Went to the Oil Gas Committee[7] this morning, of which concern I am president, or chairman.  It has amused me much by bringing me into company with a body of active, business-loving, money-making citizens of Edinburgh, chiefly Whigs by the way, whose sentiments and proceedings amuse me.  The stock is rather low in the market, 35s. premium instead of L5.  It must rise, however, for the advantages of the light are undeniable, and folks will soon become accustomed to idle apprehensions or misapprehensions.  From L20 to L25 should light a house capitally, supposing you leave town in the vacation.  The three last quarters cost me L10, 10s., and the first, L8, was greatly overcharged.  We will see what this, the worst and darkest quarter, costs.

Dined with Sir Robert Dundas,[8] where we met Lord and Lady Melville.  My little nieces (ex officio) gave us some pretty music.  I do not know and cannot utter a note of music; and complicated harmonies seem to me a babble of confused though pleasing sounds.  Yet songs and simple melodies, especially if connected with words and ideas, have as much effect on me as on most people.  But then I hate to hear a young person sing without feeling and expression suited to the song.  I cannot bear a voice that has no more life in it than a pianoforte or a bugle-horn.  There is something about all the fine arts, of soul and spirit, which, like the vital principle in man, defies the research of the most critical anatomist.  You feel where it is not, yet you cannot describe what it is you want.  Sir Joshua, or some other great painter, was looking at a picture on which much pains had been bestowed—­“Why, yes,” he said, in a hesitating manner, “it is very clever—­very well done—­can’t find fault; but it wants something; it wants—­it wants, damn me—­it wants THAT”—­throwing his hand over his head and snapping his fingers.  Tom Moore’s is the most exquisite warbling I ever heard.  Next to him, David Macculloch[9] for Scots songs.  The last, when a boy at Dumfries, was much admired by Burns, who used to get him to try over the words which he composed to new melodies.  He is brother of Macculloch of Ardwell.

November 22.—­MOORE.  I saw Moore (for the first time, I may say) this season.  We had indeed met in public twenty years ago.  There is a manly frankness, and perfect ease and good breeding about him which is delightful.  Not the least touch of the poet or the pedant.  A little—­very little man.  Less, I think, than Lewis, and somewhat like him in person; God knows, not in conversation, for Matt, though a clever fellow, was a bore of the first description.  Moreover, he looked always like a schoolboy.  I remember a picture of him being handed about at Dalkeith House.  It was a miniature I think by Sanders,[10] who had contrived to muffle Lewis’s person in a cloak, and placed some poignard or dark lanthorn appurtenance (I think) in his hand, so as to give the picture the cast of