this mistiness of mind, as a north
wind would disperse it.

"Blow, blow, thou northern wind."[248]

Nothing more than about two or three pages. I went to the Parliament
House to-day, but had little to do. I sat to Mr. Graham the last time,
Heaven be praised! If I be not known in another age, it will not be for
want of pictures. We dined with Mr. Wardlaw Ramsay and Lady Anne--a fine
family. There was little done in the way of work except correcting
proofs. The bile affects me, and makes me vilely drowsy when I should be
most awake. Met at Mr. Wardlaw's several people I did not know. Looked
over Cumnor Hall by Mr. Usher Tighe of Oxford. I see from the
inscription on Tony Foster's tomb that he was a skilful planter, amongst
other fashionable accomplishments.

FOOTNOTES:

[232] Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Bk. i.

[233] See Cases in Court of Session, vol. vii. S. p. 527.

[234] John Graham, who afterwards assumed the name of Gilbert; born
1794, died 1866.

He was at this time painting Sir Walter for the Royal Society of
Edinburgh. When the portrait was finished it was placed in the rooms of
the Society, where it still hangs. The artist retained in his own
collection a duplicate, with some slight variations, which his widow
presented to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1867.

[235] Sir Walter, in common with the majority of his contemporaries,
evidently believed that Dr. Robert Knox was partly responsible for the
West Port atrocities, but it is only just to the memory of the talented
anatomist to say that an independent and influential committee, after a
careful examination, reported on March 13th, 1829, that there was no
evidence showing that he or his assistants knew that murder had been
committed, but the committee thought that more care should have been
exercised in the reception of the bodies at the Anatomical Class-room.

Lord Cockburn, who was one of the counsel at the trial of Burke, in
writing of these events, remarks: "All our anatomists incurred a most
unjust and very alarming, though not an unnatural, odium; Dr. Knox in
particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the
condemnation of more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But,
tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the
profession, our anatomists were spotlessly correct, and Knox the most
correct of them all."

At this date Dr. Knox was the most popular teacher in the Medical School