"But, mortifying as it may be to the disputants on the subject, the discovery is now beyond rational hope; for Junius intimates his having been a spectator of parliamentary proceedings even further back than the year 1743; which, supposing him to have been twenty years old at the time, would give more than a century for his experience. In the long interval since 1772, when the letters ceased: not the slightest clue has been discovered; though doubtless the keenest inquiry was set on foot by the parties assailed. Sir William Draper died with but one wish, though a sufficiently uncharitable one, that he could have found out his castigator, before he took leave of the world. Lord North often avowed his total ignorance of the writer. The king's reported observation to Gen. Desaguiliers, in 1772, 'We know who Junius is, and he will write no more,' is unsubstantiated; and if ever made, was probably prefaced with a supposition; for no publicity ever followed; and what neither the minister of the day, nor his successors ever knew, could scarcely have come to the king's knowledge but by inspiration, nor remained locked up there but by a reserve not far short of a political error. "But the question is not worth the trouble of discovery; for, since the personal resentment is past, its interest can arise only from pulling the mask off the visage of some individual of political eminence, and giving us the amusing contrast of his real and his assumed physiognomy; or from unearthing some great unknown genius. But the leaders have been already excluded; and the composition of the letters demanded no extraordinary powers. Their secret information has been vaunted; but Junius gives us no more than what would now be called the 'chat of the clubs;' the currency of conversation, which any man mixing in general life might collect in his half-hour's walk down St. James's Street: he gives us no insight into the _purposes_ of government; of the _counsels_ of the _cabinet_ he knows nothing. The style was undeniably excellent for the purpose, and its writer must have been a man of ability. If it had been original, he might have been a man of genius; but it was notoriously formed on Col. Titus's letter, which from its strong peculiarities, is of easy imitation. The crime and the blunder together of Junius was, that he attacked the king, a man so publicly honest and so personally virtuous, that his assailant inevitably pronounced himself a libeller. But if he had restricted his lash to the contending politicians of the day, justice would have rejoiced in his vigorous severity. Who could have regretted the keenest application of the scourge to the Duke of Grafton, the most incapable of ministers, and the most openly and offensively profligate of