A MAN IN THE MAKING

“Give us Men !
Strong and stalwart ones.
Men whom highest hope inspires,
Men whom purest honour fires,
Men who trample self beneath them,
Men who make their country wreath them
As her noble sons,
Worthy of their sires,
Men who never shame their mothers,
Men who never fail their brothers,
True, however false are others,
Give us Men ! I say again
Give us Men !”
Bishop Bickersteth.

THE nineteenth century opened to the strains of martial music. Europe shuddered beneath the tramp of armies. The horror of an alien force landing on British shores paralysed the imagination of England. And yet, in one memorable year, lying midway between Trafalgar and Waterloo, there took place an invasion more remarkable than any of which Napoleon ever dreamed. For in 1809 there stole into the world a host of remarkable babies. Mr. Gladstone was born at Liverpool ; Alfred Tennyson was welcomed at the Somersby Rectory ; and Oliver Wendell Holmes made his first appearance at Massachusetts.

On the very self-same day of that fateful year, Charles Darwin made his debut at Shrewsbury, and Abraham Lincoln drew his first breath at old Kentucky. Music was enriched by the advent of Frederic Chopin at Warsaw, and, of Felix Mendelssohn at Hamburg. Within the year, too, Samuel Morley was born at Homerton, Edward Fitzgerald at Woodbridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning at Durham, and Frances Kemble in London.

If there is any justification for the pretty old legend that blazing portents in the skies invariably herald the births of conquerors and of heroes, then our astronomers should have strange tales to tell concerning the celestial apparitions of 1809.

But this brilliant cradle-roll is not yet complete. For, in those stirring days, there lived in the picturesque old thoroughfare known as Church Row, at Hampstead, an eminent solicitor named William Selwyn. He had already achieved distinction as a specialist in his profession, and his published contributions to learned literature were always quoted with confidence and always heard with respect. When, nearly thirty years afterwards, the youthful Queen Victoria announced her intention of being united in marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, it was decided to appoint William Selwyn “to instruct Prince Albert in the Constitution and Laws of his adopted country.” At the time of his death, in 1855, Mr. Selwyn was the Senior Queen’s Counsel at the English Bar. It was into the favourable atmosphere of this cultured Hampstead home that George Augustus Selwyn was born on the 5th of April, 1809. He entered the world, as we have seen, in distinguished company. He was born in a district dear to the heart of every Londoner. The old row, with the ivy-covered church not far off, possessed a thousand and one subtle suggestions of a stately past. And if there is any real philosophy in Heine’s famous dictum, that “a man should be very careful in the selection of his parents,” then George Selwyn displayed in his very nativity that perspicacity which, in his after life, never once failed him.

His mother a daughter of Mr. Roger Kynaston, of Witham, Essex was a woman of rare devotion and of a singularly winsome spirit. She was, however, a pitiful sufferer, not the least of her sorrows being the extreme depression and melancholy into which her painful malady submerged her. In these periods of gloom and misery, George had a peculiar influence over her. To her consolation he, even as a child, consecrated the best of his time and talents. Her spirit, crushed and drooping, seemed to inhale the buoyancy and elasticity of his. He alone could rouse and cheer her. Many a half-holiday, when his companions were off to the fields with their bats or their sledges, George spent by his frail mother’s couch. After his departure for New Zealand, poor Mrs. Selwyn would steal in silence to a spot beneath his portrait, where her soul would breathe out to God her evening devotions, and it was here that she was found unconscious at last, dying a few hours afterwards on the first anniversary of her son’s consecration.

George was the life of the home. There were six children four boys and two girls among whom he was quite easily the leader. Whenever the fun waxed most furious in the Hampstead nursery, it was invariably George who was showing the way into new avenues of merriment or of mischief. In every romp his figure was in the forefront, and his laughter rang the loudest. He inherited from his father, too, a passionate love of all outdoor exercises. For is it not written in the annals of Eton that William Selwyn had carried his bat in the school eleven ?

