and incessant foe of the administration. Lord Bute resigned on

the 8th April, 1763. On the 23rd April the famous forty-fifth number of the North Briton was issued. As it contained, or was supposed to contain, matter libellous or seditious. Lord Halifax, the secretary of state for the home department, sent forth a general warrant for the apprehension of the authors, printers, and publishers. First Mr. Dryden Leach, a printer, was taken into custody, who had nothing to do with the North Briton at all, then Mr. Kearsley the publisher, and Mr. Balfe the real printer of the North Briton, and lastly, Wilkes himself, who was committed to the Tower. This despotic proceeding excited great indignation. Earl Temple and the duke of Bolton went to the Tower to see Wilkes. They were not admitted. They offered to become his bail to the extent of £100,000 each: their proposal was disregarded. At various sittings of the court of common pleas early in the month of May, Wilkes was allowed to plead his own cause. On the 6th May the court of common pleas gave the order for his release. The defeat of the persecutors was celebrated in London by bonfires and illuminations. The ministry showed its spite at Earl Temple by depriving him of his lord-lieutenancy. As the arrest of Wilkes and others connected with the affair of the North Briton was illegal, actions were brought against the offenders. The king's messengers had to pay £300, Lord Halifax £4000, and Mr. Wood, undersecretary of state, £1000, as damages. To be chronologically accurate, we may state that it was not till November, 1769, that the verdict in the case of Lord Halifax was pronounced. Wilkes was forced more than once to reside abroad on account of his debts; but he did not abandon the contest for the complete liberty of the subject. Successive, and what were meant to be contumelious expulsions from the house of commons, fines, and imprisonments, did not break his indomitable purpose. He was the idol of the people. Subscriptions were raised for him, legacies left him, and condoling or congratulatory addresses were presented to him. In 1771 he was chosen sheriff of London, in 1773 one of the members for Middlesex; but the crown still maintained its system of persecution, and would not confirm the return. The election of Wilkes in 1774 as lord mayor was followed by his re-election for Middlesex, when government, tired of tormenting, allowed him quietly to take his place in the house of commons, where he was a frequent speaker. Of the American war he was the resolute and vehement adversary. Appointed in December, 1779, city chamberlain, he had less from that moment to fear from debts and duns; but his political importance had in a great measure ceased. On the 27th of December, 1797, Wilkes died—not at Kensington, where in his latter years he resided, but at his daughter's house in Grosvenor Square. He was buried in South Audley Street chapel. Wilkes was tall and thin, had a sallow complexion, and a horrible squint. His manners were charming, his wit prompt, sparkling, abundant, and irresistible. Dr. Johnson, when unexpectedly thrown into his company, was delighted with his discourse; and Lord Mansfield said that he had never found any one so entertaining. For a considerable period before he died Wilkes had sunk from a popular power into a popular curiosity. The stranger turned to look at the once famous man in his daily walk from Kensington to Grosvenor Square. Nothing now was notable except the dress—the military boots, the scarlet coat, the cocked hat with its button and its loop. It would be wrong altogether to consider Wilkes as an exalted patriot; it would be wrong to represent him as a vulgar demagogue. He had the instinct of independence, he valiantly asserted it, and he achieved a noble victory. He upset a ministry, and he made it impossible for subsequent ministries to set aside the customary legal procedure in order to crush a political opponent. As duellist and debauchee, Wilkes was no worse than his wicked age. He wrote much both anonymously and otherwise. Many popular songs were ascribed to him. His speeches were published after his death, and various collections of his letters appeared. That he has sometimes been regarded as the author of Junius, proves at least a high estimate of his literary abilities.