Horne Tooke having challenged Wilkes, who was then Sheriff of London and Middlesex, received the following laconic reply:- -"Sir, I do not think it my business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of his life; but, as I am at present High Sheriff of the city of London, it may happen that I shall shortly have an opportunity of attending you in my official capacity, in which case I will answer for it that you shall have no ground to complain of my endeavours to serve you."

"He was

Walpole is more tender towards Wilkes than might have been expected. When the Lord of Strawberry was ill in Paris, in 1765, Wilkes called twice to see him. very civil," says Walpole, "but I cannot say entertained me much. I saw no wit; his conversation shows how little he has lived in good company. He has certainly one merit, notwithstanding the bitterness of his pen, that is, he has no rancour."

Boswell, dining with the sheriffs and judges at the Old Bailey, complained that he had had his pocket picked of his handkerchief. "Poh, poh!" said Alderman Wilkes, “it is nothing but the ostentation of a Scotchman, to let the world know that he had possessed a pocket-handkerchief."

Wilkes's wit was so constantly at his command that wagers were laid, that, from the time he quitted his home near Storey's Gate till he reached Guildhall, no one would address him who would leave him without a smile or a hearty laugh. Notwithstanding their feuds, Lord Sandwich and Wilkes were partial to each other. Charles Butler once was not punctual in an appointment with Lord Sandwich, when it was mentioned to his lordship that the delinquent had dined with Mr. Wilkes. "Well, then," said Lord Sandwich, "Wilkes has so often made me break appointments with others, that it is but fair he should once make a person break his appointment with me."

Wilkes frequently noticed the multitude of peers created during Mr. Pitt's administration, as a circumstance likely to be attended with an important consequence not generally foreseen. "While the relation between the minister and the newly-made peers shall subsist, their subserviency," he used. to say, "to his measures will continue; but, when this relation ceases, the probability is that, as the succeeding ministers will not have the means of attaching them, they will form a

silent, sulky opposition-a dead weight on every administration. Will it not then be found that the descendants of Mr. Pitt's peers will be mutes to strangle his successors ?”

Wilkes had written the history of his life, and earnestly requested Charles Butler to be his executor, under a condition of printing it entire and unaltered. Butler read the manuscript, but declined the charge it is said that, on the death of Wilkes, the cover of the book of manuscript was found without any of the leaves.

Dr. Franklin has left this plain-spoken estimate of Wilkes and 45: ""Tis really an extraordinary event, to see an outlaw and exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing, come over from France, set himself up as a candidate for the capital of the kingdom, miss his election only by being too late in his application, and immediately carrying it for the principal county. The mob, spirited up by numbers of different ballads, sung or roared in every street, requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks, as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty!' marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and No. 45 on every door; which extends a vast way along the roads into the country. I went last week to Winchester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window-shutter next the road unmarked; and this continued, here and there, quite to Winchester, which is sixty-four miles."

Wilkes, of course, in his constant tilts, did not escape retaliation. The following is attributed to Sheridan :

"Johnny Wilkes, Johnny Wilkes,
Thou greatest of bilks,

How changed are the notes you now sing;
Your famed forty-five

Is Prerogative,

And your blasphemy, 'God save the King.””

Mr. Rogers thus relates his first impression of Wilkes“One morning, when I was a lad, Wilkes came into our banking-house to solicit my father's vote. My father happened to be out, and I, as his representative, spoke to Wilkes. At parting, Wilkes shook hands with me; and I felt proud of it for a week after. He was quite as ugly, and squinted as much, as his portraits make him; but he was very gentlemanly in appearance and manners. I think I see him at this moment, walking through the crowded streets of the City, as

Chamberlain, on his way to Guildhall, in a scarlet coat, military boots, and a bag-wig-the hackney-coachmen in vain calling out to him, 'A coach, your honour.""

Wilkes resided occasionally at Hamilton Lodge, in Kensington Gore. Sometimes he had high visitors here: a memorandum of his refers to a dinner given here to Counts Woronzow and Nesselrode; and, if we are to set down Sir Philip Francis as "Junius," here Junius visited, as Mrs. Rough, Wilkes's daughter, said, frequently; and he once cut off a lock of her hair when a child. Wilkes, to the last, kept up a certain fashionable status: he died in No. 30, Grosvenor-square; and was buried in Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley-street, where is a tablet with this inscription from his own pen, “The remains of John Wilkes, a Friend to Liberty."

· BURKE AT THE "ROBIN HOOD.".

