e representative synods of clergy and laity which assemble
annually in each New Zealand diocese. The first draft of this Church
constitution came indeed from the brain and hand of Sir George Grey,
but for the rest the credit of it belongs to Selwyn.

[Footnote 1: The lines with which Mr. Punch in December, 1867, saluted
"Selwyn the pious and plucky," then just translated to Lichfield, had
truth in them as well as fun:--

"Where lawn sleeves and silk apron had turned with a shiver,
From the current that roared 'twixt his business and him,
If no boat could be come at he breasted the river,
And woe to his chaplain who craned at a swim!

* * * * *

"What to him were short commons, wet jacket, hard-lying
The savage's blood-feud, the elements' strife,
Whose guard was the Cross, at his peak proudly flying,
Whose fare was the bread and the water of life?"]

Among the many interesting figures on the stage of the New Zealand of
the first generation three seem to me to rise head and shoulders above
the crowd--Gibbon Wakefield, Grey, and Selwyn, the founder, the ruler,
the pastor. Nor must it be supposed, because these towered above their
fellow-actors, that the latter were puny men. Plenty of ability found
its way to the Colony, and under the stress of its early troubles wits
were sharpened and faculties brightened. There is nothing like the
colonial grindstone for putting an edge on good steel. Grey, Selwyn,
and Wakefield, as unlike morally as they were in manner, had this in
common, that they were leaders of men, and that they had men to lead.
That for thirty years the representatives of the English Government,
from Busby to Browne, were, with the exception of Grey, commonplace
persons or worse, must not blind us to the interest of the drama or to
the capacity of many of the men whom these commonplace persons were
sent to guide.

Of the trio referred to, Grey is the greatest figure, and most
attractive and complex study. Of such a man destiny might have made a
great visionary, a capable general, an eloquent tribune, or a graceful
writer. He had in him the stuff for any of these. But the south wing
of the British Empire had to be built, and the gods made Grey a social
architect in the guise of a pro-consul. Among the colonies of the
southern hemisphere he is already a figure of history, and amongst
them no man has played so many parts in so many theatres with s