March 13.—­Wrote to the end of a chapter, and knowing no more than the man in the moon what comes next, I will put down a few of Lord Elgin’s remembrances, and something may occur to me in the meanwhile.  When M[aria] Louise first saw B[onaparte], she was in the carriage with his representative general, when she saw a horseman ride forward at the gallop, passing and repassing the carriage in a manner which, joined to the behaviour of her companion, convinced her who it was, especially as he endeavoured, with a curiosity which would not have been tolerated in another, to peep into the windows.  When she alighted at the inn at——­, Napoleon presented himself, pulled her by the ear, and kissed her forehead.

Bonaparte’s happiest days passed away when he dismissed from about him such men as Talleyrand and Fouche, whose questions and objections compelled him to recur upon, modify, and render practicable the great plans which his ardent conception struck out at a heat.  When he had Murat and such persons about him, who marvelled and obeyed, his schemes, equally magnificent, were not so well matured, and ended in the projector’s ruin.

I have hinted in these notes that I am not entirely free from a sort of gloomy fits, with a fluttering of the heart and depression of spirits, just as if I knew not what was going to befall me.  I can sometimes resist this successfully, but it is better to evade than to combat it.  The hang-dog spirit may have originated in the confusion and chucking about of our old furniture, the stripping of walls of pictures, and rooms of ornaments; the leaving a house we have so long called our home is altogether melancholy enough.  I am glad Lady S. does not mind it, and yet I wonder, too.  She insists on my remaining till Wednesday, not knowing what I suffer.  Meanwhile, to make my recusant spirit do penance, I have set to work to clear away papers and pack them for my journey.  What a strange medley of thoughts such a task produces!  There lie letters which made the heart throb when received, now lifeless and uninteresting—­as are perhaps their owners.  Riddles which time has read—­schemes which he has destroyed or brought to maturity—­memorials of friendships and enmities which are now alike faded.  Thus does the ring of Saturn consume itself.  To-day annihilates yesterday, as the old tyrant swallowed his children, and the snake its tail.  But I must say to my Gurnal as poor Byron did to Moore, “Damn it, Tom, don’t be poetical.”

Memorandum.—­I received some time since from Mr. Riddoch, of Falkirk, a sort of iron mallet, said to have been found in the ruins of Grame’s Dike; there it was reclaimed about three months since by the gentleman on whose lands it was found, a Doctor—­by a very polite letter from his man of business.  Having unluckily mislaid his letter, and being totally unable either to recollect the name of the proprietor or the professional gentleman, I returned this day the piece of antiquity to Mr. Riddoch, who sent it to me.  Wrote at the same time to Tom Grahame of Airth, mentioning what I had done.  “Touch my honour, touch my life—­there is the spoon."[219]