f good resolutions I trifled with my children after dinner, and
read to them in the evening, and did just nothing at all.

_August_ 3.--Wrote five pages and upwards--scarce amends for past
laziness. Huntly Gordon lent me a volume of his father's manuscript
memoirs.[18] They are not without interest, for Pryse Gordon, though a
bit of a _roue_, is a clever fellow in his way. One thing struck me,
being the story of an Irish swindler, who called himself Henry King
Edgeworth, an impudent gawsey fellow, who deserted from Gordon's
recruiting party, enlisted again, and became so great a favourite with
the Colonel of the regiment which he joined, that he was made
pay-sergeant. Here he deserted to purpose with L200 or L300, escaped to
France, got a commission in the Corps sent to invade Ireland, was taken,
recognised, and hanged. What would Mr. Theobald Wolfe Tone have said to
such an associate in his regenerating expedition? These are thy gods, O
Israel! The other was the displeasure of the present Cameron of Lochiel,
on finding that the forty Camerons, with whom he joined the Duke of
Gordon's Northern Fencible regiment, were to be dispersed. He had
wellnigh mutinied and marched back with them. This would be a good
anecdote for Garth.[19]

_August_ 4.--Spent the morning at Selkirk, examining people about an
assault. When I returned I found Charlotte Kerr here with a clever
little boy, Charles Scott, grandson of Charles of the Woll, and son of
William, and grand-nephew of John of Midgehope. He seems a smart boy,
and, considering that he is an only son with expectations, not _too_
much spoiled. General Yermoloff called with a letter from a Dr. Knox,
whom I do not know. If it be Vicesimus, we met nearly twenty-five years
ago and did not agree. But General Yermoloff's name was luckily known to
me. He is a man in the flower of life, about thirty, handsome, bold, and
enthusiastic; a great admirer of poetry, and all that. He had been in
the Moscow campaign, and those which followed, but must have been very
young. He made not the least doubt that Moscow was burned by Rostopchin,
and said that there was a general rumour before the French entered the
town, and while the inhabitants were leaving it, that persons were left
to destroy it. I asked him why the magazine of gunpowder had not been
set fire to in the first instance. He answered that he believed the
explosion of that magazine would have endangered the retreating
Russians. This see