Wilberforce, in his later reminiscences,
"so little did I know of general society, that I came up to London stored
with arguments to prove the authenticity of 'Rowley's Poems,' (the
academic and pedantic topic of the day,) and now I was at once immersed in
politics and fashion. The very first time I went to Boodle's, I won
twenty-five guineas of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at this time to
five clubs, Miles' and Evans', Brookes', Boodle's, White's, and
Goosetree's. The first time I was at Brookes', scarcely knowing any one, I
joined, from mere shyness, in play at the faro-table, where George Selwyn
kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim
dressed out for sacrifice, called to me--'What, Wilberforce, is that you?'
Selwyn quite resented the interference, and turning to him, said in his
most expressive tone--'Oh, sir, don't interrupt Mr Wilberforce, he could
not be better employed.' Nothing could be more harmonious than the style
of those clubs--Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading men
frequented them, and associated upon the easiest terms. You either chatted,
played at cards, or gambled, as you pleased."

We have no idea of entering into any of the scandals of the time. The
lives of all the men of fashion of that day were habitually profligate.
The "Grand Tour" was of but little service to their morals, and Pope's
sarcastic lines were but too true.

"He travell'd Europe round,
And gather'd every vice on foreign ground;
Till home return'd, and perfectly well-bred,
With nothing but a solo in his head;
Stolen from a duel, follow'd by a nun,
And, if a borough choose him--not undone."

But this vice did not descend among the body of the people. It was limited
to the idlers of high life, and even among them it was extinguished by the
cessation of our foreign intercourse at the French revolution; or was at
least so far withdrawn from the public eye, as to avoid offending the
common decencies of a moral people.

Selwyn was probably more cautious in his habits than his contemporaries,
for he survived almost every man who had begun life with him; and he lived
to a much greater age than the chief of the showy characters who rose into
celebrity during his career. He died at the age of seventy-two, January 25,
1791. He had long relinquished gaming, assigning the very sufficient
reason, "It was too great a consumer of four things--time, health, fortune,
and _thinkin