One of George Grenville's letters adverts to the progress of events briefly in these words:-- "The last accounts from the North say that the Highlanders have begun plundering part of the country between Edinburgh and Berwick. This manner of proceeding may be an unfortunate one with respect to those on whom it falls; but cannot be more so to them than to the party which suffers it, whose hopes, I think, it must entirely destroy, if carried to any length. It is now said that the Castle of Edinburgh is in great want of provisions; that the governor of the Castle ordered the inhabitants of the city to supply him, and threatened, in case of refusal, to burn the town, and beat it down about their ears. They obeyed for two or three days; but then the Highlanders threatened them with military execution if they continued it any longer; upon which they desisted immediately: and the magistrates have applied to the King, stating their miserable situation, and beseeching him to give orders to the governor not to execute his threats. The answer to the application I do not know; but I imagine it is a favourable one." An amusing feature of these volumes is the style in which public men, in the last age, spoke of each other. It was contemptuous in the extreme--every character was a caricature. Pitt, in a letter to George Grenville, had alluded to Sir William Yonge, a veteran placeman, as telling him of Grenville's "being very well; and I most sincerely hope he tells me truth. I could more easily pardon any of the _fictions_ in which he sometimes deals, than one on this occasion." Lord Hervey, in his _Memoirs_, thus sketches Yonge:-- "Without having done anything that I know of remarkably profligate, anything out of the common track of a ductile courtier and a parliamentary tool, his name was proverbially used to express everything pitiful, corrupt, and contemptible. It is true, he was a great _liar_, but rather a mean than a vicious one. He had been always constant to the same party, he was good-natured and good-humoured, never offensive in company, nobody's friend, nobody's enemy.... He had a great command of what is called parliamentary language, and a talent of talking eloquently without a meaning, and expatiating agreeably upon nothing, beyond any man, I believe, that ever had the gift of speech." After all, this description leaves Yonge, as regards talents, a very considerable man. His lying, however, blackens the whole character. Yet it throve with him; for he was, in succession, Commissioner of the Admiralty, and of the Treasury, Secretary-at-War, finishing all by the opulent sinecure of joint-Treasurer of Ireland.