it; but it still walks. It is not likely to resist Mr. Wade, however; and we suspect that, in a little time, if our own hypothesis be not adopted, people must honestly chime in with Lord Byron, and admit "That he whom Junius we are wont to call, Was really, truly, nobody at all"— a conclusion, by-the-bye, which Sir Harris Nicholas, in the book about which we write, says, comes as easy to his apprehensions of the matter as any hypothesis extant. was published (that signed "Poplicola"), Francis was just twenty-seven years oldan insignificant clerk in the War-Office. There is no difference in power or style between this letter and those of the later Junian series. The beginning of the series bears as plainly the stamp of Junius as the close of it; the vivacity and power of the extraordinary author are visible everywhere alike. Now, we do not think it possible that a young man of twenty-seven could write these letters-could exhibit the high political decision the consummate literary strength and science conspicuous in every one of them. The tone of them does not belong to that period of any man's life; and it is to little purpose that Lady Francis, in a letter to Lord Campbell, talks of Sir Philip's early experience in embassies, bureaux, and soforth. This negative evidence has demonstrative power enough to carry all the special pleading of Sir Philip's advocates away before it. There is another good argument, inferior to the foregoing, but forcible, nevertheless. It is not possible that a young man, who began life under the patronage of William Pitt The acquaintance with the War-Office so visible in Junius's letters, seems to tell very much in favor of the advocates of Sir Philip Francis. Mr. Francis was a chief-clerk in the War Office at the time Junius began to write, in 1767; and continued there till 1772, when the letters ceased. Favorable mention is made of Francis in the Miscellaneous Letters, and Lord Barrington is denounced for dismissing him. Several of the miscellaneous letters are in sarcastic denunciation of Lord Barrington for his appointments, and written in the way young Francis would be supposed to write, if he wrote on such a subject. Again, in 1813, Mr. Taylor, who received his appointment in the Warwho published a book, called "Junius Iden Office from Lord Holland, Pitt's Paymaster tified," puts Sir Philip's case in another way. of the Forces-who was the Private SecreHe argues from the fact, that young Francis tary of Pitt for some time, and professed for reported several speeches delivered by Lord him, ever after, the highest veneration and Chatham in the House of Lords. Now, a gratitude, would begin a series of letters number of sentiments, metaphors, and pe- with an outrageously exaggerated assault on culiar phrases, which appear in these speech- the character and general policy of his benees (published by Almon in 1791), are also factor-the highest genius and the most to be found in Junius's letters, forming a re- popular man in the realm. The masked markable portion of their style and charac-writer was a Whig. Is it likely he would ter. Of course, argues Mr. Taylor, either of two things must have happened that Francis adopted these things from the speaker, and used them as his own; or, that, from the affluence of his mind and manners, he clothed the meaning of Chatham with his own phraseology, figures, and so forth-did for the speeches what he did for the letters-poured the Franciscan char-erything he wrote, an imitation of Junius acteristics over both! This likeness between Lord Chatham's reported matter and the letters is so strong, so startling, that Mr. Taylor comes to the obvious conclusion, that Francis was Junius! He had no other alternative, of course. Nevertheless, we are not yet convinced. There are one or two objections so rugged and indefensible, that Mr. Taylor, e seguaci suoi, must get along without us. The first and we think it all-sufficient-is that, at the time the first of the Miscellaneous Letters begin by assailing the venerable and recognized champion of Whiggery? Such a supposition is too violent to be countenanced. Furthermore, in all that he achieved in his life-long career, Sir Philip gave no proof that he possessed the mind-the large intellectual mould in which the lava-literature of Junius took shape-none whatever. In ev can be detected; and thus many have been like Ascanius by his father's side, haud pas- nal. imitator-that he never was the great origi- | Elshie, of Mucklestane Moor,, with large head, and great strength, but stunted in all other respects. Who, then, wrote these letters? No doubt, somebody whose antecedents were as striking and as full of power as the epistles themselves are seen to be; one who did other things as great as these. His