nd
straining after the world's riches and honours: and I do not see but
he may gain heaven as well--which, by the by, is no mean
consideration--who steals through the vale of life, amusing himself
with every little flower that fortune throws in his way, as he, who
straining straight forward, and perhaps spattering all about him,
gains some of life's little eminencies, where, after all, he can only
see and be seen a little more conspicuously than what, in the pride of
his heart, he is apt to term the poor, indolent devil he has left
behind him.

* * * * *

_August._

A Prayer, when fainting fits, and other alarming symptoms of a
pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder, which indeed still
threatens me, first put nature on the alarm:--

O thou unknown, Almighty Cause
Of all my hope and fear![151]

* * * * *

_August._

Misgivings in the hour of _despondency_ and prospect of death:--

Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene.[152]

* * * * *

EGOTISMS FROM MY OWN SENSATIONS.

_May._

I don't well know what is the reason of it, but somehow or other,
though I am when I have a mind pretty generally beloved, yet I never
could get the art of commanding respect.--I imagine it is owing to my
being deficient in what Sterne calls "that understrapping virtue of
discretion."--I am so apt to a _lapsus linguae_, that I sometimes think
the character of a certain great man I have read of somewhere is very
much _apropos_ to myself--that he was a compound of great talents and
great folly.--N.B. To try if I can discover the causes of this
wretched infirmity, and, if possible, to mend it.

* * * * *

_August._

However I am pleased with the works of our Scotch poets, particularly
the excellent Ramsay, and the still more excellent Fergusson, yet I am
hurt to see other places of Scotland, their towns, rivers, woods,
haughs, &c., immortalized in such celebrated performances, while my dear
native country, the ancient bailieries of Carrick, Kyle, and Cunningham,
famous both in ancient and modern times for a gallant and warlike race
of inhabitants; a country where civil, and particularly religious
liberty have ever found their first support, and their last asylum; a
country, the birth-place of many famous philosophers, soldiers,
statesman, and the scene of many important events recorded i