but that if I were capable, in a moment of
weakness, of doing anything short of what my honour demanded, I would
die the death of a poisoned rat in hole, out of mere sense of my own
degradation. God knows, that, though life is placid enough with me, I do
not feel anything to attach me to it so strongly as to occasion my
avoiding any risk which duty to my character may demand from me.

I set to work with the _Tales of a Grandfather_, second volume, and
finished four pages.

_September_ 18.--Wrote five pages of the _Tales_. Walked from Huntly
Burn, having gone in the carriage. Smoked my cigar with Lockhart after
dinner, and then whiled away the evening over one of Miss Austen's
novels. There is a truth of painting in her writings which always
delights me. They do not, it is true, get above the middle classes of
society, but there she is inimitable.

_September_ 19.--Wrote three pages, but dawdled a good deal; yet the
_Tales_ get on, although I feel bilious, and vapourish, I believe I must
call it. At such times my loneliness, and the increasing inability to
walk, come dark over me, but surely these mulligrubs belong to the mind
more than the body.

_September_ 22.--Captain and Colonel Ferguson, the last returned from
Ireland, dined here. Prayer of the minister of the Cumbrays, two
miserable islands in the mouth of the Clyde: "O Lord, bless and be
gracious to the Greater and the Lesser Cumbrays, and in thy mercy do not
forget the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland."

_September_ 23.--Worked in the morning; then drove over to Huntly Burn,
chiefly to get from the good-humoured Colonel the accurate spelling of
certain Hindu words which I have been using under his instructions. By
the way, the sketches he gave me of Indian manners are highly
picturesque. I have made up my Journal, which was three days in arrear.
Also I wrought a little, so that the second volume of _Grandfather's
Tales_ is nearly half finished.

_September_ 24.--Worked in the morning as usual, and sent off the
proofs and copy. Something of the black dog still hanging about me; but
I will shake him off. I generally affect good spirits in company of my
family, whether I am enjoying them or not. It is too severe to sadden
the harmless mirth of others by suffering your own causeless melancholy
to be seen; and this species of exertion is, like virtue, its own
reward; for the good spirits, which are at first simulated, become at
length real.[42]