"If Grenville was peculiarly exceptionable, another middle person might have the Treasury. I fancy their middleman to be the same they had in their thoughts this time twelve-month--Lord Gower. They talked of the Duke of Northumberland as a proper person for the Treasury, in case of the Duke of Grafton's going out. The truth is, the Bedfords will never act any part, either fair or amiable, with your lordship or your friends, until they see you in a situation to give the law to them." No doubt all this was perfectly true; the whole was selfish, supercilious, and exclusive; one red riband matched against another, one garter balanced against a rival fragment of blue; the whole a court-ball, in which the nation had no more share than if it had been danced in the saloon of Windsor; a masquerade in which the political minuet was gravely danced by the peerage in character, and of which the nation heard scarcely even the fiddles. But those times have passed away, and, for the honour of common sense, they have passed never to return. The long contested authorship of "Junius's Letters" makes the subject of a brief portion of his correspondence. A letter from Charles Townshend, brother of Lord Sidney, says--"I met Fitzherbert last night, and talked to him on the subject of our late conversation. I told him that I had heard that he had asserted that you were the author of 'Junius's Letters,' for which I was very sorry, because, if it reached your ears, it would give you a great deal of concern. He assured me, that he had only said that the ministry now looked upon you as the author, but that he had constantly contradicted the report whenever it was mentioned in his company, particularly yesterday and the day before, to persons who affirmed that you were now fixed on as the writer of those papers. He declared that he was convinced in his own mind that you were not concerned in the publication, and that he had said so." This letter was written in 1771. Burke replies to it, in two days after, in a letter of thanks, unequivocally denying that he had any share in those letters. "My friends I have satisfied; my enemies shall never have any direct satisfaction from me. The ministry, I am told, are convinced of my having written Junius, on the authority of a miserable bookseller's preface, in which there are not three lines of common truth or sense. I have never once condescended to take the least notice of their invectives, or publicly to deny the fact on which some of them were grounded. At the same time to you or to any of my friends, I have been as ready as I ought to be in disclaiming, in the most precise terms, writings that are as superior, perhaps, to my talents, as they are most certainly different in many essential points from my regards and my principles." Burke seems to have been constantly bored on this subject, for he writes an angry letter to Markham, then bishop of Chester. Charles Townshend writes to