[47] This probably refers to Archibald, Lord Douglas, who had married the Lady Frances Scott, sister of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch.  Lord Douglas died on the 26th December 1827.  For notices of these valued friends see Life, vol. ii. pp. 27-8; iv. pp. 22, 70; and v. p. 230.

[48] Robert Macqueen—­Lord Braxfield—­Justice Clerk from 1788; he died in 1799.

[49] Mrs. Grant of Laggan, author of Letters from the Mountains, Superstitions of the Highlanders, etc.  Died at Edin. in 1838, aged 83.

[50] Scott had not the smallest hesitation in applying this unsavoury proverb to himself a few months later, when he unwillingly “impeticosed the gratillity” for the critique on Galt’s Omen.  See this Journal, June 24, 1826.

[51] Afterwards Major-General Sir James Russell, G.C.B.  He died at Ashestiel in 1859 in his 78th year.

DECEMBER.

December 1st.—­Colonel R[ussell] told me that the European Government had discovered an ingenious mode of diminishing the number of burnings of widows.  It seems the Shaster positively enjoins that the pile shall be so constructed that, if the victim should repent even at the moment when it is set on fire, she may still have the means of saving herself.  The Brahmins soon found it was necessary to assist the resolution of the sufferers, by means of a little pit into which they contrive to let the poor widow sink, so as to prevent her reaping any benefit from a late repentance.  But the Government has brought them back to the regard of their law, and only permit the burning to go on when the pile is constructed with full opportunity of a locus penitentiae.  Yet the widow is so degraded if she dare to survive, that the number of burnings is still great.  The quantity of female children destroyed by the Rajput tribes Colonel R. describes as very great indeed.  They are strangled by the mother.  The principle is the aristocratic pride of these high castes, who breed up no more daughters than they can reasonably hope to find matches for in their own tribe.  Singular how artificial systems of feeling can be made to overcome that love of offspring which seems instinctive in the females, not of the human race only, but of the lower animals.  This is the reverse of our system of increasing game by shooting the old cock-birds.  It is a system would aid Malthus rarely.

Nota bene, the day before yesterday I signed the bond for L5000, with Constable, for relief of Robinson’s house.[52] I am to be secured by good bills.