whose hands I have directed so many thousands, think they are right in taking every advantage and giving none, it must be my care to see that they take none but what law gives them.  If they take the sword of the law, I must lay hold of the shield.  If they are determined to consider me as an irretrievable bankrupt, they have no title to object to my settling upon the usual terms which the Statute requires.  They probably are of opinion that I will be ashamed to do this by applying publicly for a sequestration.  Now, my feelings are different.  I am ashamed to owe debts I cannot pay; but I am not ashamed of being classed with those to whose rank I belong.  The disgrace is in being an actual bankrupt, not in being made a legal one.  I had like to have been too hasty in this matter.  I must have a clear understanding that I am to be benefited or indulged in some way, if I bring in two such funds as those works in progress, worth certainly from L10,000 to L15,000.

Clerk came in last night and drank wine and water.

Slept ill, and bilious in the morning. N.B.—­I smoked a cigar, the first for this present year, yesterday evening.

February 17.—­Slept sound, for Nature repays herself for the vexation the mind sometimes gives her.  This morning put interlocutors on several Sheriff-Court processes from Selkirkshire.  Gibson came to-night to say that he had spoken at full length with Alexander Monypenny, proposed as trustee on the part of the Bank of Scotland, and found him decidedly in favour of the most moderate measures, and taking burthen on himself for the Bank of Scotland proceeding with such lenity as might enable me to have some time and opportunity to clear these affairs out.  I repose trust in Mr. M. entirely.  His father, old Colonel Monypenny, was my early friend, kind and hospitable to me when I was a mere boy.  He had much of old Withers about him, as expressed in Pope’s epitaph—­

    “O youth in arms approved! 
    O soft humanity in age beloved."[173]

His son David, and a younger brother, Frank, a soldier who perished by drowning on a boating party from Gibraltar, were my school-fellows; and with the survivor, now Lord Pitmilly,[174] I have always kept up a friendly intercourse.  Of this gentleman, on whom my fortunes are to depend, I know little.  He was Colin Mackenzie’s partner in business while my friend pursued it, and he speaks highly of him:  that’s a great deal.  He is secretary to the Pitt Club, and we have had all our lives the habit idem sentire de republica:  that’s much too.  Lastly, he is a man of perfect honour and reputation; and I have nothing to ask which such a man would not either grant or convince me was unreasonable.  I have, to be sure, some of my constitutional and hereditary obstinacy; but it is in me a dormant quality.  Convince my understanding, and I am perfectly docile; stir my passions by coldness or affronts, and the devil would not drive me from my purpose.  Let