ome abridgment of vacation.

[_From July_ 8, 1828, _to January_ 10, 1829, _there are no entries in
the Journal_.]

FOOTNOTES:

[230] Burns's song.

[231] Now called Wellhouse Tower.

1829.

JANUARY.

Having omitted to carry on my Diary for two or three days, I lost heart
to make it up, and left it unfilled for many a month and day. During
this period nothing has happened worth particular notice. The same
occupations, the same amusements, the same occasional alternations of
spirits, gay or depressed, the same absence of all sensible or rational
cause for the one or the other. I half grieve to take up my pen, and
doubt if it is worth while to record such an infinite quantity of
nothing, but hang it! I hate to be beat, so here goes for better
behaviour.

_January_ 10.--I resume my task at Abbotsford. We are here alone, except
Lockhart, on a flying visit. Morritt, his niece, Sir James Stuart,
Skene, and an occasional friend or two, have been my guests since 31st
December. I cannot say I have been happy, for the feeling of increasing
weakness in my lame leg is a great affliction. I walk now with pain and
difficulty at all times, and it sinks my soul to think how soon I may be
altogether a disabled cripple. I am tedious to my friends, and I doubt
the sense of it makes me fretful.

Everything else goes off well enough. My cash affairs are clearing, and
though last year was an expensive one, I have been paying debt. Yet I
have a dull contest before me which will probably outlast my life. If
well maintained, however, it will be an honourable one, and if the
_Magnum Opus_ succeed, it will afford me some repose.

_January_ 11.--I did not write above a page yesterday; most weary,
stale, and unprofitable have been my labours. Received a letter I
suppose from Mad. T.----, proposing a string of historical subjects not
proper for my purpose. People will not consider that a thing may already
be so well told in history, that romance ought not in prudence to meddle
with it.

The ground covered with snow, which, by slipperiness and the pain
occasioned by my lameness, renders walking unpleasant.

_January_ 12.--This is the third day I have not walked out, pain and
lameness being the cause. This bodes very ill for my future life. I made
a search yesterday and to-day for letters of Lord Byron to send to Tom
Moore, but I could only find two. I had several others, and am shocked
at missing them. The one which he s