Two melancholy things.  Last night I left my pallet in our family apartment, to make way for a female attendant, and removed to a dressing-room adjoining, when to return, or whether ever, God only can tell.  Also my servant cut my hair, which used to be poor Charlotte’s personal task.  I hope she will not observe it.

The funeral yesterday was very mournful; about fifty persons present, and all seemed affected.  The domestics in particular were very much so.  Sir Alexander was a kind, though an exact master.  It was melancholy to see those apartments, where I have so often seen him play the graceful and kind landlord filled with those who were to carry him to his long home.

There was very little talk of the election, at least till the funeral was over.

April 20.—­Lady Scott’s health in the same harassing state of uncertainty, yet on my side with more of hope than I had two days since.

Another death; Thomas Riddell, younger of Camiston, Sergeant-Major of the Edinburgh Troop in the sunny days of our yeomanry, and a very good fellow.

The day was so tempting that I went out with Tom Purdie to cut some trees, the rather that my task was very well advanced.  He led me into the wood, as the blind King of Bohemia was led by his four knights into the thick of the battle at Agincourt or Crecy,[252] and then, like the old King, “I struck good strokes more than one,” which is manly exercise.

April 21.—­This day I entertained more flattering hopes of Lady Scott’s health than late events permitted.  I went down to Mertoun with Colonel Ferguson, who returned to dine here, which consumed time so much that I made a short day’s work.

Had the grief to find Lady Scott had insisted on coming downstairs and was the worse of it.  Also a letter from Lockhart, giving a poor account of the infant.  God help us! earth cannot.

April 22.—­Lady Scott continues very poorly.  Better news of the child.

Wrought a good deal to-day, rather correcting sheets and acquiring information than actually composing, which is the least toilsome of the three.

J.G.L. kindly points out some solecisms in my style, as “amid” for “amidst,” “scarce” for “scarcely.”  “Whose,” he says, is the proper genitive of “which” only at such times as “which” retains its quality of impersonification.  Well!  I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me.  I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney’s case and horum harum horum.[253] I believe the Bailiff in The Good-natured Man is not far wrong when he says, “One man has one way of expressing himself, and another another, and that is all the difference between them."[254] Went to Huntly Burn to-day and looked at the Colonel’s projected approach.  I am sure if the kind heart can please himself he will please me.