I have been out in a most delicious real spring day.  I returned with my nerves strung and my mind determined.  I will make this plunge, and with little doubt of coming off no loser in character.  What is given in detail may be suppressed, general views may be enlarged upon, and a bird’s-eye prospect given, not the less interesting, that we have seen its prominent points nearer and in detail.  I have been of late in a great degree free from wafered letters, sums to make up, notes of hand wanted, and all the worry of an embarrassed man’s life.  This last struggle will free me entirely, and so help me Heaven it shall be made!  I have written to Sir James, stating that I apprehend the terms to be L1000, namely, for one volume containing about one-third more than one of the volumes of Tales of my Grandfather, and agreeing to do so.  Certes, few men can win a thousand pounds so readily.

We dine with the Fergusons to-day at four.  So off we went and safely returned.

April 18.—­Corrected proofs.  I find J.B. has not returned to his business, though I wrote him how necessary it was.  My pity begins to give way to anger.  Must he sit there and squander his thoughts and senses upon cloudy metaphysics and abstruse theology till he addles his brains entirely, and ruins his business?  I have written to him again, letter third and, I am determined, last.

Wrote also to the fop Reynolds, with preface to the House of Aspen, then to honest Joseph Train desiring he would give me some notion how to serve him with Messrs. Carr, and to take care to make his ambition moderate and feasible.

My neighbour, Mr. Kerr of Kippielaw, struck with a palsy while he was looking at the hounds; his pony remained standing by his side.  A sudden call if a final one.

That strange desire to leave a prescribed task and set about something else seized me irresistibly.  I yielded to it, and sat down to try at what speed and in what manner I could execute this job of Sir James Mackintosh’s, and I wrote three leaves before rising, well enough, I think.  The girls made a round with me.  We drove to Chiefswood, and from that to Janeswood, up the Rhymer’s Glen, and so home.  This occupied from one to four.  In the evening I heard Anne read Mr. Peel’s excellent Bill on the Police of the Metropolis, which goes to disband the whole generation of Dogberry and Verges.  Wrote after tea.

April 19.—­I made this a busy day.  I wrote on at the history until two o’clock, then took a gallant walk, then began reading for Gillies’s article.  James Ferguson dined with us.  We smoked and I became woundy sleepy.  Now I have taken collar to this arrangement, I find an open sea before me which I could not have anticipated, for though I should get through well enough with my expectations during the year, yet it is a great thing to have a certainty to be clear as a new pin of every penny of debt.  There is no being obliged or asking favours