of this style of life. We think that
man has other matters to consider than _pates_ and _consommes_, the
flavour of his Burgundy and pines, or even the _bons-mots_ of his friends.
We are afraid that we must, after all, regard the whole Selwyn class as
little better than the brutes in their stables, or on their hearth-rugs;
with the advantage to the brutes of following their natural appetites,
having no twinges of either conscience or the gout, and not being from
time to time stripped by their friends, or plundered by the Jews. The
closing hours of the horse or the dog are also, perhaps, more complacent
in general, and their deaths are less a matter of rejoicing to those who
are to succeed to their mangers and cushions. Of higher and more startling
contemplations, this is not the place to speak. If such men shall yet have
the power of looking down from some remoter planet on their idle, empty,
and self-indulgent course in our own, perhaps they would rejoice to have
exchanged with the lot of him whose bread was earned by the sweat of his
brow, yet who had fulfilled the duties of his station; and whose hand had
been withheld by necessity from that banquet, where all the nobler purposes
of life were forgotten, and where the senses absorbed the higher nature.
Still, we admit that these are topics on which no man ought to judge the
individual with severity. We have spoken only of the class. The individual
may have had virtues of which the world can know nothing; he may have been
liberal, affectionate, and zealous, when his feelings were once awakened;
his purse may have dried many a tear, and soothed many a pulse of secret
suffering. It is, at all events, more kindly to speak of poor human nature
with fellow feeling for those exposed to the strong temptations of fortune,
than to establish an arrogant comparison between the notorious errors of
others, and the secret failures of our own.

But we have something to settle with Mr Jesse. He is alive, and therefore
may be instructed; he is making books with great rapidity, and therefore
may be advantageously warned of the perils of book-making. The _title_ of
his volumes has altogether deceived us. We shall not charge him with
intending this; but it has unquestionably had the effect. "_George Selwyn_
and his contemporaries." We opened the volumes, expecting to find our
witty clubbist in every page; George in his full expansion, "in his armour
as he lived;" George, every inch a wit, g