voted. There was too much speaking as it was; if Vavasour had not
replied, I believe we should have won.'

'But then, my dear fellow, think of my points; think how they laid
themselves open!'

'A majority is always the best repartee,' said Coningsby.

'I have been talking with Montacute,' whispered Lord Henry to Coningsby,
who was seated next to him. 'Wonderful fellow! You can conceive nothing
richer! Very wild, but all the right ideas; exaggerated of course. You
must get hold of him after dinner.'

'But they say he is going to Jerusalem.'

'But he will return.'

'I do not know that; even Napoleon regretted that he had ever re-crossed
the Mediterranean. The East is a career.'

Mr. Vavasour was a social favourite; a poet and a real poet, and
a troubadour, as well as a member of Parliament; travelled,
sweet-tempered, and good-hearted; amusing and clever. With catholic
sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour saw something good
in everybody and everything, which is certainly amiable, and perhaps
just, but disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life,
which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice. Mr.
Vavasour's breakfasts were renowned. Whatever your creed, class, or
country, one might almost add your character, you were a welcome guest
at his matutinal meal, provided you were celebrated. That qualification,
however, was rigidly enforced.

It not rarely happened that never were men more incongruously grouped.
Individuals met at his hospitable house who had never met before, but
who for years had been cherishing in solitude mutual detestation, with
all the irritable exaggeration of the literary character. Vavasour liked
to be the Amphitryon of a cluster of personal enemies. He prided himself
on figuring as the social medium by which rival reputations became
acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which
veiled their ineffable disgust. All this was very well at his rooms in
the Albany, and only funny; but when he collected his menageries at his
ancestral hall in a distant county, the sport sometimes became tragic.

A real philosopher, alike from his genial disposition and from the
influence of his rich and various information, Vavasour moved amid
the strife, sympathising with every one; and perhaps, after all, the
philanthropy which was his boast was not untinged by a dash of humour,
of which rare and charming quality he possessed no inconsiderable