ite
serious in his views of helping Lockhart. I hope it will come to
something.

_April_ 20.--A surly sort of day. I walked for two hours, however, and
then returned chiefly to _Nap_. Egad! I believe it has an end at last,
this blasted work. I have the fellow at Plymouth, or near about it.
Well, I declare, I thought the end of these beastly big eight volumes
was like the end of the world, which is always talked of and never
comes.

_April_. 21.--Here is a vile day--downright rain, which disconcerts an
inroad of bairns from Gattonside, and, of course, annihilates a part of
the stock of human happiness. But what says the proverb of your true
rainy day--

"'Tis good for book, 'tis good for work,
For cup and can, or knife and fork."

_April_ 22.--Wrote till twelve o'clock, then sallied forth, and walked
to Huntly Burn with Tom; and so, look you, sir, I drove home in the
carriage. Wrought in the afternoon, and tried to read _De Vere_, a
sensible but heavy book, written by an able hand--but a great bore for
all that.[506] Wrote in the evening.

_April 23._--Snowy morning. White as my shirt. The little Bainbridges
came over; invited to see the armoury, etc., which I stood showman to.
It is odd how much less cubbish the English boys are than the Scotch.
Well-mannered and sensible are the southern boys. I suppose the sun
brings them forward. Here comes six o'clock at night, and it is snowing
as if it had not snowed these forty years before. Well, I'll work away a
couple of chapters--three at most will finish _Napoleon_.

_April 24._--Still deep snow--a foot thick in the courtyard, I dare say.
Severe welcome to the poor lambs now coming into the world. But what
signifies whether they die just now, or a little while after to be
united with salad at luncheon-time? It signifies a good deal too. There
is a period, though a short one, when they dance among the gowans, and
seem happy. As for your aged sheep or wether, the sooner they pass to
the Norman side of the vocabulary the better. They are like some old
dowager ladies and gentlemen of my acquaintance,--no one cares about
them till they come to be _cut up_, and then we see how the tallow lies
on the kidneys and the chine.

_April 25._--Snow yet, and it prevents my walking, and I grow bilious. I
wrote hard though. I have now got _Boney_ pegg'd up in the knotty
entrails of Saint Helena, and may make a short pause.

So I finished the review of John Home's works, wh