He had an income which would be equivalent to one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year in our money, and for several years traveled abroad and spent very little.  On his return with an ample sum of ready money, he carried into execution a long-cherished scheme of country life.

He arranged his immense mansion after the fashion of an inn.  The guests arrived, were shown to their rooms, and treated as though they were in the most perfectly-appointed hotel.  They ordered dinner when they pleased, dined together or alone as suited them, hunted, shot, played billiards, cards, etc. at will, and kept their own horses.  There was a regular bar, where drinks of the finest quality were always served.  The host never appeared in that character:  he was just like any other gentleman in the house.

The only difference from a hotel lay in the choice character of the company, and the fact that not a farthing might be disbursed.  The servants were all paid extra, with the strict understanding that they did not accept a farthing, and that any dereliction from this rule would be punished by instant dismissal.

Unlike most Irish establishments, especially at that date (about the middle of the last century), this was managed with the greatest order, method and economy.

Among the notable guests was Dean Swift, whose astonishment at the magnitude of the place, with the lights in hundreds of windows at night, is mentioned by Dr. Sheridan.

It is pleasant to add in this connection that the count and countess de Jarnac worthily sustain the high character earned a century since by their remarkable ancestor, who was one of the best and most benevolent men of his day.]

In some respects railroads have had a very injurious effect on the sociability of English country life.  They have rendered people in great houses too apt to draw their supplies of society exclusively from town.  English trains run so fast that this can even be done in places quite remote from London.  The journey from London to Rugby, for instance, eighty miles, is almost invariably accomplished in two hours.  Leaving at five in the afternoon, a man reaches that station at 7.10:  his friend’s well-appointed dog-cart is there to meet him, and that exquisitely neat young groom, with his immaculate buckskins and boots in which you may see yourself, will make the thoroughbred do the four miles to the hall in time to enable you to dress for dinner by 7.45.  Returning on Tuesday morning—­and all the lines are most accommodating about return tickets—­the barrister, guardsman, government clerk can easily be at his post in town by eleven o’clock.  Thus the actual “country people” get to be held rather cheap, and come off badly, because Londoners, being more in the way of hearing, seeing and observing what is going on in society, are naturally more congenial to fine people in country-houses who live in the metropolis half the year.