The name of this gentleman, the entertainments given by him, the charities to which he occasionally subscribed, and the amount of his transactions in the money-markets were blazoned abroad. Peers and princes of the blood sat at his table; clergymen and laymen bowed before him; and they who preached loudest against mammon bent lowest before the mammon-worshipper. Gorgeous plate, fine furniture, an establishment such as many a noble of Norman descent would envy, graced his entertainments. Without social refinement, with manners which, offensive in the million, were but _brusque_ in the millionnaire, he collected around him the fastidious members of the most fastidious aristocracy in the world. He saw the representatives of all the states in Europe proud of his friendship. By the democratic envoy of the New World, by the ambassador of the imperial Russ, was his hospitality alike accepted; while the man who warred with slavery in all its forms and phases was himself slave to the golden reputation of the Hebrew. The language which Mr. Rothschild could use when his anger overbalanced his discretion, was a license allowed to his wealth; and he who, when placed in a position which almost compelled him to subscribe to a pressing charity, could exclaim, “Here, write a check,—I have made one —— fool of myself!” was courted and caressed by the clergy, was fêted and flattered by the peer, was treated as an equal by the first minister of the crown, and more than worshipped by those whose names stood foremost on the roll of a commercial aristocracy. His mode of dictating letters was characteristic of a mind entirely absorbed in money-making; and his ravings, when he found a bill unexpectedly protested, were translated into mercantile language ere they were fit to meet a correspondent’s eye. It is painful to write thus depreciatingly of a man who possessed so large a development of brain; but the golden gods of England have many idolaters, and the voice of truth rarely penetrates the private room of the English merchant. Mr. Rothschild’s was a character which may be serviceably held up as a warning. There was, however, an occasional gleam of humor in him, sternly as his thoughts were devoted to heaping up riches. “I am as much as you,” he said to the Duc de Montmorenci, when his title was granted; “you style yourself the first Christian baron, and I am the first Jew baron.”