And yet, side by side with this buoyant and boisterous exuberance, there was a strange seriousness of demeanour about his bearing that rendered him peculiarly engaging and attractive to his seniors. Even as a lad, he breathed upon the whole home a strangely charming and gracious influence. “He was truly the family friend and counsellor,” his sister tells us, “ever ready to help in all difficulties. If any case of distress was mentioned in his hearing, his pocket money was at once devoted to its relief.”

An unwonted heaviness brooded over the home at Church Row on that memorable day in 1816, when George, then at the age of seven, set out, in company with William, for a preparatory school at Ealing. Here the lads found themselves thrown into the company of about three hundred other boys, among whom were another distinguished pair of brothers John Henry Newman (afterwards Cardinal) and F. W. Newman (afterwards Professor of Classics in the University of London). On his return home for the holidays, George horrified his sisters by displaying, among other accomplishments, a thorough acquaintance with the Racing Calendar, and a skilful proficiency in dancing! Nothing could have been more characteristic or prophetic. We shall repeatedly have cause to admire the facility with which he mastered every subject that offered itself to his eager and hungry mind. And in the playground at Ealing he innocently absorbed all that was to be known on subjects with which his comrades were familiar. That no taint had adhered to his free and open spirit is clear. For in the same letter in which his sister tells of these surprising acquisitions, she says: “There was nothing that was pious, noble, self-denying, and generous, that my brother did not exhibit in his daily life, and as years drew on he was more than ever constant in prayer, never ceasing in the service of his heavenly Master.”

From Ealing, George passed on to Eton, where his athletic figure and alert mind soon created their inevitable impression upon his companions at the great school. Two of these Mr. Gladstone and Bishop Abraham have borne eloquent witness to the magnetic influence which Selwyn exerted at Eton. Bishop Abraham, who was afterwards associated with Selwyn in New Zealand, contributed to the Eton College Chronicle this characteristic anecdote: “We belonged,” he says, “to the pre-scientific period, as regards athleticism as well as studies. In Selwyn’s long-boat there were seven oars not very good, and one superlatively bad. The boys used to run up town as hard as they could to Bob Tollady’s, and seize upon one of the seven moderately bad ones, and the last comer got the ‘punt-pole.’ Of course, he was sulky all the way up to Surly Hall ; and the other seven abused him for not pulling his own weight. Everyone was out of temper. So George Selwyn determined always to come last. The other fellows chaffed him ; but he used to laugh, and at last said: ‘It’s worth my while taking the bad oar ; I used to pull the weight of the sulky fellow who had it ; now you are all in good-humour.’ The incident illustrates his whole after life. He always took the labouring oar in everything.”

After taking the boat to the shed, he would often strip and plunge into the river before returning. For he was as much at home in the water as on it. He could swim like a fish and dive like a duck. For many years a certain bush at Eton, standing high on the bank of the Thames, was known as “Selwyn’s bush.” “To this,” we are told, “he used to run, take a spring, and go over it head foremost at a certain angle, coming up to the surface almost immediately. When asked how to do it, he used to say: ‘Fancy yourself a dart, and you will do it with ease !’”

He little suspected, in those happy, careless days, that he was practising arts, and acquiring powers that would be simply invaluable to him, amidst strangely different conditions, in years to come. It would be an easy task to record his triumphs in academic realms, for in the class-rooms at Eton it was usually taken for granted that Selwyn would be found in the place of honour. But his prowess in running, and jumping, and rowing, and diving must also be carefully observed. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the place which these occupied in the strenuous days of hardship and adventure that followed.

