He speaks also of his Italian tour in a letter to Dr Grossart, dated from Jedburgh on 11th October, in which he says:-- Did I write you giving an account of my Italian trip? I know that I meant to do so. I enjoyed myself amazingly, and picked up a lot of wrinkles which will stand me in good stead. Ods man! but it was hot spielin’ the hills with the thermometer 94° in the shade. God knows but I thought it not far short of 500° in the sun.... I’m going to take it easy this winter--if I can. I have now got my _magnum opus_ off my hands, and hope to send you a copy next month. It makes some 500 pages of demy 8vo!--a wiselike size!... The illustrations will please you, I hope. They have been beautifully engraved.... The country here is looking beautiful--woods having all their autumn colours on. I don’t wonder that emigrants who were born on the Jed, the Teviot, and the Tweed should aye have such intense longings to get back again to their native howffs. It makes one young as a boy to wander up the sweet glens and ravines in this lovely district. If I were in love I’m afraid I should use up whole reams of paper in the composing of passionate songs and sonnets. But not being so I can only croon as I trot along the half-forgotten words of some old Border ditty. Some other passages in this and other letters suggest that with the finishing of the great book, and the lifting of the strain, the young man felt _désœuvré_, was beginning to think that youth was slipping away and he was perhaps not getting the best out of life, and was liable to alternate fits of depression and of a cynicism which was probably largely a pose intended to hide his true feelings. In brief, he was becoming aware that it is not good for man to dwell alone, and the Glacial Epoch, whatever its charms, proved a chilly substitute for the kind of companionship which his affectionate spirit craved. A few extracts from a letter, undated, but written from Jedburgh, apparently about the same time as the foregoing, may help to make the position clear. The letter may be entitled--anything more specific being avoided--“To a Young Man contemplating Matrimony,” and the quotations must necessarily be disjointed:-- You know your own affairs best. But if I were in your place, and the girl were a really good girl and suitable, hang it I would propose and get her.... Something like fate whispers in my ear, “Jim, my boy, you’ll never have a wife, altho’ you should live to the age of Methusaleh.” ... With the uncertainty of temper and feeling that I have, I seriously doubt whether I would be other than miserable if I were to marry. So lest you should get into the same state, O young man! either flee temptation or be bold and seize the tempter. What more can I say. Perhaps you were only laughing when you wrote me, and are now laughing at me and my soft-heartedness. All right, laugh away. I have had my day, and some time you shall have had yours also.