celebrity, we think, was not confined to the pen; it will be found equally recognized under another aspect in the politics and statesmanship of that age. We must not take Parr's, Taylor's, Brewster's, Wade's word for it, and look for Junius among the understrappers and pelting, petty officers of the day. We must look among the foremost and most towering characters in the nation—the men of the quarter-deck, who used trumpets for their talk, and directed the ship of the State through the rough waters of the time. To find Junius we must look to the picture painted by Copley, and lying on the wall of the House of Lords. THERE is old Nominis Umbra! with his flannels on his gouty legs, his crutches falling out of his hands, and he himself sinking into the arms of the Duke of Cumberland: "The Pilot that weathered the Storm" on one side, and Lord Mahon on the other; there he is, after having protested against the independence of America, and the diminution of that "ancient and noble monarchy" which he himself had said and done so much to establish-and about to be carried away to Hayes, where, in eleven days, he shall die, and make no sign of Junius! It is only in William Pitt, Lord Chatham, that we can find the anonymous letter-writer. In him alone, of all the great characters of the time, can we find the full requirements of the authorship. He alone could have written the letters. He alone had the compelling motives to write them-as a perusal of his career will conclusively show-and the bitter vigor to keep up the epistolary war for five years. The only Whig of the time who came near Chatham in intellectual power, was Burke. When the latter is set aside, the grim Earl stands alone, as the secretary did before. To suppose Junius to be only Junius-a man of mean antecedents, or none at all-who did nothing in his lifetime to equal, in another way, the merit of this epistolary achievement, or show himself capable of it, is a very violent assumption. The letters give evidence of an intellectual energy which could never be bounded to the production of them. They are, so to speak, aerolitic fragments of some great revolving body which research must find out. Junius must have been something more than Canny To come to a just conclusion on this matter, we must, we repeat, take a broad view of things. We must look to the life of the man whose character presents a well-defined likeness of that shifting and shadowy apparition which has disconcerted so much admirable logic. William Pitt was born in 1708, and educated at Oxford, where he had the name of a good scholar, an excellent debater, and a writer of very elegant verse. After leaving college, he travelled on the Continent, and on his return was made a cornet of horse. In 1736 he went into Parliament for the borough of Old Sarum. The gout, which seldom left him untormented during his life, and, certainly, helped his vehement politics to exacerbate his mind, obliged him to "Forego the plumed troop, and the big wars, That make ambition virtue." As a soldier, we can easily conceive how Pitt would have rivalled the celebrity of Marlborough. In parliament he was distinguished for a bold and original style of oratory, which amazed and offended Sir Robert Walpole and his supporters; and the exclamation, "will no one muzzle that terrible cornet of horse!" shows the minister's perplexity, and, perhaps, something of his admiration. From the beginning, Pitt set his face against the ascendancy of Sir Robert Walpole, in the irrespective, intrepid spirit which Junius afterwards exhibited in his assaults upon the ministries of Grafton and Bute. He thwarted George the Second long before he called George the Third "the falsest hypocrite in Europe;" but in 1746, the high and popular character of Pitt obliged George the Second, much against his will, to admit the orator into office; and he was made Paymaster of the Forces. Pitt, Mr. Legge, and the Grenvilles always acted in concert, from the beginning; and their league was occasionally strong enough to overpower the royal antipathies, and the intrigues of the Court party. They were dismissed from the Ministry in 1755; but, in 1756, the want of Pitt was so grievously felt, in the midst of ministerial incapacity and national disaster, that the King sent the Duke of Newcastle to treat with him. The latter heartily refused to accept any situation with the Duke. He refused another overture made by the Duke of Devonshire; till, But Pitt was to pay the penalty of his lofty ambition and success, and prove the truth of the lines suggested by another aspiring genius to the noble poet of the last generation "He who ascends the mountain tops, shall find After the death of George II., a system at last, in 1756, Pitt obtained the concession | by the