“Cadell dressed among the rest,
      Wi’ gun and good claymore, man,
    On gelding grey he rode that day,
      Wi’ pistols set before, man. 
    The cause was gude, he’d spend his blude
      Before that he would yield, man,
    But the night before he left the corps,
      And never faced the field, man."[147]

Harden and Mrs. Scott called on Mamma.  I was abroad.  Henry called on me.  Wrote only two pages (of manuscript) and a half to-day.  As the boatswain said, one can’t dance always nowther, but, were we sure of the quality of the stuff, what opportunities for labour does this same system of retreat afford us!  I am convinced that in three years I could do more than in the last ten, but for the mine being, I fear, exhausted.  Give me my popularity—­an awful postulate!—­and all my present difficulties shall be a joke in five years; and it is not lost yet, at least.

February 5.—­Rose after a sound sleep, and here am I without bile or anything to perturb my inward man.  It is just about three weeks since so great a change took place in my relations in society, and already I am indifferent to it.  But I have been always told my feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, enjoyment and privation, are much colder than those of other people.

     “I think the Romans call it stoicism."[148]

Missie was in the drawing-room, and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in the back-room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself.  But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister,[149] or I for my lost fortune?  If I have a very strong passion in the world, it is pride, and that never hinged upon world’s gear, which was always with me—­Light come, light go.

February 6.—­Letters received yesterday from Lord Montagu, John Morritt, and Mrs. Hughes—­kind and dear friends all—­with solicitous inquiries.  But it is very tiresome to tell my story over again, and I really hope I have few more friends intimate enough to ask me for it.  I dread letter-writing, and envy the old hermit of Prague, who never saw pen or ink.  What then?  One must write; it is a part of the law we live on.  Talking of writing, I finished my six pages, neat and handsome, yesterday. N.B. At night I fell asleep, and the oil dropped from the lamp upon my manuscript.  Will this extreme unction make it go smoothly down with the public?

    Thus idly we “profane the sacred time”
    By silly prose, light jest, and lighter rhyme.[150]

I have a song to write, too, and I am not thinking of it.  I trust it will come upon me at once—­a sort of catch it should be.[151] I walked out, feeling a little overwrought.  Saw Constable and turned over Clarendon.  Cadell not yet out of hiding.  This is simple work.  Obliged to borrow L240, to be refunded in spring, from John Gibson, to pay my nephew’s outfit and passage to Bombay.  I wish I could have got this money otherwise, but I must not let the orphan boy, and such a clever fellow, miscarry through my fault.  His education, etc., has been at my expense ever since he came from America.