grounds on the brow of the hill are elegantly disposed; and the place must have proved a charming retreat to a man of Pitt's tasteful appreciation of the beauties of natural scenery heightened by art; to which the battle-field of Sedgmoor, the scene of Monmouth's defeat, adds the interest of historical association. Chatham was fond of this retreat, and in his letters calls himself the Somersetshire Hermit. His Countess, in her reply to one of his letters from Bath, gives this interesting picture of the family group at Burton-Pynsent: "Nine o'clock come, the duties of our Sunday evening done, and the little ones retired to bed, I musing by the fire, in comes my dearest love's letter. What a charm did it immediately spread over my whole mind, and with what delight and gratitude to the Almighty did I read that my prayers had been answered! The honour paid to the dear Hermit are natural. Superstition leads a few, and true devotion the other part." Mr. Pitt was at Burton-Pynsent when, in 1766, the King's mandate reached him, summoning him to return to office. Only a few days before he had written to a personal friend: "France is still the object of my mind whenever thought calls me back to a public world, infatuated, bewitched; in a word, a riddle too hard for Edipus to solve. . . Farming, grazing, haymaking, and all the Lethe of Somersetshire, cannot obliterate the memory of days of activity." On receiving the King's and the Chancellor's letters, Pitt wrote suitable replies to both, wishing, in pompous phrase, that he could "change infirmity into wings of expedition," and promising to set off, as he did, without delay, to London. The journey, in those days, a long and weary one, was rapidly travelled by Pitt, though "the flying machine," as it was termed, did not finish its journey in less than four days. The editor of the Chatham Papers adds, with exultation, "Now (in 1838) the journey is accomplished in 15 hours!" Eight years afterwards it was accomplished in less than four hours! To Dr. Addington Lord Chatham writes thus from BurtonPynsent, in 1771, giving some account of his favourite son, William : "All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of the kind attention of the Good Shepherd. Our dear William has held out well, on the whole. Pitt lives much abroad, and grows strong: the hounds and the gun are great delights, without prejudice to literary pursuits. I sometimes follow him after a hare, longo sed proximus intervallo. My last fit of the gout left me as it visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the field, and as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like one. Your obliging inquiries justify all details about health and regimen. Ale, then, goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly; my reverence for it, too, is increased, having just read, in the manners of our remotest Celtic ancestors, much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all long for ale, seeing papa drink it; but we do not try such experiments. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch myself in all I do, for fear of misleading: if your friend William saw me smoke he would certainly call for a pipe." LORD CHATHAM'S INVITATION TO GARRICK. In the year 1772, Garrick, while on a visit at Mount Edgcumbe, received from Lord Chatham the following invitation in verse: "Leave, Garrick, the rich landscape, proudly gay, Herds, flocks, and smiling Ceres deck our plain, Of sportive children frolic o'er the green; Meantime, pure love looks on, and consecrates the scene. Great Nature's proxy, glass of ev'ry age! Come, taste the simple life of Patriarchs old, Who, rich in rural peace, ne'er thought of pomp or gold." To which Mr. Garrick returned the following answer: "When Peleus' son, untaught to yield, His breast still warm with heav'nly fire, "So Chatham, whose exalted soul, "Nor slow he moves with solemn air, While the wing'd hours obedient stand, "Cheerful he came, all blithe and gay, Lord Chatham acknowledges the receipt of Garrick's verses thus felicitously: "Nothing but my hand is guilty in leaving your very obliging letter so long unacknowledged. I now make the earliest use of its returning strength, to express how much I feel your flattering sensibility, upon a small tribute to Genius and universal Talents. As our age owes more to them, for improvement as well as delight, than it is able to pay, I might have it upon my conscience, were I not to bring my unit of praise towards discharging this favourite branch of the National Debt; which, however, like the other, must, I foresee, remain to late posterity. "Need I say what charms the verses from Mount Edgcumb have for all here; or that the sentiment which dictated them makes me justly vain ? You have kindly settled upon me a lasting species of property I never dreamed of, in that enchanting place: a far more able conveyance than any in Chancery-lane; for, instead of laboriously perplexing rights, you, by a few happy lines, at once both create the title and fix the possession." Lord Lyttelton, in reply to the letter of Lord Chatham, accompanying these lines, says: "I am charmed with your verses, which I have sent to Garrick; who will answer them for himself. I will only say about them, that it would have been thought unconscionable in Cicero, if he had made verses as well as Catullus or Horace. It is usurpation in you to go out of your province, and because you do not rule the State, assume a dominion over Mount Parnassus! However, I forgive you, though I think you are partly a trespasser on my ground; and Garrick will forgive you for encroaching upon his, in consideration of your being out of business at present, and as we know it is your destiny always to excel in some way or other." 66 Almost every writer of eminence who has applied himself to the investigation of the authorship of the "Letters of Junius," has fixed on Sir Philip Francis as the writer. Since the publication of the Chatham Correspondence and the Grenville Letters, it appears that Junius addressed private notes both to Mr. George Grenville and the Earl of Chatham. They are not of great importance further than evincing the desire of the writer to obtain the notice of these statesmen, or to apprise them that he was in a position to assist them with his pen, or means of information. With his second letter to Lord Chatham he also sent proof sheets of those addressed to Lord Chief Justice Mansfield and Lord Camden, and which appeared in the Public Advertiser, Jan. 21, 1772: they were the last efforts of Junius in that channel of publicity. Whether Junius was at this time personally known to the Earl of Chatham, or became so subsequently, is uncertain; but that Chatham did become acquainted with him, and aided him with materials for some of his philippics against his opponents, Mr. John Wade (one of the editors of the Letters of Junius) has the written testimony of Lady Francis for affirming. The other parties who became privy to the secret, appear to have been the King and his minister Lord North, from whom Francis received his valuable appointment in the East Indies.-See England's Greatness, by John Wade, 1856. "Chatham" (says Walpole) "was little scrupulous about means to attain his political ends, and Junius, as I have heard from later disclosures, was not his only auxiliary." Mr. Calcraft was his confidential political agent; and after his death, in 1787, Sir Philip Francis got back "the Calcraft papers" and destroyed them, thus doubtless closing one im |