urs tied
to their sides, so as to prick them into a constant gallop. Cadell tells
me their gross profit was sometimes L10,000 a year, but much swallowed
up with expenses, and his partner's draughts, which came to L4000
yearly. What there is to show for this, God knows. Constable's apparent
expenses were very much within bounds.

Colin Mackenzie entered, and with his usual kindness engages to use his
influence to recommend some moderate proceeding to Constable's
creditors, such as may permit him to go on and turn that species of
property to account, which no man alive can manage so well as he.

Followed Mr. Gibson with a most melancholy tale. Things are so much
worse with Constable than I apprehended that I shall neither save
Abbotsford nor anything else. Naked we entered the world, and naked we
leave it--blessed be the name of the Lord!

_January_ 22.--I feel neither dishonoured nor broken down by the
bad--now really bad news I have received. I have walked my last on the
domains I have planted--sate the last time in the halls I have built.
But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.
My poor people whom I loved so well! There is just another die to turn
up against me in this run of ill-luck; _i.e._ if I should break my magic
wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my
fortune. Then _Woodstock_ and _Bony_ may both go to the paper-maker, and
I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee, and
intoxicate the brain another way. In prospect of absolute ruin, I wonder
if they would let me leave the Court of Session. I would like, methinks,
to go abroad,

"And lay my bones far from the _Tweed_."

But I find my eyes moistening, and that will not do. I will not yield
without a fight for it. It is odd, when I set myself to work _doggedly_,
as Dr. Johnson would say, I am exactly the same man that I ever was,
neither low-spirited nor _distrait_. In prosperous times I have
sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to
me at least a tonic and bracer; the fountain is awakened from its inmost
recesses, as if the spirit of affliction had troubled it in his passage.

Poor Mr. Pole the harper sent to offer me L500 or L600, probably his
all.[131] There is much good in the world, after all. But I will
involve no friend, either rich or poor. My own right hand shall do
it--else will I be _done_ in the slang language, and _undone_ in common