me record, I have striven against this besetting sin.  When I was a boy, and on foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be so indifferent which way our course was directed, and I acquiesced in what any one proposed; but if I was once driven to make a choice, and felt piqued in honour to maintain my proposition, I have broken off from the whole party, rather than yield to any one.  Time has sobered this pertinacity of mind; but it still exists, and I must be on my guard against it.

It is the same with me in politics.  In general I care very little about the matter, and from year’s end to year’s end have scarce a thought connected with them, except to laugh at the fools who think to make themselves great men out of little, by swaggering in the rear of a party.  But either actually important events, or such as seemed so by their close neighbourhood to me, have always hurried me off my feet, and made me, as I have sometimes afterwards regretted, more forward and more violent than those who had a regular jog-trot way of busying themselves in public matters.  Good luck; for had I lived in troublesome times, and chanced to be on the unhappy side, I had been hanged to a certainty.  What I have always remarked has been, that many who have hallooed me on at public meetings, and so forth, have quietly left me to the odium which a man known to the public always has more than his own share of; while, on the other hand, they were easily successful in pressing before me, who never pressed forward at all, when there was any distribution of public favours or the like.  I am horribly tempted to interfere in this business of altering the system of banks in Scotland; and yet I know that if I can attract any notice, I will offend my English friends without propitiating one man in Scotland.  I will think of it till to-morrow.  It is making myself of too much importance after all.

February 18.—­I set about Malachi Malagrowther’s Letter on the late disposition to change everything in Scotland to an English model, but without resolving about the publication.  They do treat us very provokingly.

    “O Land of Cakes! said the Northern bard,
      Though all the world betrays thee,
    One faithful pen thy rights shall guard,
      One faithful harp shall praise thee."[175]

Called on the Lord Chief Commissioner, who, understanding there was a hitch in our arrangements, had kindly proposed to execute an arrangement for my relief.  I could not, I think, have thought of it at any rate.  But it is unnecessary.

February 19.—­Finished my letter (Malachi Malagrowther) this morning, and sent it to James B., who is to call with the result this forenoon.  I am not very anxious to get on with Woodstock.  I want to see what Constable’s people mean to do when they have their trustee.  For an unfinished work they must treat with the author.  It is the old story of the varnish spread over the picture, which nothing but the artist’s own hand could remove.  A finished work might be seized under some legal pretence.