ing themselves
in public matters. Good luck; for had I lived in troublesome times, and
chanced to be on the unhappy side, I had been hanged to a certainty.
What I have always remarked has been, that many who have hallooed me on
at public meetings, and so forth, have quietly left me to the odium
which a man known to the public always has more than his own share of;
while, on the other hand, they were easily successful in pressing before
me, who never pressed forward at all, when there was any distribution of
public favours or the like. I am horribly tempted to interfere in this
business of altering the system of banks in Scotland; and yet I know
that if I can attract any notice, I will offend my English friends
without propitiating one man in Scotland. I will think of it till
to-morrow. It is making myself of too much importance after all.

_February_ 18.--I set about Malachi Malagrowther's Letter on the late
disposition to change everything in Scotland to an English model, but
without resolving about the publication. They do treat us very
provokingly.

"O Land of Cakes! said the Northern bard,
Though all the world betrays thee,
One faithful pen thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee."[175]

Called on the Lord Chief Commissioner, who, understanding there was a
hitch in our arrangements, had kindly proposed to execute an arrangement
for my relief. I could not, I think, have thought of it at any rate. But
it is unnecessary.

_February_ 19.--Finished my letter (Malachi Malagrowther) this morning,
and sent it to James B., who is to call with the result this forenoon. I
am not very anxious to get on with _Woodstock_. I want to see what
Constable's people mean to do when they have their trustee. For an
unfinished work they must treat with the author. It is the old story of
the varnish spread over the picture, which nothing but the artist's own
hand could remove. A finished work might be seized under some legal
pretence.

Being troubled with thick-coming fancies, and a slight palpitation of
the heart, I have been reading the Chronicle of the Good Knight Messire
Jacques de Lalain--curious, but dull, from the constant repetition of
the same species of combats in the same style and phrase. It is like
washing bushels of sand for a grain of gold. It passes the time,
however, especially in that listless mood when your mind is half on your
book, half on something else. You catch somethin