with his
grandmother, the Duchess-Dowager's death.[79] She was a woman of
unbounded beneficence to, and even beyond, the extent of her princely
fortune. She had a masculine courage, and great firmness in enduring
affliction, which pressed on her with continued and successive blows in
her later years. She was about eighty-four, and nature was exhausted; so
life departed like the extinction of a lamp for lack of oil. Our dinner
on Monday is put off. I am not superstitious, but I wish this festival
had not been twice delayed by such sinister accidents--first, the injury
sustained by Lord Melville, and then this event spreading crape like the
shroud of Saladin over our little festival.[80] God avert bad omens!

Dined with Archie Swinton. Company--Sir Alexander and Lady Keith, Mr.
and Mrs. Anderson, Clanronald, etc. Clanronald told us, as an instance
of Highland credulity, that a set of his kinsmen, Borradale and others,
believing that the fabulous Water Cow inhabited a small lake near his
house, resolved to drag the monster into day. With this view they
bivouacked by the side of the lake, in which they placed, by way of
night-bait, two small anchors, such as belong to boats, each baited with
the carcase of a dog slain for the purpose. They expected the Water Cow
would gorge on this bait, and were prepared to drag her ashore the next
morning, when, to their confusion of face, the baits were found
untouched. It is something too late in the day for setting baits for
Water Cows.[81]

_November_ 24.--Wrote at review in the morning. I have made my
revocation of the invitation for Monday. For myself it will give me time
to work. I could not get home to-day till two o'clock, and was quite
tired and stupid. So I did little but sleep or dose till dressing-time.
Then went to Sir David Wedderburn's, where I met three beauties of my
own day, Margaret Brown, Maria Brown, and Jane Wedderburn, now Lady
Wedderburn, Lady Hampden, and Mrs. Oliphant. We met the pleasant Irish
family of Meath. The resemblance between the Earl of Meath and the Duke
of Wellington is something remarkably striking--it is not only the
profile, but the mode of bearing the person, and the person itself. Lady
Theodora Brabazon, the Earl's daughter, and a beautiful young lady, told
me that in Paris her father was often taken for Lord Wellington.

_November_ 25.--This forenoon finished the review, and despatched it to
Lockhart before dinner. Will Clerk, Tom Thomson, a