egad! I live _by_
it, and that is worse. _Tu ne cede malis, sed contra_, etc.

I corrected and transmitted sheets before breakfast; afterwards went and
cut wood with Tom, but returned about twelve in rather a melancholy
humour. I fear this failure may be followed by others; and then what
chance of extricating my affairs. But they that look to freits, freits
will follow them. _Hussards en avant_,--care killed a cat. I finished
three pages--that is, a full task of the _Chronicles_--after I returned.
Mr. and Mrs. Philips of Manchester came to dinner.

_August 14._--Finished my task before breakfast. A bad rainy day, for
which I should not have cared but for my guests. However, being
good-humoured persons and gifted with taste, we got on very well, by
dint of showing prints, curiosities; finally the house up stairs and
down; and at length by undertaking a pilgrimage to Melrose in the rain,
which pilgrimage we accomplished, but never entered the Abbey Church,
having just had wetting enough to induce us, when we arrived at the
gate, to "Turn again, Whittington."

_August_ 15.--Wrote in the morning. After breakfast walked with Mr.
Philips, who is about to build and plan himself, and therefore seemed to
enter _con amore_ into all I had been doing, asked questions, and seemed
really interested to learn what I thought myself not ill-qualified to
teach. The little feeling of superior information in such cases is
extremely agreeable. On the contrary, it is a great scrape to find you
have been boring some one who did not care a d---- about the matter, so
to speak; and that you might have been as well employed in buttering a
whin-stone. Mr. and Mrs. Philips left us about twelve--day bad. I wrote
nearly five pages of _Chronicles_.

_August_ 16.--A wet, disagreeable, sulky day, but such things may be
carried to account. I wrote upwards of seven pages, and placed myself
_rectus in curia_ with Madam Duty, who was beginning to lift up her
throat against me. Nothing remarkable except that Huntly Gordon left
us.

_August 17._--Wrote my task in the morning. After breakfast went out and
cut wood with Tom and John Swanston, and hewed away with my own hand;
remained on foot from eleven o'clock till past three, doing, in my
opinion, a great deal of good in plantations above the house, where the
firs had been permitted to predominate too much over the oak and
hardwood. The day was rough and stormy--not the worst for working, and I
could do