In the same way, he was surely guided by some shrewd and prophetic instinct, in view of the unknown privations that awaited him across the seas, in cultivating with peculiar persistence a fine contempt for easy and luxurious living. They are very few of whom it could be said more truly than of him that they endured hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. And to graduate in that stern school he deliberately set himself, even in boyhood. When, years afterwards, all England applauded his heroic endurance on inhospitable islands, his relatives found intense pleasure in recalling trivial incidents of early days by which he had demonstrated his disdain of soft living. On one occasion, for example, he had asked his mother for permission to invite his schoolfellow, William Ewart Gladstone, to stay with him as his guest for the Easter-tide holidays. But Easter means spring, and spring means spring-cleaning ; and the house was in the turmoil of domestic revolution. His mother pointed to the dismantled apartments, and told him that it was impossible; a guest would be sadly in the way, and would feel himself to be so. George bounded upstairs, and soon reappeared, dragging a great mattress, which he flung upon the wet boards, saying triumphantly: “There now, where’s the difficulty?”

The education which had been commenced at Ealing, and continued at Eton, was completed at Cambridge. At the age of eighteen he entered St. John’s College, of which he was afterwards a fellow. His first impressions of university life were not altogether favourable. School life had been to him something in the nature of a frolic; and the gravity of his new environment oppressed him. But with those phenomenal powers of adjustment, which all through life stood him in such good stead, he swiftly made friends with his more sombre surroundings, and discovered that the new conditions had their compensations. “After awhile,” he wrote, “the absence of the many distractions of Eton rather recommended the place to me, as one where lost time might, in some measure, be made up.” He applied himself with avidity to the main business of university life, and the great day of the year, both with him and with his brother, was that on which they welcomed their proud parents to Cambridge to witness the public acknowledgment of their scholastic successes. With great fidelity and regularity, William Selwyn and his delicate wife made these annual pilgrimages to Cambridge. They were doubtless a source of profound gratification to the fond parents themselves. They certainly afforded unbounded delight to their student sons ; and, long afterwards, in the wild solitudes of the New Zealand bush, in the cabin of his schooner, or on the lonely shore of some tropical isle, a smile would play upon the sunburnt and weather-beaten countenance of Selwyn, as he told Sir William Martin, or “Coley” Patteson, of the immense delight he had derived from those happy visits.

In 1829, Oxford challenged Cambridge to a contest for supremacy upon the river. Cambridge snatched up the gauntlet with alacrity, and set herself to the selection of her crew. The name of George Selwyn sprang to every lip. And so it came to pass that, always a pioneer, he took a prominent part in the very first of those great inter-university contests, which have ever since occupied so large a place in the world of athletics.

At Cambridge he cast about him the same pure and wholesome moral atmosphere which had distinguished him in the playgrounds, and by the water-courses of Eton. Both at school and at college, it was freely affirmed that “no fellow would dare to use bad language if Selwyn were within earshot.” A look, which eloquently expressed a subtle combination of pity and contempt, would often wither the offender, who would slink off feeling heartily ashamed of himself.

In aspiring to classical honours, Selwyn felt himself to be particularly vulnerable in the matter of mathematics; and in his day a place in the mathematical tripos was an essential qualification for classical distinction. He set himself with a will to conquer his pet aversion, and so far succeeded that he gave to his mind an entirely new bent, a circumstance of which it took magnificent advantage in connection with the delicate and accurate computations which he required of it in the explorations and navigations of later years. He went up for his classical tripos in 1831. In the result, Benjamin Hall Kennedy, who afterwards became headmaster of Shrewsbury, and, later still, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, was found to have headed the list ; but in the second place, and with a very narrow margin of excellence intervening between first and second, stood the name of George Augustus Selwyn.

It has often been said that, if Cuthbert Collingwood had been born into any other age of British history than that which was assigned him, he would have been one of the most beloved and most admired of British admirals. As it is, he was overshadowed by the superior genius and irresistible fascination of Horatio Nelson. Selwyn shared a similar fate. He chanced to enter for his coveted distinction in the same year with one whose name was soon applauded throughout the world as a synonym for the ripest and most exact scholarship. But for this fact the achievement of Selwyn would have been recorded among the most splendid triumphs in the Cambridge annals. As it is, it was “a famous victory.” A Fellowship at St. John’s followed. And then a new turn in the tide of events led him, soon after, to take farewell of university life, and search for fresh fields to conquer.

