To-day I leave Mrs. Brown’s lodgings.  Altogether I cannot complain, but the insects were voracious, even until last night when the turtle-soup and champagne ought to have made me sleep like a top.  But I have done a monstrous sight of work here notwithstanding the indolence of this last week, which must and shall be amended.

    “So good-by, Mrs. Brown,
    I am going out of town,
    Over dale, over down,
    Where bugs bite not,
    Where lodgers fight not,
    Where below you chairmen drink not,
    Where beside you gutters stink not;
    But all is fresh, and clean, and gay,
    And merry lambkins sport and play,
    And they toss with rakes uncommonly short hay,
    Which looks as if it had been sown only the other day,
    And where oats are at twenty-five shillings a boll, they say,
    But all’s one for that, since I must and will away.”

July 14, ABBOTSFORD.—­Arrived here yesterday before five o’clock.  Anybody would think, from the fal-de-ral conclusion of my journal of yesterday, that I left town in a very gay humour—­cujus contrarium verum est.  But nature has given me a kind of buoyancy, I know not what to call it, that mingles even with my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours.  I have a secret pride—­I fancy it will be so most truly termed—­which impels me to mix with my distresses strange snatches of mirth “which have no mirth in them.”  In fact, the journey hither, the absence of the affectionate friend that used to be my companion on the journey, and many mingled thoughts of bitterness, have given me a fit of the bile.

July 15.—­This day I did not attempt to work, but spent my time in the morning in making the necessary catalogue and distribution of two or three chests of books which I have got home from the binder, Niece Anne acting as my Amanuensis.  In the evening we drove to Huntly Burn, and took tea there.  Returning home we escaped a considerable danger.  The iron screw bolts of the driving-seat suddenly giving way, the servants were very nearly precipitated upon the backs of the horses.  Had it been down hill instead of being on the level, the horses must have taken fright, and the consequences might have been fatal.  Indeed, they had almost taken fright as it was, had not Peter Matheson,[301] who, in Mr. Fag’s phrase, I take to be, “the discreetest of whips,"[302] kept his presence of mind, when losing his equilibrium, so that he managed to keep the horses in hand until we all got out.  I must say it is not the first imminent danger on which I have seen Peter (my Automedon for near twenty-five years) behave with the utmost firmness.