ning and seated in all
the voluptuous repose of an after-dinner _abandonnement_.

Now it chanced that Mr. Dunn's lot in life had thrown him into a
fortunate conjuncture of the world's temper. The prosperity of a long
peace had impressed us with an exaggerated estimate of all the arts that
amass wealth; riches became less the reward than the test of ability;
success and merit had grown to be convertible terms; clever speakers
and eloquent writers assured us that wars pertained only to ages of
barbarism,--that a higher civilization would repudiate them,--that
men, now bent upon a high and noble philanthropy, would alone strive to
diffuse the benefits of abundance and refinement amongst their fellows,
and that we were about to witness an elysian age of plenty, order,
and happiness. The same men who stigmatized the glory of war as the
hypocrisy of carnage, invented another hypocrisy infinitely meaner and
more ignoble, and placed upon the high altars of our worship the golden
image of Gain.

As the incarnation of this passion Davenport Dunn stood out before the
world; nor was there a tribute of its flattery that was not laid at his
feet. Even they who had neither wish nor necessity to benefit by his
peculiar influence did not withhold their homage, but joined in the
general acclamation that pronounced him the great man of our time; and
at his Sunday dinners were met the most distinguished in rank,--all
that the country boasted of great in station, illustrious by services or
capacity. His splendid house in Piccadilly--rented for the season for a
fabulous sum--was beset all the morning by visitors, somewhat unlike,
it must be owned, the class who frequented his Dublin levees. Here they
were not deputations or bank directors, railway chairmen or drainage
commissioners; they were all that fashion claims as her own,--proud
duchesses of princely fortune, great countesses high in courtly favor,
noble ladies whose smile of recognition was a firman to the highest
places. They met there, by one of those curious compacts the grand
world occasionally makes with itself, to do something, in a sort of half
imitation of that inferior race of mortals who live and marry and die
in the spheres beneath them. In fact, Dunn's house was a sort of bourse,
where shares were trafficked in, and securities bought and sold, with
an eagerness none the less that the fingers that held them wore gloves
fastened with rubies and emeralds.

In those gorgeou