, "_Du
hast Diamanten und Perlen_," when I heard a poor cripple man in the
gutter wailing over a pitiful Scotch air, his club-foot supported on the
other knee, and his whole woebegone body propped sideways against a
crutch. The nearest lamp threw a strong light on his worn, sordid face
and the three boxes of lucifer matches that he held for sale. My own
false notes stuck in my chest. How well off I am! is the burthen of my
songs all day long--"_Drum ist so wohl mir in der Welt!_" and the ugly
reality of the cripple man was an intrusion on the beautiful world in
which I was walking. He could no more sing than I could; and his voice
was cracked and rusty, and altogether perished. To think that that wreck
may have walked the streets some night years ago, as glad at heart as I
was, and promising himself a future as golden and honourable!

_Sunday_, 11.20 _a.m._--I wonder what you are doing now?--in church
likely, at the _Te Deum_. Everything here is utterly silent. I can hear
men's footfalls streets away; the whole life of Edinburgh has been
sucked into sundry pious edifices; the gardens below my windows are
steeped in a diffused sunlight, and every tree seems standing on
tiptoes, strained and silent, as though to get its head above its
neighbour's and _listen_. You know what I mean, don't you? How trees do
seem silently to assert themselves on an occasion! I have been trying to
write _Roads_ until I feel as if I were standing on my head; but I mean
_Roads_, and shall do something to them.

I wish I could make you feel the hush that is over everything, only made
the more perfect by rare interruptions; and the rich, placid light, and
the still autumnal foliage. Houses, you know, stand all about our
gardens: solid, steady blocks of houses; all look empty and asleep.

_Monday night._--The drums and fifes up in the castle are sounding the
guard-call through the dark, and there is a great rattle of carriages
without. I have had (I must tell you) my bed taken out of this room, so
that I am alone in it with my books and two tables, and two chairs, and
a coal-skuttle (or _scuttle_) (?) and a _debris_ of broken pipes in a
corner, and my old school play-box, so full of papers and books that the
lid will not shut down, standing reproachfully in the midst. There is
something in it that is still a little gaunt and vacant; it needs a
little populous disorder over it to give it the feel of homeliness, and
perhaps a bit more furniture, j