Worked a fair task; dined, and read Clapperton's journey and Denham's into Bornou. Very entertaining, and less botheration about mineralogy, botany, and so forth, than usual. Pity Africa picks up so many brave men, however. Work in the evening. _April_ 6.--Wrote in the morning. Went at one to Huntly Burn, where I had the great pleasure to hear, through a letter from Sir Adam, that Sophia was in health, and Johnnie gaining strength. It is a fine exchange from deep and aching uncertainty on so interesting a subject, to the little spitfire feeling of "Well, but they might have taken the trouble to write"; but so wretched a correspondent as myself has not much to say, so I will just grumble sufficiently to maintain the patriarchal dignity. I returned in time to work, and to receive a shoal of things from J.B. Among others, a letter from an Irish lady, who, for the _beaux yeux_, which I shall never look upon, desires I will forthwith send her all the Waverley Novels, which are published, with an order to furnish her with all others in course as they appear, which she assures me will be an _era_ in her life. She may find out some other epocha. _April_ 7.--Made out my morning's task; at one drove to Chiefswood, and walked home by the Rhymer's Glen, Mar's Lee, and Haxell-Cleugh. Took me three hours. The heath gets somewhat heavier for me every year--but never mind, I like it altogether as well as the day I could tread it best. My plantations are getting all into green leaf, especially the larches, if theirs may be called leaves, which are only a sort of hair, and from the number of birds drawn to these wastes, I may congratulate myself on having literally made the desert to sing. As I returned, there was, in the phraseology of that most precise of prigs in a white collarless coat and _chapeau bas_, Mister Commissary Ramsay--"a rather dense inspissation of rain." Deil care. "Lord, who would live turmoiled in the Court, That might enjoy such quiet walks as these?"[239] Yet misfortune comes our way too. Poor Laidlaw lost a fine prattling child of five years old yesterday. It is odd enough--Iden, the Kentish Esquire, has just made the ejaculation which I adopted in the last page, when he kills Cade, and posts away up to Court to get the price set upon his head. Here is a letter come from Lockhart, full of Court news, and all sort of news,--best is his wife is well, and thinks the child gains in health. Lockhart erroneously supposes that I think of applying to Ministers about Charles, and that notwithstanding Croker's terms of pacification I should find _Malachi_ stick in my way. I would not make such an application for millions; I think if I were to ask patronage it would [not] be through them, for some time at least, and I might have better access.[240]