March 14.—­J.B. called this morning to take leave, and receive directions about proofs, etc.  Talks of the uproar about Malachi; but I am tired of Malachi—­the humour is off, and I have said what I wanted to say, and put the people of Scotland on their guard, as well as Ministers, if they like to be warned.  They are gradually destroying what remains of nationality, and making the country tabula rasa for doctrines of bold innovation.  Their loosening and grinding down all those peculiarities which distinguished us as Scotsmen will throw the country into a state in which it will be universally turned to democracy, and instead of canny Saunders, they will have a very dangerous North British neighbourhood.

Some [English] lawyer expressed to Lord Elibank an opinion, that at the Union the English law should have been extended all over Scotland.  “I cannot say how that might have answered our purpose,” said Lord Patrick, who was never nonsuited for want of an answer, “but it would scarce have suited yours, since by this time the Aberdeen Advocates[220] would have possessed themselves of all the business in Westminster Hall.”

What a detestable feeling this fluttering of the heart is!  I know it is nothing organic, and that it is entirely nervous; but the sickening effects of it are dispiriting to a degree.  Is it the body brings it on the mind, or the mind that inflicts it upon the body?  I cannot tell; but it is a severe price to pay for the Fata Morgana with which Fancy sometimes amuses men of warm imaginations.  As to body and mind, I fancy I might as well inquire whether the fiddle or fiddlestick makes the tune.  In youth this complaint used to throw me into involuntary passions of causeless tears.  But I will drive it away in the country by exercise.  I wish I had been a mechanic:  a turning-lathe or a chest of tools would have been a God-send; for thought makes the access of melancholy rather worse than better.  I have it seldom, thank God, and, I believe, lightly, in comparison of others.

It was the fiddle after all was out of order, not the fiddlestick; the body, not the mind.  I walked out; met Mrs. Skene, who took a turn with me in Princes Street.  Bade Constable and Cadell farewell, and had a brisk walk home, which enables me to face the desolation here with more spirit.  News from Sophia.  She has had the luck to get an anti-druggist in a Dr. Gooch, who prescribes care for Johnnie instead of drugs, and a little home-brewed ale instead of wine; and, like a liberal physician, supplies the medicine he prescribes.  As for myself, while I have scarce stirred to take exercise for four or five days, no wonder I had the mulligrubs.  It is an awful sensation though, and would have made an enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagination on devotional subjects.  I have been always careful to place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume during my private exercises of devotion.