eal improved. My time
glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the palsy. I should not
like to be pinned to my chair. But I believe even that kind of life is
more endurable than we could suppose. Your wishes are limited to your
little circle--yet the idea is terrible to a man who has been active. My
own circle in bodily matters is daily narrowing; not so in intellectual
matters, but I am perhaps a bad judge. The plough is coming to the end
of the furrow, so it is likely I shall not reach the common goal of
mortal life by a few years. I am now in my sixtieth year only, and

"Three score and ten years do sum up."[457]

_May_ 5.--A fleece of letters, which must be answered, I suppose--all
from persons, my zealous admirers, of course, and expecting a degree of
generosity, which will put to rights all their maladies, physical and
mental; and expecting that I can put to rights whatever losses have been
their lot, raise them to a desirable rank, and [stand] their protector
and patron. I must, they take it for granted, be astonished at having an
address from a stranger; on the contrary, I would be astonished if any
of these extravagant epistles were from any one who had the least title
to enter into correspondence with me. I have all the plague of answering
these teasing people.

Mr. Burn, the architect, came in, struck by the appearance of my house
from the road. He approved my architecture greatly. He tells me the
edifice for Jeanie Deans--that is, her prototype--is nigh finished, so I
must get the inscription ready.[458] Mr. Burn came to meet with Pringle
of Haining; but, alas! it is two nights since this poor young man,
driving in from his own lake, where he had been fishing, an ill-broken
horse ran away with him, and, at his own stable-door, overturned the
vehicle and fractured poor Pringle's skull; he died yesterday morning. A
sad business; so young a man, the proprietor of a good estate, and a
well-disposed youth. His politics were, I think, mistaken, being the
reverse of his father's; but that is nothing at such a time. Burn went
on to Richardson's place of Kirklands, where he is to meet the
proprietor, whom I too would wish to see, but I can hardly make it out.
Here is a world of arrangements. I think we will soon hit upon
something. My son Walter takes leave of me to-day to return to
Sheffield. At his entreaty I have agreed to put in a seton, which they
seem all to recommend. My own opinion is, this addition