-lane, rose a deep cry of disquiet. The
profession had been betrayed, even "sold!"
the legitimate fruits of its spoliation cut off.
Now, were remembered with a regretful feeling,
reaching almost to affection, the soft protraction,
the legal sweetness long drawn out, of the
olden Chancery days. Generous professional
minds could now only think of their
benefactress with an amiable longing. "Give us
back, give us back," they shrieked, "the
professional wild freshness of receivers' accounts,
of answers, of exceptions to masters' reports!
The bark is still there, such as it is, but
the barristerial waters are gone!" It is on
record that a solicitor's bill for costs, searches,
drafting, conveyance, and other charges, was
actually presented under the new system at the
degrading figure of some eight or ten pounds.
After this cruel stab, well might the profession
cover up its head decently in its gown, and
sink down, Cæsar-like, at the base of the next
convenient statue.

The sacrifice of the Tumbletowers estate
being thus complete, we are given to understand
that fourteen days of grace will be granted to
the purchasers to "bring in" their moneys.
Their moneys are "brought in" to the Bank of
Ireland, which has often held floating balances
of nearly half a million sterling, to the credit of
the court, and is reputed to turn some forty
thousand a year by the temporary manipulation
of those funds. A few purchasers have applied
to be released from their bargains, on the
ground of mistakes and errors in the rental,
discovered afterwards; some still fewer have made
default and subjected themselves to the
disagreeable process of the court known as
"attachment." The money being thus paid down
and the land delivered, the distribution among
creditors follows next. Then sets in the storm
and battle of incumbrancers, hitherto combined
against the common enemy, now distracted
with an internecine competition. They stand
upon the order of their going, or rather coming.
He that is first, is paid first; those who fall
under the unhappy category of "puisne," or
later and latest in time, must stand by and look