Alison, Carlyle and all the great historiographers who have essayed the French Revolution go into long preambles of the causes leading up to the principal drama, antedating, by some years, the assembling of the States-general. I am very fond of the opening chosen by Charles Dickens for his “Tale of Two Cities,” namely, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The contradictory statement is yet so graphic as to suggest to my mind all the preamble I need for a chapter upon the Reign of Terror in American domestic architecture, especially as I have already touched upon the remote causes in preceding chapters. If money was ever to be made without the impending shadow of nervous prostration and heart failure--I mean a decent sum of money, a competency--that opportunity presented itself with dazzling splendor in PLATE LVI. [Illustration: “And that house with the Coopilow’s his’n.”--BRET HARTE.] [Illustration: A FIFTH AVENUE MANSION DURING THE REIGN OF TERROR.] the loyal States of the Union during the latter years of the civil war and those immediately succeeding. All kinds of property advanced in value, no matter what the kind was. Anything--even cobblestones would have been a good purchase. The great boom of the Transitional period was entirely eclipsed, and people who never expected to be wealthy, people with the humblest ambitions, people whose callings, ordinarily, would not warrant any such hopes, had affluence literally forced upon them. I am sorry that most of the fortunes thus made had to be lost again upon the inevitable return of normal conditions--sorry as I am when I read a story of Captain Kidd, that the treasure-box has always to sink out of sight at the moment when the happy finders are rejoicing, and the future seems assured.