THE LATE BISHOP SELWYN.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5034, 2 May 1878, Page 3

THE LATE BISHOP SELWYN.

(From the Melbourne Aryus, April 13.) The name of George Augustus Selwyn is so intimately identified with the history of New Zealand under British rule, and with the plantation of the English Church in those islands, that his death is an event which must not be passed over in silence ; although it occurred in a sphere of duty far removed from the scene of his more important labors. Ho was a younger son of the late William Selwyn, Q. 0., of Richmond, Surrey, and like his elder brother William, ’ Was educated for the Church ; while another brother Selwyn became distinguished, in• law and politics. Born in the year 1809, he was sent in the first instance to Eton, from whence he proceeded to. Cambridge, where he entered St. John’s College, and took his degree as junior optirae in mathematics, and first-class in classics. In due time ho received holy orders, and filled a curacy aii. "Windsor while acting as tutor at Eton. „ ~ On the 7th of February, 1840, New Zealand was proclaimed a British colony and a dependency of New South Wales; and in the year following tho Berkshire curate was appointed first bishop of a diocese the limits of, which scarcely admitted of an exact definition. It was on his setting out for his diocese that Sydney Smith uttered his well-known mot about “ cold missionary on the sideboard.” He landed at Wellington, together with bait-a-dozen clergymen and as many students, in -. 1842; The town was scarcely three years old, yet the foundations of a place’of worship for members of the Church of -England were alt ready laid; but as the .plans wore hot approved of by the prelate, the design was abandonedFroceeding from. thence to Auckland, where he found a church completed, he established the ReviMr.’Cburton as its minister, and next visited the Bay of Islands, from whence ho went on to Waimate,. and fixed his abode-in one of tho mission-houses there, converting" the school into St, John’s College. At the outbreak of the native war in 1845 this was ' removed to a sito six miles from Auckland, where he purchased some hundreds of acres of land, and established a sort of ecclesiastical township, with his own unpretending residence, so pleasantly described in Bishop iPatteson’s diary, in the centre of it. The place was quite mediaeval in its aspect, . with an air of monastic repose about it; and

it was framed in a landscape which united the amenities of English scenery with some of the grander aspects of that of New Zealand. Bishop, Selwyn was a churchman of;fthe mcdiceval type, overflowing with energy, both mental and physical; and the sort of man. who, if he had lived in the times of the prince-prelates of Germany, would have made no undistinguished figure, at the head of an army. “He walked through the length! and breadth of the islands,” says one of bis clergy! “ measuring the distance by one of Payne’s pedometers ; ho forded streams and hwarn across rivers ; he was indeed a nauseaiar bishop,” Whenever a township was laid out, it was not long before Hr. Selwyn arrived upon the scene to purchase sites for churches and .for parsonages. , How many of these edifices he was instrumental in building we have no means of ascertaining.; but the number must have 'beeu something considerable. He procured the subdivision of his diocese into the bishoprics of Christchurch, Wellington, Nelson,and Waiapu.,, He convened the first General Synod pf the, church, at Wellington in March, 1859, and established a form of Government for it in conjunction with hi? colleagues. ", ' - Prior to the consecration of Dr. Patteson as first Bishop of Melanesia, in 1881, PivSelwyn’s see extended as far north ns latitude 33deg., and therefore comprehended a great many of .the islands of the JPacifio.u In order to enable him to visit these ,lie. built a small vessel Of 23 tons burden, named the Undine; maimed by a’ crew of four, aud used to navigate it himself. This craft was afterwards replaced by the Border Maid ; in which, during the course ; of one voyage, he touched at 53 islands, brought away five-and-twenty native lads to receive instruction at his college, and .two. young girls, whom:, the bishop —with a. versatility which must have astonished some of his episcopalian brethreu.in England when they heard of it—clothed with flowing drapery made out of his best counterpane, stitched and “sloped” on the voyage by his’ own episcopal hands. Paul had made tents, and.why should not a missionary prelate fabricate feminipe skirts for the ebony Venuses of tho Pacific, where no other dressmakers were procurable? T n Dr. Selwyn refinement and dignity were! so .innate, he was so thoroughly a gentleman; in the best sense of, that sadly defamed epithet, and'whatever ha put his hand to he performed with such a rate combination of the: highest intelligence with great physical energy: and much technical skill, that he" elevated the; most commonplace occupations directly he took, part in them. He inspired the dusky savages; of the Pacific with a sentiment that was half: awe and half affection.! There was in him; both the courage:and the gentleness, both the’ strength and the sweetness of one of Arthur’s! knights ; and superadded to these qualities was: that culture of which it is no disrespect to them to conclude they were almost altogether i destitute.’.:..Whilerhe’ could hold his own ini point of scholarship with many of his famous contemporaries, he could have passed an examination for the pilot service of New Zealand. In one of his journals, where he happens to be speaking of Nelson and its boulder bank, ho i says :—“Thisis the only part of New Zealand ; where the Undine employs the services of a ; pilot: the outline of almost every hill, and the poaition,,of i every rock, being by this time written on the minds of her master and myself. If; there be any truth in phrenology, I believe that the map of New Zealand will be stamped on some part of the organ substance of my brain: It is this intimate knowledge of localities, derived from frequent visits, which gives such a peculiar charm to the whole country, and makes it seem like one’s own—and so it is; for, like the gipsies, I pitch my tent where’er I please, or anchor my floating palace in any sheltered cove ; and wherever I go, by senior land, I am received as a friend, and find some objects of moral and religious interest to leave upon the mind a pleasant recollection of the place.” *■ ■ ’ : Under the circumstances, it is not at all surprising that he should have conceived a great Dicing for the! Maoris, whose rights’he’considered to have been disregarded in the letter of instructions which Lord Grey, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, transmitted to Governor Grey in December, 1846, containing this passage “ The' savage inhabitants of New Zealand have no right of property in land which they do . not occupy, and which has remained unsubdued to the purposes of man.” Bishop Selwyn protested against’this, as a deliberate infraction of the Treaty of Waitangi, which he had been employed by Captain Hobson to interpret to the native chiefs, and he addressed a strongly worded letter to . the . Governor, which certainly savored somewhat, ns has been said, of the spirit.of a Hildebrand, or of an Alexander the Third. It led, however, to the suspension, and subsequent modification, of the instructions by Lord Grev.

, After upwards of twenty years of zealous service, not unmixed with no small amount of romantic adventure, this genuinely missionary bishop felt that the time had come when he needed a respite from labors which had been sufficiently strenuous and sustained to have broken down the constitution of ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and which must have told to some extent upon his own fine physique and well-posed mind. He ther fore resigned his episcopate, and returned to the mother country, where in 1867 he was appointed to the bishopric of Lichfield, and the value of the compliment thus paid to him must have been greatly enhanced by the fact that there wereassigned to him as coadjutors DivHobhouse, the first bishop o! Nelson, and Dr. Abraham, the first bishop of Wellington’. He was thus associated in the evening of his days with the companions of his ■ more toilsome years, but his was not a nature to_ succumb to, ease, and find its highest gratification in the elegant pursuits of learned leisure. He was a missionary bishop among the savages of the black country, just as he had been among the Maoris ; and one of the most recent acts of his busy and beneficial life was to establish a floating church for the benefit of the canal boat population. When New Zealand shall have fulfilled the prediction pf Sir Robert Peel, and become the Great Britain of the South, the Fronde of the 25th century may justly designate the late Bishop Selwyn as its Augustine.