March 6.—­Wrote two pages this morning before breakfast.  Went to the Court, where I learned that the “Colliers” are in alarm at the determination shown by our Committee, and are willing to give better terms.  I hope this is so—­but Cogan na Shie—­peace or war, I care not.  I never felt less anxiety about where I went and what I did.  A feather just lighted on the ground can scarce be less concerned where the next blast may carry it.  If I go, I shall see my children—­if I stay, I shall mend my fortune.  Dined at home and went to the play in the evening.  Lady Torphichen had commanded the play, and there were all my Swinton cousins young and old.  The play was “A Bold Stroke for a Wife,"[144]—­Charles Kemble acting as Feignwell.  The plot is extravagant nonsense, but with lively acting the ludicrousness of the situation bears it through, and few comedies act better.  After this came Rob Roy, where the Bailie played with his usual excellence.  The piece was not over until near one in the morning, yet I did not feel tired—­which is much.

March 7.—­To-day I wrought and corrected proof-sheets; went to the Court, and had a worry at the usual trashy small wares which are presented at the end of a Session.  An official predecessor of mine, the facetious Robert Sinclair, was wont to say the three last days of the Session should be abolished by Act of Parliament.[145] Came home late, and was a good deal broken in upon by visitors.  Amongst others, John Swinton, now of Swinton, brought me the skull of his ancestor, Sir Allan Swinton, who flourished five hundred years ago.  I will get a cast made of the stout old carle.  It is rare to see a genuine relic of the mortal frame drawing so far back.  Went to my Lord Gillies’s to dinner, and witnessed a singular exhibition of personification.

Miss Stirling Grame,[146] a lady of the Duntroon family, from which Clavers was descended, looks like thirty years old, and has a face of the Scottish cast, with a good expression in point of good sense and good humour.  Her conversation, so far as I have had the advantage of hearing it, is shrewd and sensible, but no ways brilliant.  She dined with us, went off as to the play, and returned in the character of an old Scottish lady.  Her dress and behaviour were admirable, and the conversation unique.  I was in the secret, of course, did my best to keep up the ball, but she cut me out of all feather.  The prosing account she gave of her son, the antiquary, who found an auld wig in a slate quarry, was extremely ludicrous, and she puzzled the Professor of Agriculture with a merciless account of the succession of crops in the parks around her old mansion-house.  No person to whom the secret was not intrusted had the least guess of an impostor, except one shrewd young lady present, who observed the hand narrowly and saw it was plumper than the age of the lady seemed to warrant.  This lady, and Miss Bell[147] of Coldstream, have this gift of personification to a much higher degree than any person I ever saw.