“When midnight o’er the pathless skies."[517]

Ay, and can I forget the author!—­the frightful moral of his own vision.  What is this world?  A dream within a dream—­as we grow older each step is an awakening.  The youth awakes as he thinks from childhood—­the full-grown man despises the pursuits of youth as visionary—­the old man looks on manhood as a feverish dream.  The Grave the last sleep?—­no; it is the last and final awakening.

May 14.—­To town per Blucher coach, well stowed and crushed, but saved cash, coming off for less than L2; posting costs nearly five, and you don’t get on so fast by one-third.  Arrived in my old lodgings here with a stouter heart than I expected.  Dined with Mr. and Mrs. Skene, and met Lord Medwyn and lady.

May 15.—­Parliament House a queer sight.  Looked as if people were singing to each other the noble song of “The sky’s falling—­chickie diddle.”  Thinks I to myself, I’ll keep a calm sough.

    “Betwixt both sides I unconcerned stand by;
    Hurt, can I laugh, and honest, need I cry?”

I wish the old Government had kept together, but their personal dislike to Canning seems to have rendered that impossible.

I dined at a great dinner given by Sir George Clerk to his electors, the freeholders of Midlothian; a great attendance of Whig and Tory, huzzaing each other’s toasts. If is a good peacemaker, but quarter-day is a better.  I have a guess the best gamecocks would call a truce if a handful or two of oats were scattered among them.

May 16.—­Mr. John Gibson says the Trustees are to allow my expense in travelling—­L300, with L50 taken in in Longman’s bill.  This will place me rectus in curia, and not much more, faith!

There is a fellow bawling out a ditty in the street, the burthen of which is

    “There’s nothing but poverty everywhere.”

He shall not be a penny richer for telling me what I know but too well without him.

May 17.—­Learned with great distress the death of poor Richard Lockhart, the youngest brother of my son-in-law.  He had an exquisite talent for acquiring languages, and was under the patronage of my kinsman, George Swinton, who had taken him into his own family at Calcutta, and now he is drowned in a foolish bathing party.

May 18.—­Heard from Abbotsford; all well.  Wrought to-day but awkwardly.  Tom Campbell called, warm from his Glasgow Rectorship; he is looking very well.  He seemed surprised that I did not know anything about the contentions of Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, in the great commercial city.  I have other eggs on the spit.  He stayed but a few minutes.[518]

May 19.—­Went out to-day to Sir John Dalrymple’s,[519] at Oxenford, a pretty place; the lady a daughter of Lord Duncan.  Will Clerk and Robert Graeme went with me.  A good dinner and pleasant enough party; but ten miles going and ten miles coming make twenty, and that is something of a journey.  Got a headache too by jolting about after dinner.