y such quiet walks as these?"[239]

Yet misfortune comes our way too. Poor Laidlaw lost a fine prattling
child of five years old yesterday.

It is odd enough--Iden, the Kentish Esquire, has just made the
ejaculation which I adopted in the last page, when he kills Cade, and
posts away up to Court to get the price set upon his head. Here is a
letter come from Lockhart, full of Court news, and all sort of
news,--best is his wife is well, and thinks the child gains in health.

Lockhart erroneously supposes that I think of applying to Ministers
about Charles, and that notwithstanding Croker's terms of pacification I
should find _Malachi_ stick in my way. I would not make such an
application for millions; I think if I were to ask patronage it would
[not] be through them, for some time at least, and I might have better
access.[240]

_April_ 8.--We expect _a raid_ of folks to visit us this morning, whom
we must have _dined_ before our misfortunes. Save time, wine, and money,
these misfortunes--and so far are convenient things. Besides, there is a
dignity about them when they come only like the gout in its mildest
shape, to authorise diet and retirement, the night-gown and the velvet
shoe; when the one comes to chalkstones, and the other to prison,
though, there would be the devil. Or compare the effects of Sieur Gout
and absolute poverty upon the stomach--the necessity of a bottle of
laudanum in the one case, the want of a morsel of meat in the other.

Laidlaw's infant, which died on Wednesday, is buried to-day. The people
coming to visit prevent my going, and I am glad of it. I hate
funerals--always did. There is such a mixture of mummery with real
grief--the actual mourner perhaps heart-broken, and all the rest making
solemn faces, and whispering observations on the weather and public
news, and here and there a greedy fellow enjoying the cake and wine. To
me it is a farce full of most tragical mirth, and I am not sorry (like
Provost Coulter[241]) but glad that I shall not see my own. This is a
most unfilial tendency of mine, for my father absolutely loved a
funeral; and as he was a man of a fine presence, and looked the mourner
well, he was asked to every interment of distinction. He seemed to
preserve the list of a whole bead-roll of cousins, merely for the
pleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked to
superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me with
him as often as he could to