tories. After the capture of
numerous fine trout, I hooked something greater and unseen, which
powerfully ran out my line. Sir Walter got into a state of great
excitement, exclaiming, 'It's a fish! It's a fish! Hold up your rod!
Give him line!' and so on. The rod, which belonged to one of his boys,
broke, and put us both into great alarm; but I contrived, by ascending
the steep bank and holding down the rod, still to give play to the reel,
till, after a good quarter of an hour's struggle, a trout, for so it
turned out to be, was conducted round a little peninsula. Sir Walter
jumped into the water, seized him, and threw him out on the grass. Tom
Purdie came up a little time after, and was certainly rather discomposed
at my success. 'It will be some sea brute,' he observed; but he became
satisfied that it was a fine river-trout, and such as, he afterwards
admitted, had not been killed in Tweed for twenty years; and when I
moved down the water, he went, as Sir Walter afterwards observed, and
gave it a kick on the head, exclaiming, 'To be ta'en by the like o' him
frae Lunnon!'"

SEPTEMBER.

_September_ 1.--Colonel Ferguson and Colonel Byers breakfasted; the
latter from India, the nephew of the old antiquarian;[32] but I had not
an opportunity to speak to him about the Eastern information required
for the _Chronicles_. Besides, my review is not finished, though I
wrought hard to-day. Sir William Hamilton and his brother, Captain
Hamilton, called; also young Davidoff. I am somewhat sorry for my young
friend. His friends permit him to remain too long in Britain to be happy
in Russia. Yet this [is a] prejudice of those who suppose that when the
institutions and habits by which they are governed come to be known to
strangers, they must become exclusively attached to them. This is not
so. The Hottentot returns from civilisation to the wild manners of his
kraal, and wherefore should not a Russian resume his despotic ideas when
returned to his country?

_September_ 2.--This was a very warm day. I remained at home, chiefly
engaged in arranging papers, as I go away to-morrow. It is lucky these
starts happen from time to time as I should otherwise never get my table
clear. At five o'clock the air became cooler, and I sat out of doors and
played with the children. Anne, who had been at Mertoun the day before,
brought up Anne and Elizabeth Scott[33] with her, and Francis has been
with us since yesterday. Richardson left us.