gout, was vehemently chafed by the of all his demands, and mounted over the eternal buzzing and stinging of his adversabenches into the Ministry, with the Grenvilles ries. behind him, as Mahomet the Second may be supposed to have entered Roman Constanti-atic proscription of all Whiggery commenced. nople, at the head of his Spahis. The new Pitt's Parliament was dissolved, and his Minister insisted on having an almost dicta- friend, Mr. Legge, dismissed from the Chantorial control of the government and the na- cellorship of the Exchequer. At the same tional armaments; and thus single-handed, time, John Stuart Earl of Bute, the King's in a great measure, undertook to restore the sometime tutor, was added to his council; failing fortunes of the monarchy. And this and Lord Barrington, whom Junius so he did with the most consummate ability and fiercely denounces as bloody Barrington," success. His three years' ministry was the put into the place of Legge. In 1761, the most triumphant on British record, and his Grenvilleite league, that sustained Pitt so fame was trumpeted wherever his power was long, was overpowered in the council. Befelt that is, in every habitable quarter of ing outvoted there, on the question of dethe globe. claring war against Spain, Pitt and Earl Temple resigned their seats. In a short time the former gave up the reins of government, and his memorable administration terminated. In the meantime the paper war against Pitt and the Whigs raged furiously. Flying pamphlets darkened all the air. Smollett wrote for prerogative and Toryism, and Wilkes charged for Whiggery and Liberty. Pitt and Temple, in 1765, refused overtures from the Duke of Cumberland, on The Leicester-House faction, the guiding which Rockingham and his Fidus Achates, spirit of which was the Princess Dowager of Burke, went in and tried to fortify themselves Wales, joined the Court in cordial hostility in the ministerial citadel. But, at the end against the dictatorial Minister, who exercised of a year and a day, they beat the chamade, so potent a Whig influence on the Govern- and marched out, scarcely with the honors ment and the Crown. The mother of George of war. Pitt, now Lord Chatham, once the Third resolved that, when her son should more got a carte blanche from his Sovereign, ascend the throne, the King of England and hoped to propitiate the fortunes of the should be no longer subject to that power by-gone decade. But in vain. The genius which had confined the royal prerogative of Whiggery was fated to sink before the ever since the Revolution. Though agreeing Toryism of George III., then mounting to in little else, the self-willed old German and its long and steady ascendant. Chatham his daughter-in-law were of one mind as re- soon seemed to feel that the omens were garded William Pitt. The minister's power against him. But he did his best, and made was a source of discontent and alarm to the a ministry, which Burke has termed the royal family and the Court parties; and mosaic administration-“a tesselated pavewhile his glory was greeted by the popular ment, without cement"-a "queer hotchapplause, and recognized throughout Europe, potch and coalition," which began to fall to a crowd of hireling writers were encouraged pieces from the moment it was set up. Lord to assail his character and general policy, Chatham himself was Lord Privy Seal in through all the channels of the press. His this administration, and the Duke of Grafton, war-projects that had effected so much to Lord Shelburne, Charles Townsend, and restore England to a sense of security, were Mr. Conway, filled the chief offices of it. denounced for the bloodshed and heavy ex- Lord Camden was Lord Chancellor. It was pense of them; and as he had, in 1761, an eminently disastrous Ministry; and Chataccepted a pension for himself and a title for ham's efforts to form it from the discordant his wife, he was vituperated as a renegade political materials about him, and, afterwards, from his former principles-a man merely to keep it together, tortured him far worse ambitious of rank, and avaricious of royal than the gout. He had accepted the task largess. All the advocates of prerogative of making it, without carrying Earl Temple were let loose upon him; and his temper, along with him, according to their old "famnever of the meekest, and always sharpened lily compact," the source of Pitt's former five years against the Tory powers of England, for the re-establishment of Whiggery upon its old ground. power. He had accepted it, too, under a | Centaur. In fact, from a fair consideration Butean influence; and the remorse of these of Chatham's antecedent career-of his pothings aggravated the perplexity of his efforts litical sympathies and antipathies, we can to carry on his