alarm; but I contrived, by ascending the steep bank and holding down the rod, still to give play to the reel, till, after a good quarter of an hour’s struggle, a trout, for so it turned out to be, was conducted round a little peninsula.  Sir Walter jumped into the water, seized him, and threw him out on the grass.  Tom Purdie came up a little time after, and was certainly rather discomposed at my success.  ‘It will be some sea brute,’ he observed; but he became satisfied that it was a fine river-trout, and such as, he afterwards admitted, had not been killed in Tweed for twenty years; and when I moved down the water, he went, as Sir Walter afterwards observed, and gave it a kick on the head, exclaiming, ‘To be ta’en by the like o’ him frae Lunnon!’”

SEPTEMBER.

September 1.—­Colonel Ferguson and Colonel Byers breakfasted; the latter from India, the nephew of the old antiquarian;[32] but I had not an opportunity to speak to him about the Eastern information required for the Chronicles.  Besides, my review is not finished, though I wrought hard to-day.  Sir William Hamilton and his brother, Captain Hamilton, called; also young Davidoff.  I am somewhat sorry for my young friend.  His friends permit him to remain too long in Britain to be happy in Russia.  Yet this [is a] prejudice of those who suppose that when the institutions and habits by which they are governed come to be known to strangers, they must become exclusively attached to them.  This is not so.  The Hottentot returns from civilisation to the wild manners of his kraal, and wherefore should not a Russian resume his despotic ideas when returned to his country?

September 2.—­This was a very warm day.  I remained at home, chiefly engaged in arranging papers, as I go away to-morrow.  It is lucky these starts happen from time to time as I should otherwise never get my table clear.  At five o’clock the air became cooler, and I sat out of doors and played with the children.  Anne, who had been at Mertoun the day before, brought up Anne and Elizabeth Scott[33] with her, and Francis has been with us since yesterday.  Richardson left us.

September 3.—­Went on with my arranging of papers till twelve, when I took chaise and arrived at Melville Castle.

Found Lord and Lady M. and the two young ladies.  Dr. Hope, my old school-fellow James Hope[34] and his son, made up our party, which was very pleasant.  After they went away we had some private conversation about politics.  The Whigs and Tories of the Cabinet are strangely divided, the former desiring to have Mr. Herries for Chancellor of the Exchequer, the latter to have Lord Palmerston, that Calcraft may be Secretary of War.  The King has declared firmly for Herries, on which Lord Goderich with tears entreated Herries to remove the bone of contention by declining to accept.  The King called him a blubbering fool.  That the King does not like or trust the Whigs is obvious from his passing over Lord Lansdowne, a man who, I should suppose, is infinitely better fitted for a Premier than Goderich.  But he probably looks with no greater [favour] on the return of the High Tories.  I fear he may wish to govern by the system of bascule, or balancing the two parties, a perilous game[35].  The Advocate[36] also dined with us.