am worse off than before, and have only embroiled the
fray. Then my long back aches with stooping into the low drawers of old
cabinets, and my neck is strained with staring up to their attics. Then
you are sure never to get the thing you want. I am certain they creep
about and hide themselves. Tom Moore[257] gave us the insurrection of
the papers. That was open war, but this is a system of privy plot and
conspiracy, by which those you seek creep out of the way, and those you
are not wanting perk themselves in your face again and again, until at
last you throw them into some corner in a passion, and then they are the
objects of research in their turn. I have read in a French Eastern tale
of an enchanted person called _L'homme qui cherche_, a sort of "Sir Guy
the Seeker," always employed in collecting the beads of a chaplet,
which, by dint of gramarye, always dispersed themselves when he was
about to fix the last upon the string. It was an awful doom;
transmogrification into the Laidleyworm of Spindlestaneheugh[258] would
have been a blessing in comparison. Now, the explanation of all this is,
that I have been all this morning seeking a parcel of sticks of sealing
wax which I brought from Edinburgh, and the "_Weel Brandt and Vast
houd_"[259] has either melted without the agency of fire or barricaded
itself within the drawers of some cabinet, which has declared itself in
a state of insurrection. A choice subject for a journal, but what better
have I?

I did not quite finish my task to-day, nay, I only did one third of it.
It is so difficult to consult the maps after candles are lighted, or to
read the Moniteur, that I was obliged to adjourn. The task is three
pages or leaves of my close writing per diem, which corresponds to about
a sheet (16 pages) of _Woodstock_, and about 12 of _Bonaparte_, which is
a more comprehensive page. But I was not idle neither, and wrote some
_Balaam_[260] for Lockhart's _Review_. Then I was in hand a leaf above
the tale, so I am now only a leaf behind it.

_April_ 27.--This is one of those abominable April mornings which
deserve the name of _Sans Cullotides_, as being cold, beggarly, coarse,
savage, and intrusive. The earth lies an inch deep with snow, to the
confusion of the worshippers of Flora. By the way, Bogie attended his
professional dinner and show of flowers at Jedburgh yesterday. Here is a
beautiful sequence to their _floralia_. It is this uncertainty in April,
and the descent of s