It happened that, on returning from Cambridge at the end of the term, he discovered, with a pang, that his parents had been driven to a radical policy of domestic retrenchment, and had dispensed, among other things, with their horses and carriage. Always keenly sensitive to the sorrows of others, he lost no time in revealing his alarm and inquiring for the reasons that had necessitated so great a change. His father was unable to conceal the fact that the expense of maintaining four sons at Eton and at Cambridge had so drained his resources as to demand imperatively the immediate sacrifice of all luxuries. George felt as David felt when his three mighty men brought him, at the hazard of their lives, the water from the well of Bethlehem for which he had longed. It was secured at too great a cost, and “he would not drink of it but poured it out upon the ground.” So the brilliant Cambridge student of 1831 felt that he could no longer quaff the waters of knowledge if they could only be obtained by so great a sacrifice on the part of those whom he loved with all the ardour of his soul. He therefore determined at the first convenient opportunity to search for remunerative employment.

He took his degree in the early days of 1831. He then spent a few weeks in foreign travel. And in May of the same year, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, he returned to Eton in the capacity of private tutor to the sons of the Earl of Powis. To those acquainted with the history and traditions of that noble house, no testimonial to Selwyn’s manly qualities and academic attainments could be more impressive than this one fact. His new style of life afforded him opportunities for the development of qualities which, during the stress of severe study, had lain dormant. He had leisure ; and none better understood how to invest it. The river was still his favourite resort ; and his manipulation of his oars rendered him the idol of the Eton boys of that generation. His expert knowledge of their craft rendered him immensely popular, too, with the watermen on the river, who were for ever singing his praises as a swimmer and an oarsman. Recognising the hold that this hero-worship had established, Selwyn turned it to the best account by labouring among them with a view to their moral and spiritual well-being.

Moreover, he was able to avail himself of his reputation as the champion of the river as a means of placing the pastime, so far as the school was concerned, on a much more secure foundation. Down to this time the Eton authorities had prohibited the boys from rowing. But, in such conditions, it is much more easy to frame such a regulation than to enforce it. The inevitable consequence was, that the prohibition was honoured more in its breach than in its observance; and the authorities were compelled to wink at the laxity with which the mandate was regarded. Such a state of things was creditable neither to the boys who defied their superiors nor to the masters who were unable to insist upon respect being shown to their own enactment. It was in these circumstances that Selwyn intervened. As a result of his representations, the law was repealed. It was ordained that any boy who had passed in swimming might indulge in rowing. By this arrangement oarsmanship received a new glory. It became an honourable distinction instead of a furtive and surreptitious pursuit; whilst the condition by which it was guarded gave to the boys a powerful incentive to aspire to aquatic proficiency.

Nor was this the only respect in which, during his residence at Eton, he successfully discharged the lofty but exacting office of a peacemaker. He was able on several occasions to mediate between the boys and the existing powers. And on every occasion his tact, his courtesy, and his experience constituted themselves a sure guarantee of the happiest -issue of his negotiations.

But his new appointment carried with it a fuller introduction to social life ; and here also he found abundant opportunities for the exercise of the same exalted faculty. For, during the period of Selwyn’s service under Lord Powis, England was torn by the bitterest political dissensions. It was a time of crisis almost approaching to revolution ; a time when all the institutions and machinery of national life were being overhauled and reviewed ; a time, in short, when the very best of men, differing sharply in opinion as to the true solution of the problems involved, found it impossible to approach the discussion of those momentous issues without being led from abstract principles into personal animosities. In those riotous days of noisy tumult and violent debate, when many a man’s hand was raised against his brother, George Selwyn found and embraced countless opportunities of reconciling those who, in the heat and excitement of public controversy, had ruthlessly outraged old and sacred friendships. Sometimes, in the delicious cool of a lovely summer’s evening, on the quiet banks of the tranquil river ; sometimes strolling among the noble oaks in the Great Park at Windsor ; sometimes in a secluded corner of a crowded drawing- room, or in the leafy recesses of its adjacent conservatory, the minister of peace prosecuted his lovely work. But wherever he did it, he did it well ; and many there were who afterwards recalled his gracious service with profound gratitude and admiration.

