“My dear Lockhart,—I am almost stunned with the melancholy intelligence I have this morning received. It appears to be God’s pleasure that this year shall be a most melancholy one, but other considerations were trifles compared to the anxiety communicated by your intelligence. Most unhappily, Morritt is, I understand, just leaving Brighton” (whither Hugh Littlejohn had been sent by the physicians). “I own I have had always a deep-rooted anxiety on account of that poor dear infant, and have sometimes thought there was too much mind for the corporeal strength. I can scarce conceive a situation more melancholy than yours—thinking and feeling as you do. Even Sophia is easier, because she is at least constantly present where her anxiety is most anxiously fixed. What can I form for you but vain wishes? or what arguments can I use that will not occur to yourself, and when they have thus occurred, be of very little avail? We would send up Anne with pleasure if her presence could be useful.
“As for the political part of your letter, Scotland
will, in twenty years, perhaps much sooner, be revolutionised from head to
foot; and then let England look to herself, for she may have some reason to
resume her own old proverb, ‘All ill comes from the North.’
The present time
| 400 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Within these twenty years, nay, within these ten years, there have been so many alterations made, that law seems to be treated like religion, according to Hudibras—
——‘as if intended For nothing else but to be mended.’ |
| MALAGROWTHER | 401 |
“As for myself, what reason on earth can I have to affront all my friends in power “(by his “Malagrowther” Letters), “but the deep consciousness that there is a duty to be discharged? If they can argue me out of the world, as they say, and into Liddesdale, I have not the least objections.
“I have written more than I intended, but I am not sorry that any of our private friends should know why I do not answer my friend” (Croker) “at the Admiralty. Mr. Canning is mistaken if he supposes I appealed to the populace. On the contrary, I resisted every proposal to put the ‘Letters’ into a shape for general circulation. If ever there should be an occasion to address the people, I fancy I might have a guess how to set about it. But it should not be against the present men, although I am so unfortunate as to disapprove of the present measures.
“My heart sinks at writing all this stuff on a subject so different from that which at present occupies us both. It is what, however, we would likely have talked about, to divert for a moment our thoughts from that which must be uppermost. I am alone at Abbotsford, and have spent one pleasant day here, but that which follows is after the manner of Sezed with a witness. Pray write often.—Yours truly,
