and see Mark xii. 25.  Harmony is obviously chosen as the least corporeal of all gratifications of the sense, and as the type of love, unity, and a state of peace and perfect happiness.  But they have a poor idea of the Deity, and the rewards which are destined for the just made perfect, who can only adopt the literal sense of an eternal concert—­a never-ending Birthday Ode.  I rather suppose there should be understood some commission from the Highest, some duty to discharge with the applause of a satisfied conscience.  That the Deity, who himself must be supposed to feel love and affection for the beings he has called into existence, should delegate a portion of those powers, I for one cannot conceive altogether so wrong a conjecture.  We would then find reality in Milton’s sublime machinery of the guardian saints or genii of kingdoms.  Nay, we would approach to the Catholic idea of the employment of saints, though without approaching the absurdity of saint-worship, which degrades their religion.  There would be, we must suppose, in these employments difficulties to be overcome, and exertions to be made, for all which the celestial beings employed would have certain appropriate powers.  I cannot help thinking that a life of active benevolence is more consistent with my ideas than an eternity of music.  But it is all speculation, and it is impossible even to guess what we shall [do], unless we could ascertain the equally difficult previous question, what we are to be.  But there is a God, and a just God—­a judgment and a future life—­and all who own so much let them act according to the faith that is in them.  I would [not], of course, limit the range of my genii to this confined earth.  There is the universe, with all its endless extent of worlds.

Company at home—­Sir Adam Ferguson and his Lady; Colonel and Miss Russell; Count Davidoff, and Mr. Collyer.  By the by, I observe that all men whose names are obviously derived from some mechanical trade, endeavour to disguise and antiquate, as it were, their names, by spelling them after some quaint manner or other.  Thus we have Collyer, Smythe, Tailleure; as much as to say, My ancestor was indeed a mechanic, but it was a world of time ago, when the word was spelled very [differently].  Then we had young Whytbank and Will Allan the artist[67], a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man.

December 11.—­A touch of the morbus eruditorum, to which I am as little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young.  It is a tremor of the heart, the pulsation of which becomes painfully sensible—­a disposition to causeless alarm—­much lassitude—­and decay of vigour of mind and activity of intellect.  The reins feel weary and painful, and the mind is apt to receive and encourage gloomy apprehensions and causeless fears.  Fighting with this fiend is not always the best way to conquer him.  I have always found exercise and the open air better than reasoning.  But such weather as is now without