“And so ’twill be when I am gone,
    The increasing charge will still go on,
    And other bards shall climb these hills,
    And curse your charge, dear evening bills.”

Well, the skirmish has cost me L200.  I wished for information—­and I have had to pay for it.  The information is got, the money is spent, and so this is the only mode of accounting amongst friends.

I have packed my books, etc., to go by cart to Edinburgh to-morrow.  I idled away the rest of the day, happy to find myself at home, which is home, though never so homely.  And mine is not so homely neither; on the contrary, I have seen in my travels none I liked so well—­fantastic in architecture and decoration if you please—­but no real comfort sacrificed to fantasy.  “Ever gramercy my own purse,” saith the song;[418] “Ever gramercy my own house,” quoth I.

November 27.—­We set off after breakfast, but on reaching Fushie Bridge at three, found ourselves obliged to wait for horses, all being gone to the smithy to be roughshod in this snowy weather.  So we stayed dinner, and Peter, coming up with his horses, bowled us into town about eight.  Walter came and supped with us, which diverted some heavy thoughts.  It is impossible not to compare this return to Edinburgh with others in more happy times.  But we should rather recollect under what distress of mind I took up my lodgings in Mrs. Brown’s last summer, and then the balance weighs deeply on the favourable side.  This house is comfortable and convenient.[419]

[Edinburgh,] November 28.—­Went to Court and resumed old habits.  Dined with Walter and Jane at Mrs. Jobson’s.  When we returned were astonished at the news of ——­’s death, and the manner of it; a quieter, more inoffensive, mild, and staid mind I never knew.  He was free from all these sinkings of the imagination which render those who are liable to them the victims of occasional low spirits.  All belonging to this gifted, as it is called, but often unhappy, class, must have felt at times that, but for the dictates of religion, or the natural recoil of the mind from the idea of dissolution, there have been times when they would have been willing to throw away life as a child does a broken toy.  But poor ------ was none of these:  he was happy in his domestic relations; and on the very day on which the rash deed was committed was to have embarked for rejoining his wife and child, whom I so lately saw anxious to impart to him their improved prospects.

O Lord, what are we—­lords of nature?  Why, a tile drops from a housetop, which an elephant would not feel more than the fall of a sheet of pasteboard, and there lies his lordship.  Or something of inconceivably minute origin, the pressure of a bone, or the inflammation of a particle of the brain takes place, and the emblem of the Deity destroys himself or some one else.  We hold our health and our reason on terms slighter than one would desire were it in their choice to hold an Irish cabin.