—W. M—l. WILKIE, Sir David, the principal of British genre painters, was born in the parish of Cults, Fifeshire, November 18, 1785. He was the third son of David Wilkie, minister of Cults. Having very early displayed his ability for drawing, his father sent him in 1799 to the Trustees academy in Edinburgh. In 1803 he won the first premium for painting, in the academy, and returned home in the following year. He now earned his living by painting small portraits, and he had made great progress in the practice of painting. Wilkie painted two clever pictures before he ventured to London in 1805, "Pitlessie Fair," and the "Village Recruit"—the last he brought to London with him, and sold for £6. In London he entered the Royal Academy as a student, and seized notoriety at a single bound by the exhibition of his "Village Politicians" in the Academy, in 1806. Wilkie was now a London lion, and had, at the youthful age of twenty-one, to work to maintain a reputation only, not to make one. Every succeeding picture added to his popularity. The "Village Politicians" was followed, among others, by the "Blind Fiddler," the "Card-Players," the "Rent Day," the "Jew's Harp," the "Cut Finger," the "Wardrobe Ransacked," and the great picture of the "Village Festival," painted for Mr. Angerstein for eight hundred guineas, and now one of the principal ornaments of the National gallery. This brings us down to 1811, when Wilkie was elected a Royal academician. He had been made an associate of the Academy in 1809. So much labour as he bestowed upon his works injured his health, and he found a respite necessary. He accordingly visited his father in 1811, and spent the summer with him. Wilkie returned to London in the autumn, and removed from Chelsea to Kensington, where, after the death of his father in 1812, his mother and sister resided with him, at 24 Lower Phillimore Place. His mother died in 1824. But with all his popularity, Wilkie was now making only about £600 a year. In 1814 he visited Paris with Haydon the painter; and in 1816 he visited Holland and Belgium with Raimbach the engraver. The following are his principal pictures, painted between 1811 and 1825—"Blind Man's Buff;" the "Letter of Introduction;" "Duncan Gray;" "Distraining for Rent;" the "Rabbit on the Wall;" the "Penny Wedding;" the "Whisky Still;" the "Reading of the Will," now in the modern gallery at Munich; and the large picture of the "Chelsea Pensioners," painted for the duke of Wellington for twelve hundred guineas, and exhibited in 1822. These early works are all very carefully painted, and up to 1825 Wilkie was known exclusively as a genre painter; but in that year, in order to recruit his failing health, he made a tour on the continent, remained abroad three years, and after his return completely changed both his style and his class of subjects. The above mentioned pictures, on which his reputation now chiefly depends, have all been engraved by some of the most able masters of the English school of engraving, as John Burnet, Abraham Raimbach, Samuel Cousins, R.A., G. T. Doo, R.A., C. Fox, and others. At the death of Sir Henry Raeburn in 1823, Wilkie was appointed to succeed him as limner to the king in Scotland, and after the death of Lawrence in 1830 he received the appointment of painter in ordinary to his majesty; but he failed in obtaining the presidentship of the Academy to which he aspired. He had but a single vote. Sir Martin Archer Shee being the successful candidate. During his stay on the continent Wilkie visited France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and he seems to have been much impressed with the works of Correggio, of Rembrandt, and of Velazquez. The last had most influence upon him, and some Spanish subjects were among the most interesting of the works he exhibited at the Academy after his return. But his style was now so different from that by which he had gained his great name, and he came into competition with so many other perfect masters in their own manner, that so far from increasing his reputation, he did not even maintain it. Wilkie certainly painted many fine pictures after 1829, but also many very indifferent ones. Among the worst is conspicuous the "Entrance of George IV. into Holyrood House in 1822"— a bad subject for Wilkie; it is ill composed, ill drawn, and ill executed. Among the more successful of his later works are "John Knox Preaching the Reformation in St. Andrews," 1832, purchased by Sir Robert Peel for twelve hundred guineas; "Napoleon and the Pope," 1836 (in this year he was knighted by William IV.); "Sir David Baird discovering the body of Tippoo Saib," painted for Lady Baird for fifteen hundred guineas, 1839; and "Benvenuto Cellini and the Pope," 1840. During this period he attempted some large life-size portraits, but more often failed than succeeded. His portrait of the queen, exhibited in 1840, was very unsatisfactory. In the autumn of this year he suddenly set out with Mr. Woodburn for a tour in the East; he passed through Holland and Germany to Constantinople, where he painted the reigning sultan. From Constantinople he went to Smyrna, thence to Rhodes, Beyrout, Jafl'a, and