This job, however, took me up the whole morning to little purpose.  Captain and Mrs. Hall dined with us, also Sir James Stuart, Charles Sharpe, John Scott of Gala, etc.

February 10.—­I was up at seven this morning, and will continue the practice, but the shoal of proofs took up all my leisure.  I will not, I think, go after these second-rate pictures again to-day.  If I could get a quiet day or two I would make a deep dint in the third volume; but hashed and smashed as my time is, who can make anything of it?  I read over Henry’s History of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; he is but a stupid historian after all.  This took me up the whole day.

February 11.—­Up as usual and wrought at proofs.  Mr. Hay Drummond and Macintosh Mackay dined.  The last brought me his history of the Blara Leine or White Battle (battle of the shirts).  To the Court, and remained there till two, when we had some awkward business in the Council of the Royal Society.

February 12.—­W.  Lockhart came to breakfast, full of plans for his house, which will make a pretty and romantic habitation.  After breakfast the Court claimed its vassal.

As I came out Mr. Chambers introduced a pretty little romantic girl to me who possessed a laudable zeal to know a live poet.  I went with my fair admirer as far as the new rooms on the Mound, where I looked into the Royal Society’s Rooms, then into the Exhibition, in mere unwillingness to work and desire to dawdle away time.  Learned that Lord Haddington had bought the Sir Joshua.  I wrought hard to-day and made out five pages.

February 13.—­This morning Col.  Hunter Blair breakfasted here with his wife, a very pretty woman, with a good deal of pleasant conversation.  She had been in India, and had looked about her to purpose.  I wrote for several hours in the forenoon, but was nervous and drumlie; also I bothered myself about geography; in short, there was trouble, as miners say when the vein of metal is interrupted.  Went out at two, and walked, thank God, better than in the winter, which gives me hopes that the failure of the unfortunate limb is only temporary, owing to severe weather.  We dined at John Murray’s with the Mansfield family.  Lady Caroline Murray possesses, I think, the most pleasing taste for music, and is the best singer I ever heard.  No temptation to display a very brilliant voice ever leads her aside from truth and simplicity, and besides, she looks beautiful when she sings.

February 14.—­Wrote in the morning, which begins to be a regular act of duty.  It was late ere I got home, and I did not do much.  The letters I received were numerous and craved answers, yet the third volume is getting on hooly and fairly.  I am twenty leaves before the printers; but Ballantyne’s wife is ill, and it is his nature to indulge apprehensions of the worst, which incapacitates him for labour.  I cannot help regarding this amiable weakness of the mind with something too nearly allied to contempt.  I keep the press behind me at a good distance, and I, like the