rare virtue; moreover she is proud enough, and will not be easily netted and patronised by any of that class of ladies who may be called Lion-providers for town and country.  She is domestic besides, and will not be disposed to gad about.  Then she seems an economist, and on L3000,[43] living quietly, there should be something to save.  Lockhart must be liked where his good qualities are known, and where his fund of information has room to be displayed.  But, notwithstanding a handsome exterior and face, I am not sure he will succeed in London Society; he sometimes reverses the proverb, and gives the volte strette e pensiere sciolti, withdraws his attention from the company, or attaches himself to some individual, gets into a corner, and seems to be quizzing the rest.  This is the want of early habits of being in society, and a life led much at college.  Nothing is, however, so popular, and so deservedly so, as to take an interest in whatever is going forward in society.  A wise man always finds his account in it, and will receive information and fresh views of life even in the society of fools.  Abstain from society altogether when you are not able to play some part in it.  This reserve, and a sort of Hidalgo air joined to his character as a satirist, have done the best-humoured fellow in the world some injury in the opinion of Edinburgh folks.  In London it is of less consequence whether he please in general society or not, since if he can establish himself as a genius it will only be called “Pretty Fanny’s Way.”

People make me the oddest requests.  It is not unusual for an Oxonian or Cantab, who has outrun his allowance, and of whom I know nothing, to apply to me for the loan of L20, L50, or L100.  A captain of the Danish naval service writes to me, that being in distress for a sum of money by which he might transport himself to Columbia, to offer his services in assisting to free that province, he had dreamed I generously made him a present of it.  I can tell him his dream by contraries.  I begin to find, like Joseph Surface, that too good a character is inconvenient.  I don’t know what I have done to gain so much credit for generosity, but I suspect I owe it to being supposed, as Puff[44] says, one of those “whom Heaven has blessed with affluence.”  Not too much of that neither, my dear petitioners, though I may thank myself that your ideas are not correct.

Dined at Melville Castle, whither I went through a snow-storm.  I was glad to find myself once more in a place connected with many happy days.  Met Sir R. Dundas and my old friend George, now Lord Abercromby,[45] with his lady, and a beautiful girl, his daughter.  He is what he always was—­the best-humoured man living; and our meetings, now more rare than usual, are seasoned with a recollection of old frolics and old friends.  I am entertained to see him just the same he has always been, never yielding up his own opinion in fact, and yet in words acquiescing in