"Mr. Coleridge has yesterday transferred to me the treasures of the _Quarterly Review_; and I must say, my dear Wilson, that his whole stock is not worth five shillings. Thank God, other and better hands are at work for my first Number or I should be in a pretty hobble. My belief is that he has been living on the stock bequeathed by Gifford, and the contributions of a set of H----es and other d----d idiots of Oriel. But mind now, Wilson, I am sure to have a most hard struggle to get up a very good first Number, and if I do not, it will be the Devil." This letter was quoted in an abridged form in the Life of Professor Wilson by Mrs. Gordon. [47] This probably refers to Archibald, Lord Douglas, who had married the Lady Frances Scott, sister of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch. Lord Douglas died on the 26th December 1827. For notices of these valued friends see _Life_, vol. ii. pp. 27-8; iv. pp. 22, 70; and v. p. 230. [48] Robert Macqueen--Lord Braxfield--Justice Clerk from 1788; he died in 1799. [49] Mrs. Grant of Laggan, author of _Letters from the Mountains_, _Superstitions of the Highlanders_, etc. Died at Edin. in 1838, aged 83. [50] Scott had not the smallest hesitation in applying this unsavoury proverb to himself a few months later, when he unwillingly "impeticosed the gratillity" for the critique on Galt's _Omen_. See this Journal, June 24, 1826. [51] Afterwards Major-General Sir James Russell, G.C.B. He died at Ashestiel in 1859 in his 78th year. DECEMBER. _December 1st._--Colonel R[ussell] told me that the European Government had discovered an ingenious mode of diminishing the number of burnings of widows. It seems the Shaster positively enjoins that the pile shall be so constructed that, if the victim should repent even at the moment when it is set on fire, she may still have the means of saving herself. The Brahmins soon found it was necessary to assist the resolution of the sufferers, by means of a little pit into which they contrive to let the poor widow sink, so as to prevent her reaping any benefit from a late repentance. But the Government has brought them back to the regard of their law, and only permit the burning to go on when the pile is constructed with full opportunity of a _locus penitentiæ_. Yet the widow is so degraded if she dare to survive, that the number of burnings is still great. The quantity of female children destroyed by the Rajput tribes Colonel R. describes as very great indeed. They are strangled by the mother. The principle is the aristocratic pride of these high castes, who breed up no more daughters than they can reasonably hope to find matches for in their own tribe. Singular how artificial systems of feeling can be made to overcome that love of offspring which seems instinctive in the females, not of the human race only, but of the lower animals. This is the reverse of our system of increasing game by shooting the old cock-birds. It is a system would aid Malthus rarely.