ll the business in Westminster Hall."

What a detestable feeling this fluttering of the heart is! I know it is
nothing organic, and that it is entirely nervous; but the sickening
effects of it are dispiriting to a degree. Is it the body brings it on
the mind, or the mind that inflicts it upon the body? I cannot tell; but
it is a severe price to pay for the _Fata Morgana_ with which Fancy
sometimes amuses men of warm imaginations. As to body and mind, I fancy
I might as well inquire whether the fiddle or fiddlestick makes the
tune. In youth this complaint used to throw me into involuntary passions
of causeless tears. But I will drive it away in the country by exercise.
I wish I had been a mechanic: a turning-lathe or a chest of tools would
have been a God-send; for thought makes the access of melancholy rather
worse than better. I have it seldom, thank God, and, I believe, lightly,
in comparison of others.

It was the fiddle after all was out of order, not the fiddlestick; the
body, not the mind. I walked out; met Mrs. Skene, who took a turn with
me in Princes Street. Bade Constable and Cadell farewell, and had a
brisk walk home, which enables me to face the desolation here with more
spirit. News from Sophia. She has had the luck to get an anti-druggist
in a Dr. Gooch, who prescribes care for Johnnie instead of drugs, and a
little home-brewed ale instead of wine; and, like a liberal physician,
supplies the medicine he prescribes. As for myself, while I have scarce
stirred to take exercise for four or five days, no wonder I had the
mulligrubs. It is an awful sensation though, and would have made an
enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagination on devotional subjects.
I have been always careful to place my mind in the most tranquil posture
which it can assume during my private exercises of devotion.

I have amused myself occasionally very pleasantly during the last few
days, by reading over Lady Morgan's novel of _O'Donnel_,[221] which has
some striking and beautiful passages of situation and description, and
in the comic part is very rich and entertaining. I do not remember being
so much pleased with it at first. There is a want of story, always fatal
to a book the first reading--and it is well if it gets a chance of a
second. Alas! poor novel! Also read again, and for the third time at
least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of _Pride and Prejudice_.
That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements