There is an operation called putting to rights—­Scottice, redding up—­which puts me into a fever.  I always leave any attempt at it half executed, and so am worse off than before, and have only embroiled the fray.  Then my long back aches with stooping into the low drawers of old cabinets, and my neck is strained with staring up to their attics.  Then you are sure never to get the thing you want.  I am certain they creep about and hide themselves.  Tom Moore[257] gave us the insurrection of the papers.  That was open war, but this is a system of privy plot and conspiracy, by which those you seek creep out of the way, and those you are not wanting perk themselves in your face again and again, until at last you throw them into some corner in a passion, and then they are the objects of research in their turn.  I have read in a French Eastern tale of an enchanted person called L’homme qui cherche, a sort of “Sir Guy the Seeker,” always employed in collecting the beads of a chaplet, which, by dint of gramarye, always dispersed themselves when he was about to fix the last upon the string.  It was an awful doom; transmogrification into the Laidleyworm of Spindlestaneheugh[258] would have been a blessing in comparison.  Now, the explanation of all this is, that I have been all this morning seeking a parcel of sticks of sealing wax which I brought from Edinburgh, and the “Weel Brandt and Vast houd"[259] has either melted without the agency of fire or barricaded itself within the drawers of some cabinet, which has declared itself in a state of insurrection.  A choice subject for a journal, but what better have I?

I did not quite finish my task to-day, nay, I only did one third of it.  It is so difficult to consult the maps after candles are lighted, or to read the Moniteur, that I was obliged to adjourn.  The task is three pages or leaves of my close writing per diem, which corresponds to about a sheet (16 pages) of Woodstock, and about 12 of Bonaparte, which is a more comprehensive page.  But I was not idle neither, and wrote some Balaam[260] for Lockhart’s Review.  Then I was in hand a leaf above the tale, so I am now only a leaf behind it.

April 27.—­This is one of those abominable April mornings which deserve the name of Sans Cullotides, as being cold, beggarly, coarse, savage, and intrusive.  The earth lies an inch deep with snow, to the confusion of the worshippers of Flora.  By the way, Bogie attended his professional dinner and show of flowers at Jedburgh yesterday.  Here is a beautiful sequence to their floralia.  It is this uncertainty in April, and the descent of snow and frost when one thinks themselves clear of them, and that after fine encouraging weather, that destroys our Scottish fruits and flowers.  It is as imprudent to attach yourself to flowers in Scotland as to a caged bird; the cat, sooner or later, snaps up one, and these—­Sans Cullotides—­annihilate the other.  It was but yesterday I was admiring the glorious flourish of the pears and apricots, and now hath come the killing frost.[261]