rooms in Scotland, and will not use the study
again till the heats are past. Here is an entry as solemn as if it
respected the Vicar of Wakefield's removal from the yellow room to the
brown. But I think my labours will advance greatly in consequence of
this arrangement. Walked in the evening to the lake.

_July_ 15.--Achieved six pages to-day, and finished volume i. of
_Chronicles_. It is rather long; but I think the last story interesting,
and it should not be split up into parts. J.B. will, I fear, think it
low; and if he thinks so, others will. Yet--vamos. Drove to Huntly Burn
in the evening.

_July_ 16.--Made a good morning's work of the _Tales_. In the day-time
corrected various proofs. J.B. thinks that in the proposed introduction
I contemn too much the occupation by which I have thriven so well, and
hints that I may easily lead other people to follow my opinion in
vilipending my talents, and the use I have made of them. I cannot tell.
I do not like, on the one hand, to suppress my own opinion of the
_flocci-pauci-nihili-pilification_ with which I regard these things; but
yet, in duty to others, I cannot afford to break my own bow, or befoul
my own nest, and there may be something like affectation and _nolo
episcopari_ in seeming to underrate my own labours; so, all things
considered, I will erase the passage. Truth should not be spoke at all
times. In the evening we had a delightful drive to Ashestiel with
Colonel and Miss Ferguson.

_July 17_.--I wrote a laborious task; seven pages of _Tales_. Kept about
the doors all day. Gave Bogie L10 to buy cattle to-morrow at St.
Boswell's Fair. Here is a whimsical subject of affliction. Mr. Harper, a
settler, who went from this country to Botany Bay, thinking himself
obliged to me for a recommendation to General M'Allister and Sir Thomas
Brisbane, has thought proper to bring me home a couple of Emus. I wish
his gratitude had either taken a different turn, or remained as
quiescent as that of others whom I have obliged more materially. I at
first accepted the creatures, conceiving them, in my ignorance, to be
some sort of blue and green parrot, which, though I do not admire their
noise, might scream and yell at their pleasure if hung up in the hall
among the armour. But your emu, it seems, stands six feet high on his
stocking soles, and is little better than a kind of cassowary or
ostrich. Hang them! they might [eat] up my collection of old arms for
what I know. It remin