One of the most devoted and one of the most
manly of our English Bishops is gone from amongst us. The Bishop of Lich- field,—better known as the Bishop of New Zealand,—the athletic Bishop who could swim, and build, and find his way through the wildest land in a wild colony in the discharge of his mis- sionary duty,—died on Thursday, after a short illness. He was translated to the diocese of Lichfield in 1867. Bishop Selwyn was undoubtedly a more remarkable figure in the Colonies than at home, — for his genius suited him better for muscular Christianity and a genuinely paternal despotism than for intellectual disputes and constitutional policy. Still, wherever he was, his was perhaps the most unique of char- acters amongst our higher clergy. His great missionary bishopric itself was, we believe, volunteered-for under a sense of corporate family obligation,—and at a time when he was a most successful Eton tutor,—his brother having undertaken the work, and being in the end prevented by urgent private causes from carrying out his purpose, so that the Eton tutor felt compelled to offer himself in his place. The chivalry of the man was indeed one of his most remarkable characteristics. And yet, oddly enough, chivalry is not a very common characteristic of the English clergyman, who usually fulfils the injunction to count the cost of an enterprise before undertaking it, far better than he fulfils the injunction to take no thought for his life.
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