ried homewards. Immediately after, a
message was sent to George Selwyn that Miss Fagniani, the child whom he
had adopted, and whom he supposed to be his own, was suddenlly seized with
a fit, and that his presence was instantly required. He also obeyed the
summons. Both had no sooner left the room than the ballot was proceeded
with, the two ominous balls were not to be found, and Sheridan was
unanimously chosen. In the midst of the triumph, Selwyn and Lord
Besborough returned, indignant at the trick, but of course unable to find
out its perpetrators. How Sheridan and his friends looked may be imagined.
The whole scene was perfectly dramatic.

Burke's speeches, which were destined to become the honour of his age, and
the delight of posterity, were sometimes negligently received by the house.
His splendid prolixity, which was fitter for an assembly of philosophers
than an English Parliament, sometimes wearied mere men of business, as
much as his fine metaphysics sometimes perplexed them; and the man who
might have sat between Plato and Aristotle, and been listened to with
congenial delight by both, was often left without an audience. One night,
when Selwyn was hurrying into the lobby with a crowd of members, a
nobleman coming up asked him, "Is the house up?" "No," was the reply, "but
Burke is."

A model of fashionable life, Selwyn unhappily indulged in that vice which
was presumed to be essential to the man of fashion. The early gaming
propensities of Charles Fox are well known; he was ruined, estate,
personal fortune, sinecures and reversions, and all, before he was five
years in public life--ruined in every possible shape of ruin. There were
times when he could not command a guinea in the world. Yet there were
times when he won immensely. At one sitting he carried off L8000, but in a
few more he lost L11,000. He was a capital whist player; and in the cool
calculation of the clubs on such subjects, it was supposed that he might
have made L4000 a-year, if he had adhered to this profitable direction of
his genius. But, like many other great men, he mistook his forte, and
disdained all but the desperation of hazard. There he lost perpetually and
prodigiously, until he was stripped of every thing, and pauperised for
life.

It gives a strong conception of the universality of this vice, to find so
timid and girlish a nature as the late William Wilberforce's initiated
into the same career.

"When I left the University," says