high-bred foreign air upon an English stock . . .

"But how very pleasant to me was your honest and naive confession of
the joy your heart felt at hearing her admired! It is, indeed, most
extraordinary that a certain person who has great taste--would he
had as much nature!--should not see her with very different eyes
from what he does. I can never forget that naive expression of Mme.
de Sevigne, 'Je ne sais comment Von fait de ne pas aimer sa fille?'"

* The Duke of Queens berry.

But Selwyn was never quite free from the fear that she should be
taken from him. In January, 1781, he writes to Lord Carlisle:--

"From Milan things are well; at least, no menaces from thence of any
sort, and I am assured, by one who is the most intimate friend of
the Emperor's minister there, that he was much more likely to
approve than to disapprove of Mie Mie's being with me, knowing as he
does the turn and character of the mother."

The relationship from this time was more settled, and as Mie Mie
grew into womanhood she became to Selwyn a delightful and
affectionate companion.

Selwyn was a universal friend; he was equally at home with
politicians, dilettanti, and children; he was a man of such
consistent good nature, so unaffectedly kind-hearted, that every
one, statesman, gambler, or schoolboy, liked to be in his company.
Yet among Selwyn's many friends and acquaintances two groups are
remarkable. The first was formed of men of his own age--Walpole,
Edgecumbe, Gilly Williams, and Lord March comprise what may be
called the Strawberry Hill group. It was at Walpole's famous villa
that they liked best to meet, and it is by Reynolds that Walpole's
"out-of-town party" has been handed down to us.** They were an odd
coterie--cultivated, artificial, gossiping. None of them ever
married; to do so seemed to have been unfashionable, if not
unpopular; and when we see the results of many marriages among their
friends, they were best, perhaps, as bachelors. They considered
themselves free to act as they pleased; and this freedom became
notorious by the life-long dissipation of March, and by the free
living of Edgecumbe, who died at forty-five after a life misspent at
the gaming-table. That he possessed a bright mind and ingenious wit
is proved by his verses and by the estimate of his friends. The
amusing coat of arms which the friends designed for White's Club was
painted by him, while he was one of the first to recognise the
genius of Reynolds