these mortuary ceremonies; but feeling I was
not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped as often as I
could.

I saw the poor child's funeral from a distance. Ah, that Distance! What
a magician for conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing all
asperities, reconciling all incongruities, veiling all absurdness,
softening every coarseness, doubling every effect by the influence of
the imagination. A Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance; the
gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the elderly group of the
spectators,--the glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is
swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch picture, when
it becomes brutal and boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard
from a distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the whine and the
scream, should be all blended in that deep and distant sound, which,
rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may have some title to be
called the praise of our Maker. Even so the distant funeral: the few
mourners on horseback, with their plaids wrapped around them--the father
heading the procession as they enter the river, and pointing out the
ford by which his darling is to be carried on the last long road--not
one of the subordinate figures in discord with the general tone of the
incident--seeming just accessories, and no more--this _is_ affecting.

_April_ 9.--I worked at correcting proofs in the morning, and, what is
harder, at correcting manuscript, which fags me excessively. I was dead
sick of it by two o'clock, the rather as my hand, O revered "Gurnal," be
it said between ourselves, gets daily worse.

Lockhart's _Review_.[242] Don't like his article on Sheridan's life.
There is no breadth in it, no general views, the whole flung away in
smart but party criticism. Now, no man can take more general and liberal
views of literature than J.G.L. But he lets himself too easily into that
advocatism of style, which is that of a pleader, not a judge or a
critic, and is particularly unsatisfactory to the reader. Lieut.-Col.
Ferguson dined here.

_April_ 10.--Sent off proofs and copy galore before breakfast, and might
be able to give idleness a day if I liked. But it is as well reading for
_Boney_ as for anything else, and I have a humour to make my amusement
useful. Then the day is changeable, with gusts of wind, and I believe a
start to the garden will be my best out-of-doors exercise. No thorough
hill-expedition in this