360 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



to take in the fate of my luckless History? nay, rather, 

 what can I say when I think that that interest should 

 be manifested at such a time ! This much at least, that 

 those philosophers who resolve all our affections into a 

 principle of selfishness, must have had little experience 

 of true friendship. I am afraid you will render me quite 

 a bankrupt by your kindnesses, that my gratitude will 

 never be able to keep pace with them. Sir Thomas 

 too ! Whatever my fate may be in the future, it is not 

 likely I shall ever forget that a gentleman so high in the 

 political and literary world should have so honoured me 

 with his notice, and so interested himself in my behalf. 

 So far, at least, as you and he are concerned, I find that 

 my pride and my gratitude are mixed up into one senti- 

 ment ; and though the better feeling is perhaps less pure 

 in consequence of the alloy, it will, like everything else 

 of value that is hardened by a baser mixture, be rendered 

 all the more indestructible by it. 



I am engaged as busily at present with my second 

 volume as if my first had already passed into a third 

 edition, and I have got the larger half of it written, but 

 in a style so like that of the former, that if the one sink 

 the other can have no chance of rising. I am not with- 

 out hope of becoming a more skilful writer than I am at 

 present, but it must be in some department of literature 

 in which I can employ my mind more than in my pre- 

 sent walk. I often find it too narrow for me, and that, 

 while I am gossiping over my old-wife stories and dress- 

 ing up little ideas in very common language, my more 

 vigorous powers are standing idly by, perhaps pining 

 away for lack of exercise. But I must complete the 

 work at all risks, were it but for the sake of poor 

 Cromarty, before I take up anything else. I am no 

 hypocrite in literature, but an honest, right-hearted 



