Manchester, but the picturesqueness of the toute ensemble is wonderful. A high castle here, another there, on to a bridge whence one looks at a second city below, here a rugged mountain, and there beautiful public grounds, monuments, the sea, the landscape around, all wonderfully put together indeed; it would require fifty different views at least to give a true idea, but I will try from day to day to describe what I may see, either in the old or new part of the town. I unpacked my birds and looked at them with pleasure, and yet with a considerable degree of fear that they would never be published. I felt very much alone, and many dark thoughts came across my mind; I felt one of those terrible attacks of depression to which I so often fall a prey overtaking me, and I forced myself to go out to destroy the painful gloom that I dread at all times, and of which I am sometimes absolutely afraid. After a good walk I returned more at ease, and looked at a pair of stuffed pheasants on a large buffet in my present sitting-room, at the sweetly scented geraniums opposite to them, the black hair-cloth sofa and chairs, the little cherubs on the mantelpiece, the painted landscape on my right hand, and the mirror on my left, in which I saw not only my own face, but such strong resemblance to that of my venerated father that I almost imagined it was he that I saw; the thoughts of my mother came to me, my sister, my young days, all was at hand, yet how far away. Ah! how far is even the last moment, that is never to return again.
Edinburgh, October 27, 1826. I visited the market this morning, but to go to it I first crossed the New Town into the Old, over the north bridge, went down many flights of winding steps, and when at the desired spot was positively under the bridge that has been built to save the trouble of descending and mounting from one side of Edinburgh to the other, the city being mostly built on the slopes of two long ranges of high, broken hills. The vegetable market was well arranged, and looked, as did the sections for
