[EDINBURGH], SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1873.

IT is a little sharp to-day; but bright and sunny with a sparkle in
the air, which is delightful after four days of unintermitting
rain. In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation,
it was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at
each other's hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both
had. It put one in a good humour to see it.


8 P.M. - I made a little more out of my work than I have made for a
long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into
sentences - they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses.
Then I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good
deal of fun, first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed,
and afterwards buying needles and quack drugs from open-air
vendors, and taking much pleasure in their inexhaustible eloquence.
Every now and then as we went, Arthur's Seat showed its head at the
end of a street. Now, to-day the blue sky and the sunshine were
both entirely wintry; and there was about the hill, in these
glimpses, a sort of thin, unreal, crystalline distinctness that I
have not often seen excelled. As the sun began to go down over the
valley between the new town and the old, the evening grew
resplendent; all the gardens and low-lying buildings sank back and
became almost invisible in a mist of wonderful sun, and the Castle
stood up against the sky, as thin and sharp in outline as a castle
cut out of paper. Baxter made a good remark about Princes Street,
that it was the most elastic street for length that he knew;