ed from society without their being missed, as
in the case of the late conspiracy. For instance, if it was now to be
enacted, as seems reasonable, that persons dying in hospitals and
almshouses, who die without their friends claiming their remains, should
be given up to the men of science, this would be subjecting poverty to
the penalty of these atrocious criminals whom law distinguishes by the
heaviest posthumous disgrace which it can inflict. Even cultivated minds
revolt from the exposure on an anatomical table, when the case is
supposed to be that of one who is dear to them. I should, I am
conscious, be willing that I myself should be dissected in public, if
doing so could produce any advantage to society, but when I think on
relations and friends being rent from the grave the case is very
different, and I would fight knee-deep to prevent or punish such an
exposure. So inconsistent we are all upon matters of this nature.

I dined quietly at home with the girls, and wrote after dinner.

_January_ 17.--Nothing in the roll; corrected proofs, and went off at 12
o'clock in the Hamilton stage to William Lockhart's at Auchinrath. My
companions, Mr. Livingstone, the clergyman of Camnethan, a Bailie
Hamilton, the king of trumps, I am told, in the Burgh of Hamilton, and a
Mr. Davie Martin _qui gaudet equis et canibus_. Got to Auchinrath by
six, and met Lord Douglas,[237] his brother, Captain Douglas, E.N., John
G-. Lockhart also, who had a large communication from Duke of W. upon
the subject of the bullion. The Duke scouts the economist's ideas about
paper credit, after the proposition that all men shall be entitled to
require gold.

_January_ 18.--We went, the two Lockharts and I, to William's new
purchase of Milton. We found on his ground a cottage, where a man called
Greenshields,[238] a sensible, powerful-minded person, had at
twenty-eight (rather too late a week)[239] taken up the art of
sculpture. He had disposed of the person of the King most admirably,
according to my poor thoughts, and had attained a wonderful expression
of ease and majesty at the same time. He was desirous of engaging on
Burns' Jolly Beggars, which I dissuaded. Caricature is not the object of
sculpture.

We went to Milton on as fine a day as could consist with snow on the
ground. The situation is eminently beautiful; a fine promontory round
which the Clyde makes a magnificent bend. We fixed on a situation where
the sitting-room should command the