it, when Sir Walter, aware of my feeling his pulse, and the probable purpose, whispered, with a faint voice, but without opening his eyes, ’I am not yet gone.’  After some time he revived, and gave us a proof of the mastery of his mind over the sufferings of the body.  ‘Do you recollect,’ he said to me, ’a small round turret near the gate of the Monastery of Aberbrothwick, and placed so as to overhang the street?’ Upon answering that I did perfectly, and that a picturesque little morsel it was, he said, ’Well, I was over there when a mob had assembled, excited by some purpose, which I do not recollect, but failing of their original intention, they took umbrage at the little venerable emblem of aristocracy, which still bore its weather-stained head so conspicuously aloft, and, resolving to humble it with the dust, they got a stout hawser from a vessel in the adjoining harbour, which a sailor lad, climbing up, coiled round the body of the little turret, and the rabble seizing the rope by both ends tugged and pulled, and laboured long to strangle and overthrow the poor old turret, but in vain, for it withstood all their endeavours.  Now that is exactly the condition of my poor stomach:  there is a rope twisted round it, and the malicious devils are straining and tugging at it, and, faith, I could almost think that I sometimes hear them shouting and cheering each other to their task, and when they are at it I always have the little turret and its tormentors before my eyes.’  He complained that particular ideas fixed themselves down upon his mind, which he had not the power of shaking off; but this was, in fact, the obvious consequence of the quantity of laudanum which it was necessary for him to swallow to allay the spasms.

“After he had got some repose, and had become rather better in the morning, he said, with a smile on his countenance, ’If you will promise not to laugh at me I have a favour to ask.  Do you know I have taken a childish desire to see the place where I am to be laid when I go home, which there is some probability may not now be long delayed.  Now, as I cannot go to Dryburgh Abbey—­that is out of the question at present—­it would give me much pleasure if you would take a ride down and bring me a drawing of that spot, which he minutely described the position of, and mentioned the exact point where he wished it drawn, that the site of his future grave might appear.  His wish was accordingly complied with.”—­Reminiscences.

1828.

JANUARY.

    “As I walked by myself,
    I talked to myself,
    And thus myself said to me.”

January 1.—­Since the 20th November 1825, for two months that is, and two years, I have kept this custom of a diary.  That it has made me wiser or better I dare not say, but it shows by its progress that I am capable of keeping a resolution.  Perhaps I should not congratulate myself on this; perhaps it only serves to show I am more a man of method and less a man of originality, and have no longer that vivacity of fancy that is inconsistent with regular labour.  Still, should this be the case, I should, having lost the one, be happy to find myself still possessed of the other.