administration. The over- very readily conceive how he would particitures he was obliged to make to the Mar-pate in all the warfare waged by Junius for quis of Rockingham, the Duke of Bedford, and other meaner men, and the rebuffs and refusals he received, were gall and wormwood to the high, unchastened spirit of Chatham. The refusal of the Duke of Bedford inflicted upon it its sorest wound. The Duke had been instrumental in undoing what Pitt had done, in his former ministry-he had signed away at Paris, in 1763, the fruits of Pitt's organized victories. To be forced to make overtures to him, and have them refused by the angry Duke, was a dire humiliation-such as was retorted in the fiercest invectives, three years afterwards, in the twenty-third letter of Junius. The same similarity to Junius is seen in the intellectual features of Chatham's character. Pitt was always vehement and bold of speech, full of assurance, invective, vernacular idiom, metaphor, and so forth. A letter written by Horace Walpole, in 1755, will give us a general idea of what he was, on most occasions. Walpole speaks of a meeting that took place at the Cockpit, in that year; "Pitt surpassed himself, and then, I need not tell you, he surpassed Cicero and Demosthenes. What a figure would they, with their formal, labored cabinet orations, cut vis-a-vis his manly and dashing elo Such were the circumstances in which Chatham found himself in the 59th year of his age. He had been struggling with Tory-quence! I never suspected Pitt of such a ism from his youth upward-had "always been in a triumph or a fight." His political views and plans of government were systematically opposed, and the King's friends were incessantly bent on pulling him down from his elevation. The stern pride and in flexibility of his character had only the effect of sharpening the animosity of his opponents, without conciliating to his side those who would be disposed to engage in his quarrels and strengthen his influence. Among the people his popularity was great-he was generally admired and venerated. But in the government region, the Lord Privy Seal stood alone-a political Lear-while the storm blew pitilessly all about him. This enmity against the government policy, and the parties who were supplanting the Whig influence in the State, was necessarily strong and deep-rooted. His personal feelings and his political ambition had been alike outraged and thwarted. In his letter to George III., Junius expresses Chatham's sentiments on the policy of the King's reign:-" To the same early influence (that of the Earl of Bute) we attribute it that you have descended to take a share, not only in the narrow views and interests of particular persons, but in the fatal malignity of their passions. At your accession to the throne, the whole system of government was altered-not from wisdom or deliberation, but because it had been adopted by your predecessors." This alteration, which began with Pitt's own dismissal from power in 1761, always clung to his memory, like the poisoned shirt to the back of the universal armory. . . . On the first debate (on the Hanoverian and Russian Treaties) Hume Campbell, whom the Duke of Newcastle had retained as the most abusive counsel he could find against Pitt, attacked him for his eternal invectives. Oh! since the last philippic of Billingsgate memory, you never heard such an invective as Pitt returned! Campbell was annihilated. Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think what a charming ridicule that must be that lasts, and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a-half!" The sarcastic humor and happy raillery displayed in some of Junius's miscellaneous letters, are at once. recognized to be what Walpole has thus described and the loftiness of Pitt's character cannot hinder any one from conceiving how he could descend to satirical comedy and the ridicule of "little Shammy, the wonderful Girgashite," &c. In his place in parliament he often gave specimens of this extraordinary quality. He turned upon Lord Mansfield once, in the House of Lords, and cried out he had a few words to say to him; but they should be daggers. Then, after staring with the face of a thundercloud at the grandest and gravest functionary in the realm, he added, in a tone which Kemble never could have equalled, "Judge Felix trembles! He shall hear from me some other day," and then sat down! People gathered a notion, from his peculiar manner, that Chatham's head also was touched with the gout; "men often a true one. About a year subsequently, Chesterfield wrote from the same place :"Lord Chatham's physician had very ignor. antly checked a coming fit of the gout, and scattered it over his body, and it fell particularly on his nerves, so that he continues