t home, however, by nine, and went to the
Parliament House, where we were detained till four o'clock. Miss ------
dined with us, a professed lion-huntress, who travels the country to
rouse the peaceful beasts out of their lair, and insists on being hand
and glove with all the leonine race. She is very plain, besides
frightfully red-haired, and out-Lydia-ing even my poor friend Lydia
White. An awful visitation! I think I see her with javelin raised and
buskined foot, a second Diana, roaming the hills of Westmoreland in
quest of the lakers. Would to God she were there or anywhere but here!
Affectation is a painful thing to witness, and this poor woman has the
bad taste to think direct flattery is the way to make her advances to
friendship and intimacy.

_July_ 2.--I believe I was cross yesterday. I am at any rate very ill
to-day with a rheumatic headache, and a still more vile hypochondriacal
affection, which fills my head with pain, my heart with sadness, and my
eyes with tears. I do not wonder at the awful feelings which visited men
less educated and less firm than I may call myself. It is a most
hang-dog cast of feeling, but it may be chased away by study or by
exercise. The last I have always found most successful, but the first is
most convenient. I wrought therefore, and endured all this forenoon,
being a Teind Wednesday. I am now in such a state that I would hardly be
surprised at the worst news which could be brought to me. And all this
without any rational cause why to-day should be sadder than yesterday.

Two things to lighten my spirits--First, Cadell comes to assure me that
the stock of 12mo novels is diminished from 3800, which was the quantity
in the publishers' hands in March 1827, to 600 or 700. This argues
gallant room for the publication of the New Series. Second, said Cadell
is setting off straight for London to set affairs a-going. If I have
success in this, it will greatly assist in extricating my affairs.

My aches of the heart terminated in a cruel aching of the
head--rheumatic, I suppose. But Sir Adam and Clerk came to dinner, and
laughed and talked the sense of pain and oppression away. We cannot at
times work ourselves into a gay humour, any more than we can tickle
ourselves into a fit of laughter; foreign agency is necessary. My
huntress of lions again dined with us. I have subscribed to her Album,
and done what was civil.

_July_ 3.--Corrected proofs in the morning, and wrote a little. I was