During his sojourn at Eton, Selwyn indulged in a new form of athletic exercise, of a character peculiarly profitable, in view of the nature of the work to which he subsequently devoted his life. Indeed, if it were not established upon indisputable evidence that his call to colonial work came upon him as a great and amazing surprise, it would be impossible to resist the conclusion that he was deliberately training himself for the tasks that lay before him. Having provided himself with a pocket-compass, he formed the habit of taking prodigious walks, finding his way by its help from village to village, and from point to point. A ploughed field he would take at a brisk run, “to improve his wind.”

In following the hounds on one notable occasion he allowed his horse to lag some distance behind many of the leading riders, and was afterwards a little nettled by the banter to which he was subjected concerning the ignominious position he had occupied in the field. He straightway hired horses, and selecting some church steeple as his goal, rode furiously at it, clearing every obstacle that presented itself on his way to that destination. By these wild “steeple chases” his intrepidity as an equestrian was soon placed beyond all doubt ; and for the rest of his life he was held in the highest esteem as a most competent and fearless horseman.

It is easy to see how, all unconsciously, these singular recreations were fitting him for the severe tests that awaited him. Many a time, in groping his way through strange waters, or amidst the dense and trackless bush, he must have recalled with peculiar satisfaction his long cross-country walks, compass in hand, in England. And many a time, when he had no alternative but to set out on some long ride in New Zealand, mounted on the most vicious animal in the country, he must have been grateful for the apprenticeship to which he submitted himself by his daring feats of horsemanship at Eton.

He maintained, too, his old prowess as a swimmer and diver. Indeed, he became President of a somewhat fantastic organisation known as the Psychrolutic Club. It consisted of two classes of members Philolutes and Psychrolutes. The former bathed with more or less regularity, and under such conditions as were agreeable to them. The latter, on the other hand, were those who had, during one whole year, bathed on at least five days of every week summer and winter. Selwyn’s habit of taking a regular daily swim secured for him the Presidency from an admiring and devoted membership ; and it was at his hands, in the river, that the coveted degree was conferred whenever a mere philolute had qualified for psychrolutic distinction.

It must not, however, be supposed for a single moment that, by all these exuberant recreations, George Selwyn was developing but one side of his manhood. The very reverse was the case. There was never a man of more perfect balance. He was, in the best sense of the term, a great all-round man. His work with his pupils enabled him to maintain his intellectual faculties at the high standard to which he had brought them at Cambridge. And, above and beneath all this, George Selwyn was a man of deep and intense spirituality. Exactly when, and exactly where, the first impressions of this kind were made upon him, it is not easy to say. But it is not difficult to guess. He was, as a boy, the constant companion of his mother ; and to those who can rightly appraise the influence of such a companionship, that one fact will explain all that needs to be accounted for. Throughout his whole life he was remarkable for his intimate and exact knowledge of the Scriptures. An astonishingly appropriate passage would leap to his lips on every occasion. On the eve of his departure for New Zealand, for example, he gave his brother, Canon Selwyn, a Bible, on the fly-leaf of which he had written: “Ready to depart on the morro.” On saying good-bye to the Rev. E. Coleridge, he wrote in his friend’s Bible: “When we had taken our leave one of another, we took ship, and they returned home again.” And even when the moisture of death was on his brow, he thought of his widowed and lonely son in distant Melanesia, and murmured: “The blessing of his father shall be upon the head of him who is separate from his brethren.”

Whenever he was approached on this matter, he always attributed his familiarity with his Bible to the early teaching of his mother. She contrived and controlled this essential part of his education with such shrewd tact, such spiritual insight, and such consummate skill, that when he left Hampstead for Ealing he not only knew his Bible thoroughly, but loved it with a sincere and abiding devotion. He had not only mastered the letter, but caught the spirit, of that sublime study. It is altogether impossible to exaggerate the importance, as an essential element in the formation of his character, of those early conversations between mother and son. It was as a direct result of that hallowed intercourse that he was able to present to the critical mind of Eton boyhood a living embodiment of a purity that never even threatened to become priggish, and of an inflexible justice which was perfectly consistent with an exuberant and rollicking jollity. By some subtle power of perception, everybody was made to feel that Selwyn’s hearty laugh was part and parcel of Selwyn’s holy life.

