March 8.—­Wrote in the morning, then to Court, where we had a sederunt till nigh two o’clock.  From thence to the Coal Gas Committee, with whom we held another, and, thank God, a final meeting.  Gibson went with me.  They had Mr. Munro, Trotter, Tom Burns, and Inglis.  The scene put me in mind of Chichester Cheyne’s story of a Shawnee Indian and himself, dodging each other from behind trees, for six or seven hours, each in the hope of a successful shot.  There was bullying on both sides, but we bullied to best purpose, for we must have surrendered at discretion, notwithstanding the bold face we put on it.  On the other hand, I am convinced they have got a capital bargain.

March 9.—­I set about arranging my papers, a task which I always take up with the greatest possible ill-will and which makes me cruelly nervous.  I don’t know why it should be so, for I have nothing particularly disagreeable to look at; far from it, I am better than I was at this time last year, my hopes firmer, my health stronger, my affairs bettered and bettering.  Yet I feel an inexpressible nervousness in consequence of this employment.  The memory, though it retains all that has passed, has closed sternly over it; and this rummaging, like a bucket dropped suddenly into a well, deranges and confuses the ideas which slumbered on the mind.  I am nervous, and I am bilious, and, in a word, I am unhappy.  This is wrong, very wrong; and it is reasonably to be apprehended that something of serious misfortune will be the deserved punishment of this pusillanimous lowness of spirits.  Strange that one who, in most things, may be said to have enough of the ‘care na by’, should be subject to such vile weakness!  Well, having written myself down an ass, I will daub it no farther, but e’en trifle till the humour of work comes.

Before the humour came I had two or three long visits.  Drummond Hay, the antiquary and lyon-herald, came in.[148] I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling discussion about antiquarian old-womanries.  It is like knitting a stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it; or it is like, by Our Lady, a mill-dam, which leads one’s thoughts gently and imperceptibly out of the channel in which they are chafing and boiling.  To be sure, it is only conducting them to turn a child’s mill; what signifies that?—­the diversion is a relief, though the object is of little importance.  I cannot tell what we talked of; but I remember we concluded with a lamentation on the unlikelihood that Government would give the Museum L2000 to purchase the bronze Apollo lately discovered in France, although the God of Delos stands six feet two in his stocking-soles, and is perfectly entire, saving that on the right side he wants half a hip, and the leg from the knee, and that on the left his heel is much damaged.  Colonel Ferguson just come to town—­dines with us.