June 12.—­Finished volume third of Napoleon.  I resumed it on the 1st of June, the earliest period that I could bend my mind to it after my great loss.  Since that time I have lived, to be sure, the life of a hermit, except attending the Court five days in the week for about three hours on an average.  Except at that time I have been reading or writing on the subject of Boney, and have finished last night, and sent to printer this morning the last sheets of fifty-two written since 1st June.  It is an awful screed; but grief makes me a house-keeper, and to labour is my only resource.  Ballantyne thinks well of the work—­very well, but I shall [expect] inaccuracies.  An’ it were to do again, I would get some one to look it over.  But who could that some one be?  Whom is there left of human race that I could hold such close intimacy with?  No one. “Tanneguy du Chatel, ou es-tu!"[285].  Worked five pages.

June 13.—­I took a walk out last evening after tea, and called on Lord Chief-Commissioner and the Macdonald Buchanans, that kind and friendly clan.  The heat is very great, and the wrath of the bugs in proportion.  Two hours last night I was kept in an absolute fever.  I must make some arrangement for winter.  Great pity my old furniture was sold in such a hurry!  The wiser way would have been to have let the house furnished.  But it’s all one in the Greek.

“Peccavi, peccavi, dies quidem sine linea!” I walked to make calls; got cruelly hot; drank ginger-beer; wrote letters.  Then as I was going to dinner, enter a big splay-footed, trifle-headed, old pottering minister, who came to annoy me about a claim which one of his parishioners has to be Earl of Annandale, and which he conceits to be established out of the Border Minstrelsy.  He mentioned a curious thing—­that three brothers of the Johnstone family, on whose descendants the male representative of these great Border chiefs devolved, were forced to fly to the north in consequence of their feuds with the Maxwells, and agreed to change their names.  They slept on the side of the Soutra Hills, and asking a shepherd the name of the place, agreed in future to call themselves Sowtra or Sowter Johnstones.  The old pudding-headed man could not comprehend a word I either asked him or told him, and maundered till I wished him in the Annandale beef-stand.[286] Mr. Gibson came in after tea, and we talked business.  Then I was lazy and stupid, and dosed over a book instead of writing.  So on the whole, Confiteor, confiteor, culpa mea, culpa mea!

June 14.—­In the morning I began with a page and a half before breakfast.  This is always the best way.  You stand like a child going to be bathed, shivering and shaking till the first pitcherful is flung about your ears, and then are as blithe as a water-wagtail.  I am just come home from Parliament House; and now, my friend Nap., have at you with a down-right blow!  Methinks I would fain make peace with my conscience by doing six pages to-night.  Bought a little bit of Gruyere cheese, instead of our domestic choke-dog concern.  When did I ever purchase anything for my own eating?  But I will say no more of that.  And now to the bread-mill.