ng a silver spoon. Item, to John Eckford.
Item, to James Loch, to get an appointment for Sandie Ballantyne's son.
Not one, as Dangle says,[280] about any business of my own. My
correspondence is on a most disinterested footing. This lasts till past
eleven, then enters my cousin R., and remains for two hours, till
politics, family news, talk of the neighbourhood are all exhausted, and
two or three reputations torn to pieces in the scouring of them. At
length I walk him out about a mile, and come back from that
_empechement_. But it is only to find Mr. [Henry] C[ranstoun],[281] my
neighbour, in the parlour with the girls, and there is another sederunt
of an hour. Well, such things must be, and our friends mean them as
civility, and we must take and give the currency of the country. But I
am _diddled_ out of a day all the same. The ladies came from Huntly
Burn, and cut off the evening.[282]

_March_ 28.--In spite of the temptation of a fine morning, I toiled
manfully at the _review_ till two o'clock, commencing at seven. I fear
it will be uninteresting, but I like the muddling work of antiquities,
and, besides, wish to record my sentiments with regard to the Gothic
question. No one that has not laboured as I have done on imaginary
topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on all-fours, and
being grave and dull. I dare say, when the clown of the pantomime
escapes from his nightly task of vivacity, it is his special comfort to
smoke a pipe and be prosy with some good-natured fellow, the dullest of
his acquaintance. I have seen such a tendency in Sir Adam Ferguson, the
gayest man I ever knew; and poor Tom Sheridan has complained to me of
the fatigue of supporting the character of an agreeable companion.

_March_ 29.--I wrote, read, and walked with the most stoical regularity.
This muddling among old books has the quality of a sedative, and saves
the tear and wear of an overwrought brain. I wandered on the hills
pleasantly enough and concluded a pleasant and laborious day.

_March_ 30.--I finished the remainder of the criticism and sent it off.
Pray Heaven it break not the mail coach down.

Lord and Lady Dalhousie, and their relation, Miss Hawthorne, came to
dinner, to meet whom we had Dr. and Mrs. Brewster. Lord Dalhousie has
more of the Caledonian _prisca fides_ than any man I know now alive. He
has served his country in all quarters of the world and in every
climate; yet, though my contemporary, looks ten years