THE ATHENS RECEIVES THE KING, AND IS JOYOUS.

All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him: your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry,
While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,
Are smother’d up, leads fill’d, and ridges horsed,
With variable complexions; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him: seld’-shewn flamens
Do press among the popular throngs, and puff
To win a vulgar station: our veil’d dames
Commit the war of white and damask, in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks, to the wanton spoil
Of Phoebus’ burning kisses; such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
Were slily crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.—Shakspeare.

Every one, who having heard of the splendour which is attendant upon royalty while dwelling at a distance from the scene of its display, has thence been induced to mingle himself with the crowd of ordinary spectators, must have felt how much the reality falls short of the anticipation. One sees a gaudy vehicle drawn slowly along, and within it a human being, apparently but ill at his ease, and obviously feeling the same danger of tumbling from his unnatural and elevated seat as one perched upon the top of a pyramid. A crowd, usually formed of the ill-dressed and the idle, run and roar about the carriage; the trumpeters play “God save the King,” the attendants wave their hats and cheer, and the spectacle, having passed through its routine, is no more heeded. In London, for instance, those state processions which the etiquette of the court inflicts upon the sovereign, are not more imposing than a Lord-Mayor’s show; and even the most loyal, unless it conduces in some way or other to their personal interest, care little for a second display.

With this experience, I had prepared myself for being disappointed in that spectacle which had brought Scotland together; and I was disappointed. But my disappointment was of a new kind; for the solemnity, the grandeur, and the effect of the scene, were just as much superior to what I had hoped for, as those of any analogous scene that I had witnessed fell below the anticipation. The Scots are, unquestionably, not a superstitious people; neither do they care for parade. Upon ordinary occasions, too, they are a disputing and quarrelling, rather than an united people; and with the exception of those who are either paid or expect to be paid for it, they are by no means inordinate in their loyalty. But they are a people whose feelings have the depth, as well as the placidity, of still waters; the rocks, the rivers, and even the houses, are things of long duration; there is no portion of his country, upon which the foot of a Scotchman can fall, that speaks not its tale or its legend; and there is no Scotchman who does not look upon himself as identified with the annals of his country, and regard Edinburgh as the seat of a royal line, of which no man can trace the beginning, and of which no Scotchman can bear to contemplate the end; and which, though it has been bereaved of its royal tenant by an unfortunate union with a more wealthy land, is yet more worthy of him, and more his legitimate and native dwelling-place, than any other city in existence.

The operation of those feelings, or prejudices, or call them what you will, produced upon the occasion of which I am speaking, a scene, or rather a succession of scenes, of a more intense and powerful interest than any which I had ever witnessed, or, indeed, could have pictured to myself in the warmest time and mood of my imagination. I had thought the thronging of the people to Edinburgh a ridiculous waste of time; I had laughed till every rib of me ached, at the fantastic fooleries of the Celts and Archers, and the grotesque array of the official men; and founding my expectations upon these, I had made up my mind that the whole matter was to be a farce or a failure. But I had taken wrong data: I had formed my opinion of Scotland from the same persons that, to the injury and the disgrace of Scotland, form the channel through which the British Government sees it; and therefore I was not prepared for that solemn and soul-stirring display,—that rush of the whole intellect of a reflective, and of the whole heart of a feeling people, adorned and kept in measured order, by that intermixture of moral tact and of national pride, which was exhibited to the delighted King, and the astonished courtiers. It seemed as though hundreds of years of the scroll of memory had been unrolled; and that the people, carrying the civilization, the taste, and the science, of the present day along with them, had gone back to those years when Scotland stood alone, independent in arms, and invincible in spirit.

As, to the shame of the literature of Scotland, and more especially to that of the Athens—who arrogates to herself the capability of saying every thing better than any body else, no account of this singular burst of national feeling has appeared, except the gossiping newspaper-reports at the time, and a tasteless pot pourri, hashed up of the worst of these, with scraps of gazettes, and shreds of addresses,—in which, more especially the latter, it would be vain to look for any trace of the spirit of the people,—it is but an act of common justice in me to devote a few pages to it, though I know well that I shall fail of the effect which I am anxious to produce. In order, as much as I can, to guard against this, I shall divide the remainder of this chapter, (which, in spite of me, will be rather a long one,) into as many sections as there were acts in the drama of the King’s visit. The first of these will of course be,

THE PROCESSION TO HOLYROOD.

—————“He comes, he comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.”

