airly own that I have received
many communications in this way worth all the trouble and expense that
the others cost me, so I must "lay the head of the sow to the tail of
the grice," as the proverb elegantly expresses itself.

News again of Sophia and baby. Mrs. Hughes thinks the infant a beauty.
Johnnie opines that it is not _very_ pretty, and grandpapa supposes it
to be like other new-born children, which are as like as a basket of
oranges.

_January_ 7.--Wrought at the review, and finished a good lot of it. Mr.
Stewart left us, amply provided with the history of Abbotsford and its
contents. It is a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure, and I have great
pleasure in it, for while it pleases a fantastic person in the style and
manner of its architecture and decoration, it has all the comforts of a
commodious habitation.

Besides the review, I have been for this week busily employed in
revising for the press the _Tales of a Grandfather_. Cadell rather
wished to rush it out by employing three different presses, but this _I
repressed_ (smoke the pun!). I will not have poor James Ballantyne
driven off the plank to which we are all three clinging.[110] I have
made great additions to volume first, and several of these _Tales_; and
I care not who knows it, I think well of them. Nay, I will hash history
with anybody, be he who he will.[111] I do not know but it would be wise
to let romantic composition rest, and turn my mind to the history of
England, France, and Ireland, to be _da capo rota'd,_ as well as that of
Scotland. Men would laugh at me as an author for Mr. Newbery's shop in
Paul's Churchyard. I should care little for that. _Virginibus
puerisque._ I would as soon compose histories for boys and girls, which
may be useful, as fictions for children of a larger growth, which can at
best be only idle folk's entertainment. But write what I will, or to
whom I will, I am doggedly determined to write myself out of the present
scrape by any labour that is fair and honest.

_January_ 8.--Despatched my review (in part), and in the morning walked
from Chiefswood, all about the shearing flats, and home by the new walk,
which I have called the Bride's Walk, because Jane was nearly stuck fast
in the bog there, just after her marriage, in the beginning of 1825.

My post brings serious intelligence to-day, and of a very pleasing
description. Longman and Company, with a reserve which marks all their
proceedings, suddenly inform Mr.