Witty Sayings.--The Sovereignty of the People.--On two kinds of Wit.--
Selwyn's Love for Children.--Mie Mie, the Little Italian.--Selwyn's
Little Companion taken from him.--His Later Days and Death.


I have heard, at times, of maiden ladies of a certain age who found
pleasure in the affection of 'spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny
hedge-hogs, newts, and in live worms.' I frequently meet ladies who
think conversation lacks interest without the recital of 'melancholy
deaths,' 'fatal diseases,' and 'mournful cases;' _on ne dispute pas les
goûts_, and certainly the taste for the night side of nature seems
immensely prevalent among the lower orders--in whom, perhaps, the
terrible only can rouse from a sullen insensibility. What happy people!
I always think to myself, when I hear of the huge attendance on the last
tragic performance at Newgate; how very little they can see of mournful
and horrible in common life, if they seek it out so eagerly, and relish
it so thoroughly, when they find it! I don't know; for my own part,
_gaudeamus_. I have always thought that the text, 'Blessed are they that
mourn,' referred to the inner private life, not to a perpetual display
of sackcloth and ashes; but I know not. I can understand the
weeping-willow taste among people, who have too little wit or too little
Christianity to be cheerful, but it is a wonder to find the luxury of
gloom united to the keenest perception of the laughable in such a man as
George Selwyn.

If human beings could be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's snake or toad,
Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He loved the noble art of
execution, and was a connoisseur of the execution of the art. In
childhood he must have decapitated his rocking-horse, hanged his doll in
a miniature gallows, and burnt his baubles at mimic stakes. The man