sh success would for the future
be to him as--nothing. That was the lesson of wisdom which he had
endeavoured to teach himself, and the facts of the last two years had
seemed to show that the lesson was a true lesson. He had disappeared
from among his former companions, and had heard almost nothing from
them. From neither Lord Chiltern or his wife had he received any
tidings. He had expected to receive none,--had known that in the
common course of things none was to be expected. There were many
others with whom he had been intimate--Barrington Erle, Laurence
Fitzgibbon, Mr. Monk, a politician who had been in the Cabinet, and
in consequence of whose political teaching he, Phineas Finn, had
banished himself from the political world;--from none of these had he
received a line till there came that letter summoning him back to the
battle. There had never been a time during his late life in Dublin at
which he had complained to himself that on this account his former
friends had forgotten him. If they had not written to him, neither
had he written to them. But on his first arrival in England he had,
in the sadness of his solitude, told himself that he was forgotten.
There would be no return, so he feared, of those pleasant intimacies
which he now remembered so well, and which, as he remembered them,
were so much more replete with unalloyed delights than they had ever
been in their existing realities. And yet here he was, a welcome
guest in Lord Chiltern's house, a welcome guest in Lady Chiltern's
drawing-room, and quite as much at home with them as ever he had been
in the old days.

Who is there that can write letters to all his friends, or would not
find it dreary work to do so even in regard to those whom he really
loves? When there is something palpable to be said, what a blessing
is the penny post! To one's wife, to one's child, one's mistress,
one's steward if there be a steward; one's gamekeeper, if there be
shooting forward; one's groom, if there be hunting; one's publisher,
if there be a volume ready or money needed; or one's tailor
occasionally, if a coat be required, a man is able to write. But
what has a man to say to his friend,--or, for that matter, what has
a woman? A Horace Walpole may write to a Mr. Mann about all things
under the sun, London gossip or transcendental philosophy, and if
the Horace Walpole of the occasion can write well and will labour
diligently at that vocation, his letters may be worth readin