But neither would Wilkes spare Boswell, or conceal before him his prejudices against the Scotch nation. He seemed to seize, with particular avidity, every opportunity to play upon Boswell, when any thing relating to Scotland was introduced. “You must acknowledge, my friend Wilkes,” observed Boswell one day, “that the approach to Edinburgh from the London road, presents a very picturesque and interesting picture.” “Why so it perhaps may,” returned Wilkes, “but when I was there, the wind was in my face, and it brought with it such a confounded stink, that I was obliged to keep my handkerchief to my nose, the whole of the way, and could see nothing of the prospect.” Not long afterwards, Boswell was speaking of some Scotch nobleman, who was very fond of planting, and had ornamented his domain with some very fine and beautiful forest-trees. “Where could this possibly be,” said Wilkes; “I travelled through the country with an American servant, and after we had visited various places in different parts of Scotland, I enquired of him what his general opinion was of the country?” “Oh, Sir!” replied the American, “it is _finely cleared_.” There was a heavy Lord Mayor in Wilkes’s time, who, by persevering steadily in the pursuit of one object, accumulated an immense fortune, and rose progressively from the dignity of Common-councilman to the State-coach, and the Mansion-house. His first entrance into life was as a common bricklayer. At one of the Old Bailey dinners, his lordship, after a sumptuous repast on turbot and venison, was eating an immense quantity of butter with his cheese—“Why brother,” said Wilkes, “you lay it on with a _trowel_.” There is a singular anecdote of this same Lord Mayor, demonstrative of the parsimonious principles, by the exercise of which he doubtless rose to opulence. His only son was brought up in the same mean profession, and one day fell from a scaffold, and was killed by the fall. The father, who was present, on seeing the accident, only exclaimed, “Take care of his watch.” In the riots of the year 1780, which at the same time endangered and disgraced the metropolis, Wilkes was lamenting the ungovernable violence of a London mob;—upon this, some brother citizen took him up shortly, and reminded him of the disturbances of which he had formerly been the occasion. “Sir,” returned Wilkes, “I never was a Wilkite.” He was not apt to express outwardly any thing like chagrin or mortification, but he certainly took his disappointment at Brentford, the last time that he offered himself as candidate for Middlesex, very heavily to heart. “I should much have liked,” he would say, “to have died in my geers.” Upon a similar occasion he exclaimed, “I can only compare myself to an exhausted volcano.”