July 1.—­Mr. Daveis breakfasted with me.  On nearer acquaintance, I was more galled by some portion of continental manners than I had been at first, so difficult is it for an American to correct his manner to our ideas of perfect good-breeding.[390] I did all that was right, however, and asked Miss Ferrier, whom he admires prodigiously, to meet him at dinner.  Hither came also a young friend, so I have done the polite thing every way.  Thomson also dined with us.  After dinner I gave my strangers an airing round the Corstorphine hills, and returned by the Cramond road.  I sent to Mr. Gibson, Cadell’s project for Lammas, which raises L15,000 for a dividend of 3s. to be then made.  I think the trustees should listen to this, which is paying one-half of my debt.

July 2.—­Have assurances from John Gibson that L15,000 should be applied as I proposed.  If this can be repeated yearly up to 1835 the matter is ended, and well ended; yet, woe’s me! the public change their taste, and their favourites get old.  Yet if I was born in 1771, I shall only be sixty in 1831, and, by the same reasoning, sixty-four in 1835, so I may rough it out, yet be no Sir Robert Preston.  At any rate, it is all I have to trust to.

I did a morning’s task, and was detained late at the Court; came home, ate a hearty dinner, slumbered after it in spite of my teeth, and made a poor night’s work of it.  One’s mind gets so dissipated by the fagging, yet insignificant, business of the offices; my release comes soon, but I fear for a term only, for I doubt if they will carry through the Court Bill.

July 3.—­My day began at seven as usual.  Sir Adam came to breakfast.  I read Southey’s edition of the Pilgrim’s Progress, and think of reviewing the same.  I would I had books at hand.  To the Court, and remained till two; then went to look at the drawings for repairing Murthly, the house of Sir John or James Stewart, now building by Gillespie Graham, and which he has planned after the fashion of James VI.’s reign, a kind of bastard Grecian[391]—­very fanciful and pretty though.  Read Hone’s Every-day Book, and with a better opinion of him than I expected from his anti-religious frenzy.  We are to dine with the Skenes to-day.

Which we did accordingly, meeting Mr. and Mrs. Strange, Lord Forbes, and other friends.

July 4.—­Was a complete and serious day of work, only interrupted in the evening by——­, who, with all the freedom and ease of continental manners, gratified me with his gratuitous presence.  Yet it might have been worse, for his conversation is well enough, but it is strange want of tact to suppose one must be alike welcome to a stranger at all hours of the day; but I have stuffed the portfolio, so do not grudge half-an-hour.