er
to its fate.

She came home to me, however, about an hour and a half after we were
home, to my great delectation. Our visitors dined with us.

_July_ 21.--This morning wrote five pages of children's history. Went to
Minto, where we met, besides Lord M. and his delightful countess, Thomas
Thomson, Kennedy of Dunure[12], Lord Carnarvon, and his younger son and
daughter-in-law; the dowager Lady Minto also, whom I always delight to
see, she is so full of spirit and intelligence. We rubbed up some
recollections of twenty years ago, when I was more intimate with the
family till Whig and Tory separated us for a time. By the way, nobody
talks Whig or Tory just now, and the fighting men on each side go about
muzzled and mute like dogs after a proclamation about canine madness. Am
I sorry for this truce or not? Half and half. It is all we have left to
stir the blood, this little political brawling; but better too little of
it than too much.

_July_ 22, [_Abbotsford_].--Rose a little later than usual, and wrote a
letter to Mrs. Joanna Baillie. She is writing a tragedy[13] on
witchcraft. I shall be curious to see it. Will it be real
witchcraft--the _ipsissimus diabolus_--or an impostor, or the
half-crazed being who believes herself an ally of condemned spirits, and
desires to be so? That last is a sublime subject. We set out after
breakfast, and reached this about two. I walked from two till four;
chatted a long time with Charles after dinner, and thus went my day
_sine linea_. But we will make it up. James Ballantyne dislikes my
"Drovers." But it shall stand. I must have my own way sometimes.

I received news of two deaths at once: Lady Die Scott, my very old
friend, and Archibald Constable, the bookseller.

_July_ 23.--Yes! they are both for very different reasons subjects of
reflection. Lady Diana Scott, widow of Walter Scott of Harden, was the
last person whom I recollect so much older than myself, that she kept
always at the same distance in point of years, so that she scarce seemed
older to me (relatively) two years ago, when in her ninety-second year,
than fifty years before. She was the daughter (alone remaining) of
Pope's Earl of Marchmont, and, like her father, had an acute mind and an
eager temper. She was always kind to me, remarkably so indeed when I was
a boy.

Constable's death might have been a most important thing to me if it had
happened some years ago, and I should then have lamented it much. He has
li