but to go to Castle Howard, which I hope that I shall not delay many
days after my return from Gloucestershire" (August, 1774). A week
later he had arrived at his home. "The weather is very fine, and
Matson in as great beauty as a place can be in, but the beauties of
it make very little impression upon me; in short, there is nothing
in the eccentric situation in which I am now that can afford me the
least pleasure, and everything I love to see in the world is at a
distance from me" (August 9, 1774).

To-day such a man as Selwyn Would have had a choice collection of
water colours; he would be ashamed if he could not appreciate the
tone and tenderness of an English landscape. But though a friend of
Reynolds and of Romney, though he commissioned and appreciated
Gainsborough, and valued the masterpieces of the past, in a word,
was essentially a man of culture, yet this phase of modern
refinement was utterly unknown to him.

As a politician Selwyn, as has already been said, was a sinecurist;
he never took a political interest in affairs of state, and he
looked at events which have become historical from an unpolitical
point of view. But though he writes of parliamentary incidents as a
spectator, there is always in his letters a personal characterisation
which gives them vividness and life. For his long parliamentary
career brought Selwyn continually into contact with many varied
personalities of several political generations. When he entered the
House of Commons Henry Pelham was Prime Minister, and the elder Pitt
had not yet formed that coalition with the Duke of Newcastle which
enabled him to command a majority in the House of Commons and to be
the greatest War Minister of the century. When Selwyn died, still a
Member of Parliament, the younger Pitt was Prime Minister and the