Selwyn had watched over her growth and upbringing was now transferred to her well-being and pleasure in the first society of the country.  It is a charming picture—­the old man without a wife or children of his own finding in the friendship of young and old all that his kindly and affectionate nature required.  It heightens our ideas of the breadth and the depth of friendship when we see how it can compensate for the lack of those natural relationships which are supposed to be the solace of advancing years.  Of political events in England during the period covered by this last correspondence the most important was the mental illness of the King.  It began early in November, 1788; it ended in the spring of the following year.  On the 23rd of April, 1789, the King, the Royal Family, and the two Houses of Parliament attended a thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s.  But in the interval important constitutional debates had occurred in Parliament on the question of the Regency.  That the Prince of Wales should be Regent both Government and Opposition were agreed; but whilst Pitt and the Cabinet desired to place certain limits to his power, Fox and the Whigs regarded his assumption of the office as a matter of right, and held therefore that he should have the powers of the Sovereign.  The constitutional question was complicated by personal feeling, so that all London society was ranged on one side or the other.  Selwyn was a ministerialist, though he seems to have kept a cooler head than many of his friends.  But the rapid recovery of the King rendered these discussions abortive and put an end to the political hopes and fears which were aroused by his illness.  Pitt remained in office, the Whigs in opposition.

Presently, however, the French Revolution became all-important.  Events in France were watched with the keenest interest by Selwyn, to whom many of those who figured in the tragic scenes in Paris were personally known.  But he regarded the state of affairs in France with greater calmness than many, though he was shocked at revolutionary violence.  It is, however, the picture in these letters of the society of the French emigres in and about London that gives so much interest to the last group of correspondence.  Of this, however, it will be more fitting to speak when the letters which touch on it are reached.

(228) 22 Geo. III. c. 82, 1782.  An Act for enabling his Majesty to discharge the debt contracted upon his Civil List Revenues, and for preventing the same from being in arrear for the future, by regulating the mode of payments and by suppressing or regulating certain offices.

(229) He metriculated at Christchurch, October 19, 1790.

(1786, Oct. 25,) Wednesday m., Richmond.—­I was in London on Monday, but returned hither to dinner.  I propose to go there this morning, and to lie in town.  I am to dine with Williams, who is quite recovered, as I am; he is kept in London, Lord North being there, on account of his son’s ill health—­Mr. Frederick N(orth).(230) I hear no news, and am sorry that that which Lord Holland told me is not true, of his uncle’s annuity, which I mentioned in my last.