The debating club called "The Robin Hood Society" met in Essex-street, in the Strand, in the reign of George the Second. It became famous as the scene of Burke's earliest eloquence. To discipline themselves in public speaking at its meetings was then the custom among law-students, and others intended for public life; and it is said that at the Robin Hood, Burke had commonly to encounter an opponent whom nobody else could overcome, or at least silence. This person was the president, who sat in a large gilt chair. Goldsmith, who was of the club, was so struck with his eloquence and imposing aspect, that he thought Nature had meant him for a Lord Chancellor. "No, no," whispered Derrick (another member), who knew him to be a wealthy baker from the City, "only for a Master of the Rolls. "

A DAY WITH EDMUND BURKE.

Mr. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont, relates: "One of the most satisfactory days, perhaps, that I ever passed in my life was going with him, tête-à-tête, from London to Beaconsfield. He stopped at Uxbridge whilst the horses were feeding, and happening to meet some gentlemen, of I know not what militia, who appeared to be perfect strangers to him, he entered into discourse with them at the gateway of the inn. His conversation at that moment completely exem

plified what Johuson said of him: 'That you could not meet Burke for half an hour under a shed, without saying he was an extraordinary man.' He was on that day altogether uncommonly instructive and agreeable. Every object of the slightest notoriety, as we passed along, whether of natural or local history, furnished him with abundant materials for conversation. The house at Uxbridge, where the Treaty was held during Charles the First's time; the beautiful and undulating grounds of Bulstrode, formerly the residence of Chancellor Jeffries; and Waller's tomb, in Beaconsfield churchyard, which, before we went home, we visited, and whose character-as a gentleman, a poet, and an orator-he shortly delineated, but with exquisite felicity of genius, altogether gave an uncommon interest to his eloquence; and, although one-and-twenty years have now passed since that day, I entertain the most vivid and pleasing recollection of it."

BURKE'S TABLE-TALK.

In 1863 there were printed, for private circulation, some extracts from Mr. Burke's table-talk at Crewe Hall, written down by Mrs. Crewe. Here are a few specimens

*

:

When Langton, with reference to a conversation in which Johnson, as usual, had taken the lead, remarked that he should have been glad to hear more from another person (meaning Burke), Burke exclaimed, "Oh, no; it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him."

...

"What I most envy Burke for is his being constantly the same. He is never what we call humdrum; never unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. . . . Burke, sir, is such a man, that if you met him for the first time in the street when you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner that, when you parted, you would say, This is an extraordinary man.' Now, you may be long enough with me without finding anything extraordinary."

At the same time he denied him wit:

"No, sir; he never succeeds there. 'Tis low; 'tis conceit. I used to say Burke never once made a good joke.” Boswell vehemently maintains the contrary; and Reynolds * From a paper in the Saturday Review.

declared that he had often heard Burke say, in the course of an evening, ten good things which would have served a noted wit to live upon for a twelvemonth.

Burke's happiest flights of fancy are those by which he points arguments and illustrates reflections too grave and deep to suggest humorous associations. Thus, in defending the trappings of royalty-" The feather that adorns the royal bird supports his flight; strip him of his plumage, and you fix him to the earth;" or when he accused Pitt of contemplating a commercial treaty with France as an affair of two firms, and not of two great nations, as "a contention between the sign of the Fleur de Lis and the sign of the Old Red Lion, which should obtain most custom."

Mrs. Piozzi describes Burke as a reckless, haphazard talker, troubling himself little about the consequences of what he said. One evening, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, he spoke so strongly in praise of some island in the West Indies, that Mrs. Horneck, a widow with two beautiful daughters, resolved to lose no time in purchasing land there. She did so, and lost a large part of her slender income. "Dear sir," said I (Mrs. Piozzi), when we met next, "how fatal has your eloquence proved to poor Mrs. Horneck." "How fatal her own folly!" replied he; "Ods! my life, must one swear to the truth of a song?"

When some one mentioned Fox's attachment to France and French manners, Burke answered, "Yes, his attachment has been great and long; for, like a cat, he has continued faithful to the house after the family has left it." On its being remarked that no persons held together for any long continuance who called themselves democrats, taking the fact at once for granted, he replied, "Birds of prey are not gregarious." He said that Mr. Windham "often reminded him of Eddystone Lighthouse, dashed at by waves, but continuing steadily to give light to surrounding objects."

Mr. Burke thought that lounging rides on horseback had been of late one of the great checks to economy in all families among the gentry. Very few younger brothers, said he, are able to keep two horses, and two horses must be kept when they are in the habit of riding every day; and if they are neat and elegant in their ideas (as all gentlemen ought to be), this expense incurs that of an additional servant, besides necessary accoutrements, such as saddles, bridles, boots, &c.,