honest, true-hearted Lord Dalhousie, that Lordie Ramsay promised to be when at the High School.  How few such can I remember, and how poorly have honesty and valour been rewarded!  Here, at the time when most men think of repose, he is bundled off to command in India.[284] Would it had been the Chief Governorship!  But to have remained at home would have been bare livelihood, and that is all.  I asked him what he thought of “strangling a nabob, and rifling his jewel closet,” and he answered, “No, no, an honest man.”  I fear we must add, a poor one.  Lady Dalhousie, formerly Miss Brown of Coalstoun, is an amiable, intelligent, and lively woman, who does not permit society to “cream and mantle like a standing pool."[285]

The weather, drifting and surly, does not permit us to think of Melrose, and I could only fight round the thicket with Dr. Brewster and his lordship.  Lord Dalhousie gave me some interesting accounts of the American Indians.  They are, according to his lordship, decaying fast in numbers and principle.  Lord Selkirk’s property now makes large returns, from the stock of the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Companies having united.  I learned from Lord Dalhousie that he had been keeping a diary since the year 1800.  Should his narrative ever see the light, what a contrast will it form to the flourishing vapouring accounts of most of the French merchants!  Mr. and Mrs. Skene with their daughter Kitty, who has been indisposed, came to dinner, and the party was a well-assorted one.

FOOTNOTES: 

[263] See Lear, Act IV.  Sc. 1.

[264] Richard III., Act IV.  Sc. 2.

[265] See letter to George Forbes from Sir Walter, dated Dec. 18th, 1830.—­Life, vol.  X. pp. 19-20.

[266] Widow of Francis, Lord Seaforth, last Baron of Kintail, and mother of the Hon. Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie.

[267] A sportive association of young athletes.  Hogg, I think, was their Poet Laureate.—­J.G.L.

[268]

Mair spier na, no fear na, Auld age ne’er mind a feg; The last o’t, the warst o’t.  Is only for to beg.—­BURNS’S Ep. to Davie.

[269] Tempest, Act IV.  Sc. 1. (Stephano).

[270] This gentleman was a favourite with Sir Walter—­a special point of communion being the antiquities of the British drama.  He was Provost of Edinburgh in 1816-17, and again in 1822, and the king gracefully surprised him by proposing his health at the civic banquet in the Parliament House, as “Sir William Arbuthnot, Baronet.”—­J.G.L.

[271] John Hope, afterwards Lord Justice-Clerk.

[272] Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, 2 vols. 4to, 1828.

[273] Old Ballad (known as “Marie Hamilton”) quoted by Burns in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop regarding Falconer, author of The Shipwreck.—­Currie’s Burns, vol. ii. p. 290.