ble exploit to record, but I once drank three bottles of wine with
this same rogue--Sir William Forbes and Sir Alexander Wood being of the
party. David Erskine of Cardross keeps his looks better than most of our
contemporaries. I hope we shall meet for a longer time.

_March_ 5.--I corrected sheets, and, being a Teind Wednesday, began the
second volume and proceeded as far as page fourth.

We dined at Hector Macdonald's with several Highlanders, most of whom
were in their garb, intending to go to a great fancy ball in the
evening. There were young Cluny Macpherson, Campbell Airds, Campbell
Saddell, and others of the race of Diarmid. I went for an hour to the
ball, where there were many gay and some grotesque figures. A dressed
ball is, for the first half-hour, a splendid spectacle; you see youth
and beauty dressed in their gayest attire, unlimited, save by their own
taste, and enjoying the conscious power of charming, which gives such
life and alacrity to the features. But the charm ceases in this like
everything else. The want of masks takes away the audacity with which
the disguised parties conduct themselves at a masquerade, and [leaves]
the sullen sheepishness which makes them, I suppose, the worst maskers
in Europe. At the only real masquerade which I have known in Edinburgh
there were many, if not most, of those who had determined to sustain
characters, who had more ill-breeding than facetiousness. The jests were
chiefly calculated to give pain, and two or three quarrels were with
difficulty prevented from ripening into duels. A fancy ball has no
offence in it, therefore cannot be wrecked on this rock. But, on the
other hand, it is horribly dull work when the first _coup d'oeil_ is
over.

There were some good figures, and some grossly absurd. A very gay
cavalier with a broad bright battle-axe was pointed out to me as an
eminent distiller, and another knight in the black coarse armour of a
cuirassier of the 17th century stalked about as if he thought himself
the very mirror of chivalry. He was the son of a celebrated upholsterer,
so might claim the broad axe from more titles than one. There was some
good dancing; Cluny Macpherson footed it gallantly.

_March_ 6.--Wrote two pages this morning before breakfast. Went to the
Court, where I learned that the "Colliers" are in alarm at the
determination shown by our Committee, and are willing to give better
terms. I hope this is so--but _Cogan na Shie_--peace or war, I