January 1.—­A year has passed—­another has commenced.  These solemn divisions of time influence our feelings as they recur.  Yet there is nothing in it; for every day in the year closes a twelvemonth as well as the 31st December.  The latter is only the solemn pause, as when a guide, showing a wild and mountainous road, calls on a party to pause and look back at the scenes which they have just passed.  To me this new year opens sadly.  There are these troublesome pecuniary difficulties, which however, I think, this week should end.  There is the absence of all my children, Anne excepted, from our little family festival.  There is, besides, that ugly report of the 15th Hussars going to India.  Walter, I suppose, will have some step in view, and will go, and I fear Jane will not dissuade him.

A hard, frosty day—­cold, but dry and pleasant under foot.  Walked into the plantations with Anne and Anne Russell.  A thought strikes me, alluding to this period of the year.  People say that the whole human frame in all its parts and divisions is gradually in the act of decaying and renewing.  What a curious timepiece it would be that could indicate to us the moment this gradual and insensible change had so completely taken place, that no atom was left of the original person who had existed at a certain period, but there existed in his stead another person having the same limbs, thews, and sinews, the same face and lineaments, the same consciousness—­a new ship built on an old plank—­a pair of transmigrated stockings, like those of Sir John Cutler,[107] all green silk, without one thread of the original black silk left!  Singular—­to be at once another and the same.

January 2.—­Weather clearing up in Edinburgh once more, and all will, I believe, do well.  I am pressed to get on with Woodstock, and must try.  I wish I could open a good vein of interest which would breathe freely.  I must take my old way, and write myself into good-humour with my task.  It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back, and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.  All men I suppose do, less or more.  They are like the sensation of a sailor when the ship is cleared for action, and all are at their places—­gloomy enough; but the first broadside puts all to rights.  Dined at Huntly Burn with the Fergusons en masse.

January 3.—­Promises a fair day, and I think the progress of my labours will afford me a little exercise, which I greatly need to help off the calomel feeling.  Walked with Colonel Russell from eleven till two—­the first good day’s exercise I have had since coming here.  We went through all the Terrace, the Roman Planting,[108] over by the Stiel and Haxellcleuch, and so by the Rhymer’s Glen to Chiefswood,[109] which gave my heart a twinge, so disconsolate it seemed.  Yet all is for the best.  Called at Huntly Burn, and shook hands with Sir Adam and his Lady just going off.  When