uch a misery may
flow is impossible. The poor dear love had so often a slow fever, that
when it pressed its little lips to mine, I always foreboded to my own
heart what all I fear are now aware of.

Lockhart writes me that Croker is the author of the Letters in the
_Courier_ against _Malachi_, and that Canning is to make another attack
on me in the House of Commons.[226] These things would make a man proud.
I will not answer, because I must show up Sir William Rae, and even Lord
Melville, and I have done enough to draw public attention, which is all
I want. Let them call me ungrateful, unkind, and all sorts of names, so
they keep their own fingers free of this most threatening measure. It is
very curious that each of these angry friends--Melville, Canning, and
Croker--has in former days appealed to me in confidence against each
other.

While I smoked my cigar after dinner, my mind has been running into four
threads of bitter fancies, or rather into three decidedly bitter, and
one that is indifferent. There is the distress incumbent on the country
by these most untimely proceedings, which I would stop with my life were
that adequate to prevent them. 2d, there is the unpleasant feeling of
seeing a number of valued friends pass from me; that I cannot help. 3d,
there is the gnawing misery about that sweet child and its parents. 4th,
there is the necessity of pursuing my own labours, for which perhaps I
ought to be thankful, since it always wrenches one's mind aside from
what it must dwell on with pain. It is odd that the state of excitation
with me rather increases than abates the power of labour, I must finish
_Woodstock_ well if I can: otherwise how the Philistines will rejoice!

_March_ 18.--Slept indifferently, and under the influence of Queen Mab,
seldom auspicious to me, dreamed of reading the tale of the Prince of
the Black Marble Islands to little Johnnie, extended on a paralytic
chair, and yet telling all his pretty stories about Ha-papa, as he calls
me, and Chiefswood--and waked to think I should see the little darling
no more, or see him as a thing that had better never have existed. Oh,
misery! misery! that the best I can wish for him is early death, with
all the wretchedness to his parents that is like to ensue! I intended to
have stayed at home to-day; but Tom more wisely had resolved that I
should walk, and hung about the window with his axe and my own in his
hand till I turned out with him, and helped to c