June 14.—­A delicious day—­threatening rain; but with the languid and affecting manner in which beauty demands sympathy when about to weep.  I wandered about the banks and braes all morning, and got home about three, and saw everything in tolerable order, excepting that there was a good number of branches left in the walks.  There is a great number of trees cut, and bark collected.  Colonel Ferguson dined with us, and spent the afternoon.

June 15.—­Another charming day.  Up and despatched packets for Ballantyne and Cadell; neither of them was furiously to the purpose, but I had a humour to be alert.  I walked over to Huntly Burn, and round by Chiefswood and Janeswood, where I saw Captain Hamilton.  He is busy finishing his Peninsular campaigns.[341] He will not be cut out by Napier, whose work has a strong party cast; and being, besides, purely abstract and professional, to the public seems very dull.  I read General Miller’s account of the South American War.[342] I liked it the better that Basil Hall brought the author to breakfast with me in Edinburgh.  A fine, tall, military figure, his left hand withered like the prophet’s gourd, and plenty of scars on him.  There have been rare doings in that vast continent; but the strife is too distant, the country too unknown, to have the effect upon the imagination which European wars produce.

This evening I indulged in the far niente—­a rare event with me, but which I enjoy proportionally.

June 16.—­Made up parcel for Dr. Lardner; and now I propose to set forth my memoranda of Byron for Moore’s acceptance, which ought in civility to have been done long since.[343] I will have a walk, however, in the first place.

I did not get on with Byron so far as I expected—­began it though, and that is always something.  I went to see the woods at Huntly Burn, and Mars Lea, etc.  Met Captain Hamilton, who tells me a shocking thing.  Two Messrs. Stirling of Drumpellier came here and dined one day, and seemed spirited young men.  The younger is murdered by pirates.  An Indian vessel in which he sailed was boarded by these miscreants, who behaved most brutally; and he, offering resistance I suppose, was shockingly mangled and flung into the sea.  He was afterwards taken up alive, but died soon after.  Such horrid accidents lie in wait for those whom we see “all joyous and unthinking,"[344] sweeping along the course of life; and what end may be waiting ourselves?  Who can tell?

June 17.—­Must take my leave of sweet Abbotsford, and my leisure hour, my eve of repose.  To go to town will take up the morning.

[Edinburgh.]—­We set out about eleven o’clock, got to Edinburgh about four, where I dined with Baron Clerk and a few Exchequer friends—­Lord Chief Baron, Sir Patrick Murray, Sir Henry Jardine, etc. etc.