I had also time to work hard on the additions to the Tales of a Grandfather, vols. 1 and 2.  The day passed pleasantly over.

December 30.—­The Fergusons came over, and we welcomed in the New Year with the usual forms of song and flagon.

Looking back to the conclusion of 1826, I observe that the last year ended in trouble and sickness, with pressures for the present and gloomy prospects for the future.  The sense of a great privation so lately sustained, together with the very doubtful and clouded nature of my private affairs, pressed hard upon my mind.  I am now perfectly well in constitution; and though I am still on troubled waters, yet I am rowing with the tide, and less than the continuation of my exertions of 1827 may, with God’s blessing, carry me successfully through 1828, when we may gain a more open sea, if not exactly a safe port.  Above all, my children are well.  Sophia’s situation excites some natural anxiety; but it is only the accomplishment of the burthen imposed on her sex.  Walter is happy in the view of his majority, on which matter we have favourable hopes from the Duke of Wellington.  Anne is well and happy.  Charles’s entry upon life under the highest patronage, and in a line for which I hope he is qualified, is about to take place presently.

For all these great blessings it becomes me well to be thankful to God, who in his good time and good pleasure sends us good as well as evil.

FOOTNOTES: 

[84] The Duchess of Bedford’s eldest son.

[85] My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.

[86] Sir Walter need have expressed no surprise at this architect’s desire to pull down the old house of Lauriston!  The present generation can judge of Mr. Burn’s appreciation of ancient Architecture by looking at the outside of St. Giles, Edinburgh.—­It was given over to his tender mercies in 1829, a picturesque old building, and it left his hands in 1834 a bit of solid well-jointed mason-work with all Andrew Fairservice’s “whigmaleeries, curliewurlies, and open steek hems” most thoroughly removed!—­Rob Roy, vol. viii. pp. 29-30.  Fortunately the tower and crown were untouched, and the interior, which was injured in a less degree, has, through the liberality and good taste of the late William Chambers, been restored to its original stateliness.

[87] See Ethwald, Plays on the Passions, vol. ii., Lond. 1802.

[88] Alluding to an entry in the Journal, that he had expended 30s. in the purchase of the Theatre of God’s Judgment, 1612, a book which is still in the Abbotsford Library.

[89] See note to May 30, 1827, vol. i. p. 398.

[90] Burns’s lines To a Mouse.

[91] Ante, p. 60.  The book had only been published two months.  “The Second Series,” when published in the following year, contained St. Valentine’s Eve, or the Fair Maid of Perth; the two stories objected to, viz.:  My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror and the Laird’s Jock appeared in the Keepsake of 1828, and were afterwards included in vol. xli. of the Magnum Opus.