June 25.—­Finished correcting proofs for Tales, 3d Series.  The Court was over soon, but I was much exhausted.  On the return home quite sleepy and past work.  I looked in on Cadell, whose hand is in his housewife’s cap, driving and pushing to get all the works forward in due order, and cursing the delays of artists and engravers.  I own I wish we had not hampered ourselves with such causes of delay.

June 26.—­Mr. Ellis, missionary from the South Sea Islands, breakfasted, introduced by Mr. Fletcher, minister of the parish of Stepney.

Mr. Ellis’s account of the progress of civilisation, as connected with religion, is very interesting.  Knowledge of every kind is diffused—­reading, writing, printing, abundantly common.  Polygamy abolished.  Idolatry is put down; the priests, won over by the chiefs, dividing among them the consecrated lands which belonged to their temples.  Great part of the population are still without religion, but willing to be instructed.  Wars are become infrequent; and there is in each state a sort of representative body, or senate, who are a check on the despotism of the chief.  All this has come hand in hand with religion.  Mr. Ellis tells me that the missionaries of different sects avoided carefully letting the natives know that there were points of disunion between them.  Not so some Jesuits who had lately arrived, and who taught their own ritual as the only true one.  Mr. Ellis described their poetry to me, and gave some examples; it had an Ossianic character, and was composed of metaphor.  He gave me a small collection of hymns printed in the islands.  If this gentleman is sincere, which I have no doubt of, he is an illustrious character.  He was just about to return to the Friendly Islands, having come here for his wife’s health.

[Blairadam.]—­After the Court we set off (the two Thomsons and I) for Blair-Adam, where we held our Macduff Club for the twelfth anniversary.  We met the Chief Baron, Lord Sydney Osborne, Will Clerk, the merry knight Sir Adam Ferguson, with our venerable host the Lord Chief Commissioner, and merry men were we.

June 27.—­I ought not, where merry men convene, to omit our jovial son of Neptune, Admiral Adam.  The morning proving delightful, we set out for the object of the day, which was Falkland.  We passed through Lochore, but without stopping, and saw on the road eastward, two or three places, as Balbedie, Strathendry, and some others known to me by name.  Also we went through the town of Leslie, and saw what remains of the celebrated rendezvous of rustic gallantry called Christ’s Kirk on the Green.[348] It is now cut up with houses, one of the most hideous of which is a new church, having the very worst and most offensive kind of Venetian windows.  This, I am told, has replaced a quiet lowly little Gothic building, coeval, perhaps, with the royal poet who celebrated the spot.  Next we went to Falkland, where we found Mr. Howden, factor of Mr. Tyndall Bruce, waiting to show us the palace.