ntlemen whose shoebuckles he kissed, laid in their coffins. This worthy
clergyman takes care to tell us that he does not believe in his religion,
though, thank Heaven, he is not so great a rogue as a lawyer. He goes on
Mr. Selwyn's errands, any errands, and is proud, he says, to be that
gentleman's proveditor. He waits upon the Duke of Queensberry--old Q.--and
exchanges pretty stories with that aristocrat. He comes home "after a hard
day's christening", as he says, and writes to his patron before sitting
down to whist and partridges for supper. He revels in the thoughts of
ox-cheek and burgundy--he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his
master's shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto,
and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret in old
Q.'s cellar. He has Rabelais and Horace at his greasy fingers' ends. He is
inexpressibly mean, curiously jolly; kindly and good-natured in secret--a
tender-hearted knave, not a venomous lickspittle. Jesse says, that at his
chapel in Long Acre, "he attained a considerable popularity by the
pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery." Was infidelity
endemic, and corruption in the air? Around a young king, himself of the
most exemplary life and undoubted piety, lived a Court society as
dissolute as our country ever knew. George II's bad morals bore their
fruit in George III's early years; as I believe that a knowledge of that
good man's example, his moderation, his frugal simplicity, and God-fearing
life, tended infinitely to improve the morals of the country and purify
the whole nation.

After Warner, the most interesting of Selwyn's correspondents is the Earl
of Carlisle, grandfather of the amiable nobleman at present Viceroy in
Ireland. The grandfather, too, was Irish Viceroy, having previously been
treasurer of the king's household; and, in 1778, the principal
commissioner for treating, consulting, and agreeing upon the means of
quieting the divisions subsisting in his Majesty's colonies, plantations,
and possessions in North America. You may read his lordship's manifestos
in the _Royal New York Gazette_. He returned to England, having by no
means quieted the colonies; and speedily afterwards the _Royal New York
Gazette_ somehow ceased to be published.

This good, clever, kind, highly-bred Lord Carlisle was one of the English
fine gentlemen who were wellnigh ruined by the awful debauchery and
extravagance which prevailed in the