course these occasions being diminished to one out of twenty to which capital punishment is now assigned.  Our ancestors brought the country to order by kilting[135] thieves and banditti with strings.  So did the French when at Naples, and bandits became for the time unheard of.  When once the evil habit is altered—­when men are taught a crime of a certain character is connected inseparably with death, the moral habits of a population become altered, and you may in the next age remit the punishment which in this it has been necessary to inflict with stern severity.  I think whoever pretends to reform a corrupted nation, or a disorderly regiment, or an ill-ordered ship of war, must begin by severity, and only resort to gentleness when he has acquired the complete mastery by terror—­the terror being always attached to the law; and, the impression once made, he can afford to govern with mildness, and lay the iron rule aside.

Mr. Mackay talked big of the excellent state of prisons in Ireland. J’en doute un peu. That the warm-hearted and generous Irish would hurry eagerly into any scheme which had benevolence for its motive, I readily believe; but that Pat should have been able to maintain that calm, all-seeing, all-enduring species of superintendence necessary to direct the working of the best plan of prison discipline, I greatly hesitate to believe.

Well, leaving all this, I wish Mr. Mackay good luck, with some little doubt of his success, but none of his intentions.  I am come in my work to that point where a lady who works a stocking must count by threads, and bring the various loose ends of my story together.  They are too many.

February 21.—­Last night after dinner I rested from my work, and read third part of [Theodore Hook’s] Sayings and Doings, which shows great knowledge of life in a certain sphere, and very considerable powers of wit, which somewhat damages the effect of the tragic parts.  But he is an able writer, and so much of his work is well said, that it will carry through what is manque.  I hope the same good fortune for other folks.

I am watching and waiting till I hit on some quaint and clever mode of extricating, but do not see a glimpse of any one.  James B., too, discourages me a good deal by his silence, waiting, I suppose, to be invited to disgorge a full allowance of his critical bile.  But he may wait long enough, for I am discouraged enough.  Now here is the advantage of Edinburgh.  In the country, if a sense of inability once seizes me, it haunts me from morning to night; but in Edinburgh the time is so occupied and frittered away by official duties and chance occupation, that you have not time to play Master Stephen and be gentlemanlike and melancholy.[136] On the other hand, you never feel in town those spirit-stirring influences—­those glances of sunshine that make amends for clouds and mist.  The country is said to be quieter life; not to me, I am sure.  In the town the business I have to do hardly costs me more thought than just occupies my mind, and I have as much of gossip and ladylike chat as consumes the time pleasantly enough.  In the country I am thrown entirely on my own resources, and there is no medium betwixt happiness and the reverse.