Of the City of London, Selwyn probably had heard; for though fixed to one
spot, he was a man fond of collecting curious knowledge; but nothing short
of proof positive can ever convince us that he had passed Temple Bar. He,
of course, knew that there were such things on the globe as merchants and
traders, because their concerns were occasionally talked of in "the House,"
where, however, he heard as little as possible about them; for in the
debates of the time he took no part but that of a listener, and even then
he abridged the difficulty, by generally sleeping through the sitting. He
was supposed to be the only rival of Lord North in the happy faculty of
falling into a sound slumber at the moment when any of those dreary
persons, who chiefly speak on such subjects, was on his legs. St James's,
and the talk of St James's, were his business, his pleasures, the exciters
of his wit, and the rewarders of his toil. He had applied the art of
French cookery to the rude material of the world, and refined and reduced
all things into a _sauce piquante_--all its realities were concentrated in
essences; and, disdaining the grosser tastes of mankind, he lived upon the
_aroma_ of high life--an epicure even among epicures; yet not an indolent
enjoyer of the luxuries of his condition, but a keen, restless, and eager
_student_ of pleasurable sensations--an Apicius, polished by the manners,
and furnished with the arts of the most self-enjoying condition of mankind,
that of an English gentleman of fortune in the 18th century.

We certainly are not the champions of this style of life. We think that
man has other matters to consider than _pâtés_ and _consommés_, the
flavour of his Burgundy and pines, or even the _bons-mots_ of his friends.
We are afraid that we must, after all, regard the whole Selwyn class as
little better than the brutes in their stables, or on their hearth-rugs;
with the advantage to the brutes of following their natural appetites,
having no twinges of either conscience or the gout, and not being from
time to time stripped by their friends, or plundered by the Jews. The