Tuning his voice and balancing his hands.'

The affair gave rise to a correspondence between the Orator and his
young friends; who, doubtless, came off best in the matter.

This was harmless enough, but George's next freak was not so excusable.
The circumstances of this affair are narrated in a letter from Captain
Nicholson, his friend, to George Selwyn; and may, therefore, be relied
on. It appears that being at a certain club in Oxford, at a wine party
with his friends, George sent to a certain silversmith's for a certain
chalice, intrusted to the shopkeeper from a certain church to be
repaired in a certain manner. This being brought, Master George--then,
be it remembered, not at the delicate and frivolous age of most Oxford
boys, but at the mature one of six-and-twenty--filled it with wine, and
handing it round, used the sacred words, 'Drink this in remembrance of
me.' This was a blasphemous parody of the most sacred rite of the
Church. All Selwyn could say for himself was, that he was drunk when he
did it. The other plea, that he did it in ridicule of the
transubstantiation of the Romish Church, could not stand at all; and was
most weakly put forward. Let Oxford Dons be what they will; let them put
a stop to all religious inquiry, and nearly expel Adam Smith for reading
Hume's 'Essay on Human Nature;' let them be, as many allege,
narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant; we cannot charge them with
wrong-dealing in expelling the originator of such open blasphemy, which
nothing can be found to palliate, and of which its perpetrator did not
appear to repent, rather complaining that the treatment of the Dons was
harsh. The act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light
by his numerous acquaintance, many of whom condoled with him on the
occasion. It is true, the Oxford Dons are often charged with injustice
and partiality, and too often the evidence is not sufficiently strong to