I think this journal will suit me well.  If I can coax myself into an idea that it is purely voluntary, it may go on—­Nulla dies sine linea.  But never a being, from my infancy upwards, hated task-work as I hate it; and yet I have done a great deal in my day.  It is not that I am idle in my nature neither.  But propose to me to do one thing, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else—­not that it is more easy or more pleasant, but just because it is escaping from an imposed task.  I cannot trace this love of contradiction to any distinct source, but it has haunted me all my life.  I could almost suppose it was mechanical, and that the imposition of a piece of duty-labour operated on me like the mace of a bad billiard-player, which gives an impulse to the ball indeed, but sends it off at a tangent different from the course designed by the player.  Now, if I expend such eccentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched propensity to some tolerable account.  If I had thus employed the hours and half-hours which I have whiled away in putting off something that must needs be done at last, “My Conscience!” I should have had a journal with a witness.  Sophia and Lockhart came to Edinburgh to-day and dined with us, meeting Hector Macdonald Buchanan, his lady, and Missie, James Skene and his lady, Lockhart’s friend Cay, etc.  They are lucky to be able to assemble so many real friends, whose good wishes, I am sure, will follow them in their new undertaking.

December 2.—­Rather a blank day for the Gurnal.  Correcting proofs in the morning.  Court from half-past ten till two; poor dear Colin Mackenzie, one of the wisest, kindest, and best men of his time, in the country,—­I fear with very indifferent health.  From two till three transacting business with J.B.; all seems to go smoothly.  Sophia dined with us alone, Lockhart being gone to the west to bid farewell to his father and brothers.  Evening spent in talking with Sophia on their future prospects.  God bless her, poor girl! she never gave me a moment’s reason to complain of her.  But, O my God! that poor delicate child, so clever, so animated, yet holding by this earth with so fearfully slight a tenure.  Never out of his mother’s thoughts, almost never out of his father’s arms when he has but a single moment to give to anything. Deus providebit.

December 3.—­R.P.G.[53] came to call last night to excuse himself from dining with Lockhart’s friends to-day.  I really fear he is near an actual standstill.  He has been extremely improvident.  When I first knew him he had an excellent estate, and now he is deprived, I fear, of the whole reversion of the price, and this from no vice or extreme, except a wasteful mode of buying pictures and other costly trifles at high prices, and selling them again for nothing, besides an extravagant housekeeping and profuse hospitality.  An excellent disposition, with a