think it is much mended. But this is an opinion which I keep
to myself when I am among younger folk, for I recollect, in my youth,
quizzing the Sexagenarians who carried back their ideas of a perfect
state of society to the days of laced coats and triple ruffles, and
some of them to the blood and blows of the Forty-five. Therefore I am
cautious in exercising the right of censorship, which is supposed to
be acquired by men arrived at, or approaching, the mysterious period
of life, when the numbers of seven and nine multiplied into each other,
form what sages have termed the Grand Climacteric.

Of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary to say, that I swept
the boards of the Parliament-House with the skirts of my gown for the
usual number of years during which young Lairds were in my time expected
to keep term--got no fees--laughed, and made others laugh--drank claret
at Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's--and ate oysters in the Covenant
Close.

Becoming my own master, I flung my gown at the bar-keeper, and commenced
gay man on my own account. In Edinburgh, I ran into all the expensive
society which the place then afforded. When I went to my house in the
shire of Lanark, I emulated to the utmost the expenses of men of large
fortune, and had my hunters, my first-rate pointers, my game-cocks, and
feeders. I can more easily forgive myself for these follies, than for
others of a still more blamable kind, so indifferently cloaked over,
that my poor mother thought herself obliged to leave my habitation,
and betake herself to a small inconvenient jointure-house, which she
occupied till her death. I think, however, I was not exclusively to
blame in this separation, and I believe my mother afterwards condemned
herself for being too hasty. Thank God, the adversity which destroyed
the means of continuing my dissipation, restored me to the affections of
my surviving parent.

My course of life could not last. I ran too fast to run long; and when
I would have checked my career, I was perhaps too near the brink of the
precipice. Some mishaps I prepared by my own folly, others came upon
me unawares. I put my estate out to nurse to a fat man of business,
who smothered the babe he should have brought back to me in health and
strength, and, in dispute with this honest gentleman, I found, like a
skilful general, that my position would be most judiciously assumed by
taking it up near the Abbey of Holyrood. [See Note 1.--Holyrood.] I