exceedingly vaporish. He would neither see nor speak to anybody while he was here; for the last eight months he has been absolutely invisible to his most intimate friends. He would receive no friend, nor so much as open any packet about business." Eight months before the date of this letter, Junius printed his first letter, signed "Poplicola ;" after which followed, in all the modes of hostility-sarcastic, vehement, or comic-a series of attacks on the heterogeneous ministry which Chatham's strange absence had left at sixes and sevens, complaining with its several voices of his want of participation. In the beginning of 1767, Lord Charlemont, writing from London, says "Lord Chatham is still minister; but how long he may continue so is a problem that would pose the deepest politician. The opposition grows more and more violent, and seems to gain ground; his illhealth as yet prevents his doing any business. The ministry is divided into as many parties as there are men in it." In another letter he says, that no member of the opposition speaks without abusing Lord Chatham, and none of the Earl's friends take his part. "Is it possible," he exclaims, "such a man can be friendless?" The silence of his nominal friends just then is not so difficult to be. accounted for. They felt his opinion of them, and his conviction that he could do no good with them. His reserved and splenetic nature was very unfit, at any time, to make for him strong personal friends. Now he had none. He was in the predicament of Byron's stood abeigh, and ca'd him mad." Those | who shrink from allowing him the terve and vituperative spirit of Junius, must be completely ignorant of the intellect and passions that went to constitute the man. Some argue that Chatham was too old and feeble for the bitter vivacity of Junius; but age can hardly wither some minds. Lord Brougham is an older man than the Junian Chatham, and the agile vigor of his mind has very lately appeared to be as great as ever it was. In 1770, Nerva," writing to Lord Chatham, in the Public Advertiser, speaks of the "presumption, insolence, absurdity, meanness, folly, ignorance, and rancor "of his lordship's conduct in the House of Peers. All this is, doubtless, exaggeration; but there must have been something in Chatham's words and demeanor to which "Nerva's" language, in his own opinion, was not wholly inapplicable; and we can easily suppose that some of the old Pitt characteristics had again exhibited themselves. Chatham now sixty-two years of age. But "Nerva" further meets the doubts of those who believe the Earl was a broken-down old man at that time. He says, you possess, with the cold heart of age, the hot brain of rash and intemperate youth." Lord Chesterfield gives us a few more Junian features: "Lord Chatham," he says, "was haughty, imperious, impatient of contradiction, and overbear ing. He had manner and address, but one might discern through them too great a consciousness of his own superior talents. His eloquence was of every kind; his invective terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction and such dignity of countenance, that he intimidated those most willing and best able to encounter him." It is in such an original, energetic, passionate man as this, alone, that we can expect to find the identity" scorpion girt by fire." It repented Chatof the daring Junius. To no feebler or tamer order of intellect can that anonymous assaulter ever be traced. And this consideration should be the guide of all our inquiries. was Following the fate of the mosaic Ministry, we may the more clearly perceive how naturally and necessarily Chatham converts himself into Junius. It was scarcely framed, when the Earl went away to Bath, to drink the waters for the gout that just then seized him, as if it were Tory, too, and tormented him on principle. At the close of the year 1766, Lord Chesterfield, writing from Bath, says of him, "Mr. Pitt keeps his bed here with a real gout, and not a political one, as is often suspected." This suspicion was very ham that he had made the Ministry, and we hold that, in his exasperated solitude, he addressed himself to the task of destroying it— just as a master of a house, with original ideas, may be found to pull down his own tenement in a rage, if evil occupants make it intolerable. On his way up to London, the violence of Chatham's disorder obliged him to stay for some time at Hampstead, to which place the King sent every day to inquire after his health. The Ministry was now falling to pieces, and his Majesty fearing some dead-lock in the government, wrote the Earl a letter, asking his advice about further changes in it. Whereupon the tormented statesman sent back a verbal message, to say that the King need expect no further advice |