We had a long walk in a sweltering hot day.  Met Mr. Blackwood coming to call, and walked him on with us, so blinked his visit—­gratias, domine!!  Asked him for breakfast to-morrow to make amends.  I rather over-walked myself—­the heat considered.

July 31st_.—­I corrected six sheets and sent them off, with eight leaves of copy, so I keep forward pretty well.  Blackwood the bookseller came over from Chiefswood to breakfast, and this kept me idle till eleven o’clock.  At twelve I went out with the girls in the sociable, and called on the family at Bemerside, on Dr.[306] and Mrs. Brewster, and Mr. Bainbridge at Gattonside House.  It was five ere we got home, so there was a day dished, unless the afternoon does something for us.  I am keeping up pretty well, however, and, after all, visitors will come, and calls must be made.  I must not let Anne forego the custom of well-bred society.

FOOTNOTES: 

[292] Thomas Hamilton, Esq. (brother of Sir William Hamilton, the Metaphysician), author of Cyril Thornton, Men and Manners in America, Annals of the Peninsular Campaign, etc. Died in 1842.

[293] Bryan Waller Procter, author of Dramatic Scenes, and other Poems, 1819.  He died in London in 1874.

[294] A favourite expression of Scott’s, from Robinson Crusoe.

[295] John Hay Forbes (Lord Medwyn from 1825 to 1852), second son of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo.  Lord Medwyn died at the age of seventy-eight in 1854.

[296] The Highland Widow.

[297] A favourite exclamation of Sir Walter’s, which he had picked up on his Irish tour, signifying “don’t mind it”—­Na-bac-leis.  Compare Sir Boyle Roche’s dream that his head was cut off and placed upon a table:  “‘Quis separabit?’ says the head; ‘Naboclish,’ says I, in the same language.”

[298] That Mr. Kinloch was not singular in his opinion has been shown by the remarks made in the House of Commons (see ante, March 17).  Lord Cockburn in his Trials for Sedition says, “With Botany Bay before him, and money to make himself comfortable in Paris, George Kinloch would have been an idiot if he had stayed.”  Mr. Kinloch had just returned to Scotland.

[299] His neighbour, John Archibald Murray, then living at 122 George Street.—­See p. 133.

[300] See Moliere’s l’Ecole des Femmes.

[301] In 1827 Scott was one day heard saying, as he saw Peter guiding the plough on the haugh:—­“Egad, auld Pepe’s whistling at his darg:  if things get round with me, easy will be his cushion!” Old Peter lived until he was eighty-four.  He died at Abbotsford in 1854, where he had been well cared for, respected, and beloved by all the members of the family since Sir Walter’s death.

[302] Sheridan’s Rivals, Act II.  Sc. 1.

[303] The murder of Weare by Thurtell and Co., at Gill’s-Hill in Hertfordshire (1824).  Sir Walter collected printed trials with great assiduity, and took care always to have the contemporary ballads and prints bound up with them.  He admired particularly this verse of Mr. Hook’s broadside—­