As we have no near relations, the tie betwixt us is of even
unusual closeness, though in itself one of the strongest which
nature can form. I am, and have all along been, the exclusive
object of my father's anxious hopes, and his still more anxious
and engrossing fears; so what title have I to complain, although
now and then these fears and hopes lead him to take a troublesome
and incessant charge of all my motions? Besides, I ought to
recollect, and, Darsie, I do recollect, that my father upon
various occasions, has shown that he can be indulgent as well as
strict. The leaving his old apartments in the Luckenbooths was
to him like divorcing the soul from the body; yet Dr. R-- did but
hint that the better air of this new district was more favourable
to my health, as I was then suffering under the penalties of too
rapid a growth, when he exchanged his old and beloved quarters,
adjacent to the very Heart of Midlothian, for one of those new
tenements (entire within themselves) which modern taste has so
lately introduced. Instance also the inestimable favour which he
conferred on me by receiving you into his house, when you had
only the unpleasant alternative of remaining, though a grown-up
lad, in the society of mere boys. [The diminutive and obscure
place called Brown's Square, was hailed about the time of its
erection as an extremely elegant improvement upon the style of
designing and erecting Edinburgh residences. Each house was, in
the phrase used by appraisers, 'finished within itself,' or, in
the still newer phraseology, 'self-contained.' It was built
about the year 1763-4; and the old part of the city being near
and accessible, this square soon received many inhabitants, who
ventured to remove to so moderate a distance from the High
Street.] This was a thing so contrary to all my father's ideas