Moreover, it was as the natural outcome of those sacred and gracious impressions received by his mother’s couch, that he became fired with that apostolic passion and dauntless devotion which subsequently impelled him, in spite of apparently insuperable obstacles, to the uttermost ends of the earth. When home on holiday from Ealing, from Eton, from Cambridge, and, later on, from Eton again, he regarded his hour with his mother as an inviolable engagement. They read together, sometimes from the Old Testament, and sometimes from the New, he frequently translating to her from the original languages.

In 1833 he determined to seek ordination as a deacon, and this impressive service was conducted at St. George’s, Hanover Square, by the Bishop of Carlisle, on Trinity Sunday, June 9th. Precisely a year later he received “priest’s orders” at the same place, and from the same hands. After having officiated in a voluntary capacity as curate-in-charge at Boveney, he undertook to act as curate to the Vicar of Windsor, the Rev. Isaac Gossett, at a stipend of per annum.

He could do nothing by halves, and he threw himself into the work of the district with an energy that almost alarmed his parishioners. He had already undertaken, as a voluntary worker, prior to his appointment to the curacy, to supply an evening service at the parish church. This step, which had been long desired, was accordingly keenly appreciated ; and its success, combined with the assiduous and indefatigable attentions which he lavished upon his people, quickly won for him a very wide popularity and a very deep affection.

In 1834, death robbed him of his brother Thomas, and another near relative was drowned in Maidenhead Weir. It may be that these personal acquaintanceships with grief imparted to his nature an added tenderness and a deeper element of sympathy. Certain it is that he greatly endeared himself to the people of Windsor by the felicity and charm with which he fortified them in the day of trouble, and soothed their sorrows in the hour of loss. “If,” wrote a correspondent to the Guardian, “if there were any misunderstanding among friends, he would not rest until they were reconciled ; if pecuniary difficulty fell upon anyone, he would make every endeavour to extricate him ; if his friends were ill, he was their nurse and companion ; if they lost relations, or fell under any great sorrow, he was with them at any hour to console and uphold them. He was the friend, the adviser, the comforter of all who would admit him to their confidence. It is not strange that, under a ministry at once so tireless and so tender, the work of the parish felt the throb of a new impulse, and entered upon a fresh phase of prosperity. The Vicar rejoiced unfeignedly in the new order of things, and allowed his enterprising young curate a perfectly free hand. “It is all Selwyn’s doing,” he would say, when his people commented on the transformation ; “he is the moving spring here.”

When Selwyn settled at Windsor, he was strongly urged to avoid Beer Lane, a squalid neighbourhood in which the scum of the district herded together. A place with so evil a reputation had, however, a special charm for the new curate, and he made his way towards it. On entering the lane, a stalwart ruffian approached him, and loudly ordered him out of the thoroughfare. Selwyn quietly pressed on his way. The bully thereupon threw off his coat, and, assuming a pugilistic attitude, flourished his fists in the face of the curate, and again brawled out his demand. In a flash, Selwyn aimed at his braggart assailant a blow which sent him sprawling on his back on the pavement. The bystanders applauded tumultuously ; the bully hastened away in consternation ; and the curate’s visits to Beer Lane were ever after received with the utmost respect.

But perhaps the most characteristic incident in connection with his ministry at Windsor was a speech which he delivered on the unpromising subject of parochial finance. The parish was in debt to the alarming extent of about £3000. The position became so acute that a special vestry meeting was summoned. Litigation, had been threatened, and there were those who counselled a policy of resistance. It was at this stage that the curate spoke, and gave to the matter an entirely new complexion. He demonstrated most clearly that the amount was really owing, and must be honourably discharged. He appealed to his hearers to regard the debt as a challenge, and to rise bravely to meet it. To prove that he was not indulging in vapid heroics, he offered to contribute one-tenth of the entire sum himself, by refusing to accept any stipend for the next two years. Such a call was irresistible, and within a month the parish was entirely free of all pecuniary obligations. It was the first time in Selwyn’s life, but it was not the last, that he entirely cut from under his feet all visible means of support.

