widow, especially if she hath a charge of children, and
one or two fit for patronage, is one of the most impudent animals
living.

Went to Galashiels and settled the dispute about Sandie's wall.

_March_ 28.--We have now been in solitude for some time--myself nearly
totally so, excepting at meals, or on a call as yesterday from Henry and
William Scott of Harden. One is tempted to ask himself, knocking at the
door of his own heart, Do you love this extreme loneliness? I can answer
conscientiously, _I do_. The love of solitude was with me a passion of
early youth; when in my teens, I used to fly from company to indulge in
visions and airy castles of my own, the disposal of ideal wealth, and
the exercise of imaginary power. This feeling prevailed even till I was
eighteen, when love and ambition awakening with other passions threw me
more into society, from which I have, however, at times withdrawn
myself, and have been always even glad to do so. I have risen from a
feast satiated; and unless it be one or two persons of very strong
intellect, or whose spirits and good-humour amuse me, I wish neither to
see the high, the low, nor the middling class of society. This is a
feeling without the least tinge of misanthropy, which I always consider
as a kind of blasphemy of a shocking description. If God bears with the
very worst of us, we may surely endure each other. If thrown into
society, I always have, and always will endeavour to bring pleasure with
me, at least to show willingness to please. But for all this "I had
rather live alone," and I wish my appointment, so convenient otherwise,
did not require my going to Edinburgh. But this must be, and in my
little lodging I will be lonely enough.

Had a very kind letter from Croker disowning the least idea of personal
attack in his answer to _Malachi_.

Reading at intervals a novel called _Granby_; one of that very difficult
class which aspires to describe the actual current of society, whose
colours are so evanescent that it is difficult to fix them on the
canvas. It is well written, but over-laboured--too much attempt to put
the reader exactly up to the thoughts and sentiments of the parties. The
women do this better: Edgeworth, Ferrier, Austen have all had their
portraits of real society, far superior to anything man, vain man, has
produced of the like nature.[233]

_March_ 29.--Worked in the morning. Had two visits from Colonels Russell
and Ferguson. Walked from one till h