extravagance, liberal in all his appointments, and gratifying to the
utmost his love of art and decoration, while his charities and
generous actions were hearty and lavish enough to satisfy even his
warm-hearted wife.

Joined with all this was a strong turn for speculations. When the
mind has once become absorbed in earthly visions of wealth and
prosperity, the excitement exercises such a fascination over the
senses that the judgment loses balance. Bold assumptions are taken
as certainties, and made the foundation of fresh fabrics--the very
power of discerning between fact and possibility departs, and, in
mere good-will, men, honest and honourable at heart, risk their own
and their neighbours' property, and ruin their character and good
name, by the very actions most foreign to to their nature, ere it had
fallen under the strong delusion.

Mr. Frost Dynevor had the misfortune to live in a country rich in
mineral wealth, and to have a brother-in-law easily guided, and with
more love of figures than power of investigating estimates on a large
scale. Mines were set on foot, companies established, and buildings
commenced, and the results were only to be paralleled by those of the
chalybeate springs discovered by Mr. Dynevor at the little town of
Northwold, which were pronounced by his favourite hanger-on to be
destined 'literally to cut the throat of Bath and Cheltenham.'

Some towns are said to have required the life of a child ere their
foundations could be laid. Many a speculation has swallowed a life
and fortune before its time for thriving has come. Mr. Frost Dynevor
and Lord Ormersfield were the foremost victims to the Cheveleigh iron
foundries and the Northwold baths. The close of the war brought a