The year 1838 his thirtieth constitutes itself an important and eventful one in the life of George Selwyn. It was the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation. In the early part of that year Selwyn made his name prominent in connection with two absorbing matters of ecclesiastical controversy. The one was the question of Cathedral Reform, which filled the newspapers and occupied all minds. The other was a proposal for the consolidation and combination of the work of several of the great Church publishing and missionary Societies. On these thorny topics he wrote extensively, and shared the fate of all reformers. He was ridiculed as an impracticable idealist and visionary. Those who laughed at him then little dreamed that, within a very few years, he would have the opportunity, in a great diocese of his own, of submitting his theories to the crucial test of experience, and that their vindication would there be so complete as to justify their adoption in the Homeland on a more magnificent scale !

But that thirtieth year of his had a vital interest of its own, quite apart from all parochial labours and public controversies. For, in November of that year, he announced to his friends that Miss Sarah Richardson, the daughter of Sir John Richardson, a Judge in Her Majesty’s Court of Common Pleas, had consented to become his wife. Sir John Richardson had a pleasant country residence known as “The Filberts,” near Bray. It was no small undertaking for George Selwyn to negotiate the land and water that intervened between Eton and Bray, as often as his heart dictated its desirability. And concerning the ardour of Selwyn’s courtship, the Rev. Prebendary H. W. Tucker tells a famous story.//“On a certain night,” he says, “Mr. Selwyn was returning to Eton at an hour much later than those kept by the ferrymen. There was no difficulty in his punting himself across ; but then what of the owner of the punt in the morning? What of the early passengers coming perhaps to their work, if the Windsor curate had appropriated the punt at the midnight hour ? Was there no way of combining late hours at ‘The Filberts’ with the rights and comforts of the ferryman and his passengers? It was part of his nature always to have unselfish thoughts for others ; and the present difficulty was solved in a way that cost him less effort than would have been the case with most men. A modern Leander, he punted himself across the river, and then, having undressed, ferried himself back, made the boat fast, and swam back to his clothes ; thus gratifying himself and causing no inconvenience to others.” Years afterwards, in his wild and romantic episcopate beneath the Southern Cross, seated on a fallen tree, beside a crackling camp-fire in the bush, one of his favourite Maoris told him, in his lovely liquid tones, the graceful native legend of the radiant Hinemoa, and of how, for the love she bore to the noble Tutanekai, she swam at dead of night across the moonlit waters of Lake Rotorua, guided by the lute of her lover. Did Selwyn’s mind fly back, we wonder, as he listened to the story, across the oceans and across the years, to his own midnight escapades upon the Thames?

George Augustus Selwyn was married to Sarah Richardson on 25th June, 1839. Little did the curate’s bride dream of what was involved in the “I will” that she pronounced that day! Mr. William Selwyn, Q.C., who, a year later, was appointed Treasurer of Lincoln’s Inn, laid aside for awhile the onerous responsibilities of his professional career, and took his son’s position as a private tutor at Eton. The happy pair were thus enabled to indulge in the luxury of a wedding tour.

By his marriage, George Selwyn automatically vacated his Fellowship at St. John’s, Cambridge, which had been worth to him about £140 per annum. He had already heroically renounced his stipend as curate of Windsor for the space of two years. At the time of his wedding he was, therefore, wholly dependent upon his private earnings, which were both slender and precarious. And he had no reason to anticipate anything, in the unknown future, beyond a possible preferment to a quiet rural parsonage. We shall have ample opportunities of satisfying ourselves, as we follow his animated career, that George Selwyn was absolutely one of the most disinterested, and yet one of the most severely practical, men that ever breathed.

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