Dined with the Lord Chief-Commissioner, and met Lord and Lady Binning, Lord and Lady Abercromby, Sir Robert O’Callaghan, etc.  These dinners put off time well enough, and I write so painfully by candle-light that they do not greatly interfere with business.

December 18.—­Poor Huntly Gordon writes me in despair about L180 of debt which he has incurred.  He wishes to publish two sermons which I wrote for him when he was taking orders; but he would get little money for them without my name, and that is at present out of the question.  People would cry out against the undesired and unwelcome zeal of him who stretched out his hands to help the ark with the best intentions, and cry sacrilege.  And yet they would do me gross injustice, for I would, if called upon, die a martyr for the Christian religion, so completely is (in my poor opinion) its divine origin proved by its beneficial effects on the state of society.  Were we but to name the abolition of slavery and of polygamy, how much has in these two words been granted to mankind by the lessons of our Saviour![94]

December 19.—­Wrought upon an introduction to the notices which have been recovered of George Bannatyne,[95] author, or rather transcriber, of the famous Repository of Scottish Poetry, generally known by the Bannatyne MS. They are very jejune these same notices—­a mere record of matters of business, putting forth and calling in of sums of money, and such like.  Yet it is a satisfaction to learn that this great benefactor to the literature of Scotland lived a prosperous life, and enjoyed the pleasures of domestic society, and, in a time peculiarly perilous, lived unmolested and died in quiet.

At eleven o’clock I had an appointment with a person unknown.  A youth had written me, demanding an audience.  I excused myself by alleging the want of leisure, and my dislike to communicate with a person perfectly unknown on unknown business.  The application was renewed, and with an ardour which left me no alternative, so I named eleven this day.  I am too much accustomed to the usual cant of the followers of the muses who endeavour by flattery to make their bad stale butter make amends for their stinking fish.  I am pretty well acquainted with that sort of thing.  I have had madmen on my hands too, and once nearly was Kotzebued by a lad of the name of Sharpe.  All this gave me some curiosity, but it was lost in attending to the task I was engaged in; when the door opened and in walked a young woman of middling rank and rather good address, but something resembling our secretary David Laing, if dressed in female habiliments.  There was the awkwardness of a moment in endeavouring to make me understand that she was the visitor to whom I had given the assignation.  Then there were a few tears and sighs.  “I fear, Madam, this relates to some tale of great distress.”  “By no means, sir;” and her countenance cleared up.  Still there was a pause; at last she