June 26.—­Miss Kemble and her father breakfasted here, with Sir Adam and Lady Ferguson.  I like the young lady very much, respecting both her talents and the use she has made of them.  She seems merry, unaffected, and good-humoured.  She said she did not like the apathy of the Scottish audiences, who are certain not to give applause upon credit.  I went to the Court, but soon returned; a bad cold in my head makes me cough and sneeze like the Dragon of Wantley.  The Advocates’ Bill[383] is read a third time.  I hardly know whether to wish it passed or no, and am therefore in utrumque paratus.

June 27.—­In the morning worked as usual at proofs and copy of my infernal Demonology—­a task to which my poverty and not my will consents.  About twelve o’clock I went to the country to take a day’s relaxation.  We (i.e.  Mr. Cadell, James Ballantyne, and I) went to Prestonpans, and, getting there about one, surveyed the little village, where my aunt and I were lodgers for the sake of sea-bathing in 1778, I believe.  I knew the house of Mr. Warroch, where we lived,—­a poor cottage, of which the owners and their family are extinct.  I recollected my juvenile ideas of dignity attendant on the large gate, a black arch which lets out upon the sea.  I saw the church where I yawned under the inflictions of a Dr. M’Cormick, a name in which dulness seems to have been hereditary.  I saw the Links where I arranged my shells upon the turf, and swam my little skiffs in the pools.  Many comparisons between the man, and the recollections of my kind aunt, of old George Constable, who, I think, dangled after her; of Dalgetty, a veteran half-pay lieutenant, who swaggered his solitary walk on the parade, as he called a little open space before the same pool.  We went to Preston, and took refuge from a thunder-plump in the old tower.  I remembered the little garden where I was crammed with gooseberries, and the fear I had of Blind Harry’s spectre of Fawdon showing his headless trunk at one of the windows.  I remembered also a very good-natured pretty girl (my Mary Duff), whom I laughed and romped with and loved as children love.  She was a Miss Dalrymple, daughter of Lord Westhall,[384] a Lord of Session; was afterwards married to Anderson of Winterfield, and her daughter is now [the spouse] of my colleague Robert Hamilton.  So strangely are our cards shuffled.  I was a mere child, and could feel none of the passion which Byron alleges, yet the recollection of this good-humoured companion of my childhood is like that of a morning dream, nor should I now greatly like to dispel it by seeing the original, who must now be sufficiently time-honoured.