was depreciated for a libertinism by no means
unaccompanied with good qualities. " Jack
Wilkes," as he was familiarly called — Member
of Parliament, Alderman, fine gentleman,
scholar, coarse wit, and middling writer —
was certainly an impudent dog, in more
senses than that of Jack Absolute in the
play. Excess of animal spirits, and the want
of any depth of perception into some of the
gravest questions, led him into outrages
against decorum, that were justly denounced
by all but the hypocritical. Nevertheless the
country is indebted to him for more than one
benefit, particularly the freedom from
arbitrary arrest; and the two daughters that
Jack left behind him, illegitimate as well as
legitimate, were models of well-educated,
estimable women, as fond of their father as
he had shown himself fond of them. The
popularity to which he had attained at one
time was immense. " Wilkes and Liberty "
was the motto of the universal English
nation. It was on every wall; sometimes
on every door, and on every coach (to enable
it to get along); it stamped the butter-pats,
the biscuits, the gingerbread; in short, had
so identified one word with the other, that
a wit, writing to somebody, began his letter
with, " Sir, I take the Wilkes and liberty to
assure you — "

Wilkes prospered so well by his patriotism
that he maintained three establishments at
a time; one in the Isle of Wight for the
summer; another in Grosvenor Square, where
his daughter Mary kept house for him; and
the third at this place in Kensington Gore,
where his second daughter, Harriet, lived with
her mother, a Mrs. Arnold, who assisted in
training her with a propriety that must have
been thought remarkable. The first daughter,
who was as plain and as lively as her father,
died unmarried, universally lamented. The
other, a very agreeable lady in face as well
as in manners, we had the pleasure of seeing
once in company with her husband, the
late estimable Serjeant Hough, who
became a judge in India, and who deplored
her loss.

A Kensington memorandum by Wilkes
will show what high visitors he had, and how
well he could entertain them:—

"Mr. Swinburne dined with us last Sunday, with
Monsieur Barthelemi, and the Counts Woronzow and
Nesselrode. I gave them the chicken turtle dressed
at the London Tavern, a haunch of venison, and
was served by James and Samuel from Prince's
Court, who behave very well. The day passed very
cheerfully, and they all expressed themselves highly
delighted."

Wilkes, who lived to a good age, owing
probably to his love of exercise, was in the
habit, to the last, of walking from Kensington
to the City, deaf to the solicitations of the
hackney-coachmen, and not at all minding,
or rather perhaps courting, the attention of
everybody else to an appearance which must
always have been remarkable. Personal
defects deprecate or defy notice, according to
the disposition of the individual. Wilkes was
not disposed to deprecate anything. He
was tall, meagre, and sallow, with an under-
hung, grinning, good-humoured jaw, and an
obliquity of vision which, however objectionable
in the eyes of opponents, occasioned the
famous vindication from a partisan, that its
possessor did not " squint more than a gentleman
should." Upon the strength of his
having been a Colonel of Militia, the
venerable patriot daily attired this person in a
suit of scarlet and buff, with a rosette in his
cocked hat, and a pair of military boots; and
the reader may fancy him thus coming towards
Knightsbridge, ready to take off the hat in
the highest style of good breeding to anybody
that courted it, or to give the gentleman
" satisfaction," if he was disrespectful to the
squint. For Wilkes was as brave as he was
light-hearted. He was an odd kind of
English-Frenchman that had strayed into
Farringdon-Ward-Without; and he ultimately
mystified both King and people: for
he was really of no party but that of pleasure
and a fine coat. The best thing about him
was his love of his daughters; just as the
pleasantest thing in the French is their w
alking about with their families on the
Boulevards, after all the turbulence and
volatility of their insurrections.

But an interest attaches to this house ot
Wilkes's, far beyond these pleasant anomalies:
for here Junius visited. At this door,
knocking towards dinner-time, might be seen
a tall good-looking gentleman of an imposing
presence, who if anybody passing by had
known who he was, and had chosen to go
and tell it, might have been the making
of the man's fortune. This was Philip
Francis, afterwards one of the denouncers of
Hastings, ultimately Sir Philip Francis, K.B., a
nd now, since the publication of Mr. Taylor's
book on the subject, understood to be that
" mighty boar of the forest," as Burke called
him, trampling down all before him, the
author of Junius's Letters. Mrs. Rough
said, that he dined at Kensington frequently,
and that he once cut off a lock of her hair.
She was then a child. She only knew him as
Mr. Francis; but she had " an obscure
imagination that her father once said she had met
Junius." He might so, in after days; but
we feel convinced that Wilkes did not know
him for Junius at the time. He treats the
latter in his correspondence with a reverence
which was not compatible with " Wilkes and
liberty." He took Junius, we suspect, to be
Burke or Chatham, probably the latter. He
once, it is true, when Lord Mayor, invited the
Great Unknown to a ball, adding, in a truly
French style of classical allusion (then the
tone of the day) how happy he should be to
see " his Portia (Miss Wilkes) dance a graceful
minuet with Junius Brutus." But Junius
Brutus saw the absurdity of the conjunction;