It seemed as though the lowering skies and sweeping storms, which had made the longing people of Scotland almost despair of the pleasure of the royal visit, and which had drenched them, and given them a whole night of impatient delay, when the King was not many furlongs from the Scottish shore, had been intended to heighten by their contrast the splendour and eclÂt of the royal debarkation. The morning of Thursday, the 15th of August, dawned in all the freshness of spring, and in all the serenity of summer. The rains had given a renovated greenness to the fields, and a thorough ablution to the city; and while the first rays of the morning sun streamed through the curling smoke of fires that were preparing the breakfast of three hundred thousand loyal and delighted people, they painted upon the adjoining country that “clear shining after rain,” which is, perhaps, the fairest and freshest guise in which any land can be viewed. The soft west wind just gave to the expanded Firth as much of a ripple as to shew that it was living water, without curling the angry crest of a single billow. There was a transparency in the air, of which those who are accustomed only to the murky atmosphere of London, or the exhalations of the fat pastures of England, could have no conception. Not only the colour of every pendant in the roads, but the cordage of every ship, and the costume of every one on board, was discernible from the elevated grounds about Edinburgh; and, while standing on the Calton Hill, the royal squadron, with thousands of boats and barges sporting around it, on the one hand,—and the bustling crowd on the other, decked in their various and gaudy attire, flitting past every opening, and filling every street that was visible, composed a panorama of the most spirit-stirring description.

The ancient standard of Scotland was hoisted at Holyrood; the ancient crown and sceptre of Scotland were there ready to be lent to his Majesty,—but, too sacred and too dear to Scotland as the symbols of her old and loved independence, for being given to a king, whom she had come from her utmost bourne, decked herself in her finest apparel, and tuned her heart to its choicest song of joy, to welcome; the royal household of Scotland, more showy in their attire, and more self-important in their bearing, than is usual where kings are subjects of daily exhibition, because the robes and the occupation were new, were proceeding toward the place of their rendezvous by the longest and most circuitous paths that they could find out, anxious to levy their modicum of admiration ere the more transcendent splendour and dignity of the king should draw all eyes towards itself, and leave them as the forgotten tapers of the night, after the glorious orb of day has climbed the east; the Caledonian fair were thronging to the casements, (balconies there were none,) each looking more happy than another, and one could easily perceive that faces, which, during a reasonable lapse of years—either through the fault or the failure of Hymen—had been stiffened by sorrow, and saddened by despair, were that day to be decked in their earliest, their virgin smile,—a smile which, they were not without hopes, might draw other eyes, and charm other hearts, than those of their sovereign; and the maddening burghers and wondering yeomen were trotting about from place to place; and, in their zeal for obtaining the best sight of the king, running some risk of not seeing him at all.

Having seen the muster of the official men—as well those who were to proceed to the pier of Leith to receive his Majesty, as they who were to deliver to him the keys of the city of Edinburgh, and thereupon speak a speech, into which a full year’s eloquence of the whole corporation, with some assistance of the crown lawyers, and a note or two by Sir Walter Scott, was crammed,—having examined the facilities which the people along the line of the procession had given the tenants of a day for gratifying their eyes,—and having felt more joy at heart than I had ever done at a public spectacle, at seeing so vast a multitude so very happy, and so very worthy of happiness,—I set about choosing my own station, in order that I might gaze, and wonder, and be delighted with the rest; and, after very mature deliberation, I resolved that that should be upon the leads of the palace of Holyrood, provided I could get access to the same.

Access was by no means difficult to be obtained, nor was my ascent to the top of the ancient structure without its pleasures. In the first place, I passed through the apartments of the fair queen of Scotland,—the fairest, and all things considered, perhaps, the frailest of royal ladies; and there I found the whole localities of Rizzio’s murder, well preserved both in appearance and in tradition. In the second place, I had the pleasure of seeing upon the leads, dressed in the plain tartan of her adopted clan, the fair Lady Glenorchy, who possesses all the charms of Mary, without any of her faults. I am not sure that I ever saw a finer woman; I am sure that I never saw one in whose expression intellect was more blended with sweetness, or spirit softened and enriched by modesty and grace.

Besides those intellectual (is that the term?) pleasures, there were other things which rendered my locality the best of any: First, it commanded a larger and better view of the procession; and, secondly, though Edinburgh looks romantic from my situation, there is none where it becomes so perfect a fairy tale. While I paced along the leads of the palace, and I had ample time to do it, I was more and more rivetted, both in motion and in gaze, by the wonderful scene. Eastward was the expanse of blue water, widening and having no boundary in the extreme horizon, and confined every where else between the soft, green, lovely, and productive shores of Lothian and Fife. Along the whole visible portion of the waters, no ship was going forth upon her voyage, but many were cruizing towards the port of Leith by the combined powers of every thing that enables man to make his way upon the deep. Northward rose the Calton Hill, ornamented with one of the best and one of the worst specimens of modern architecture, having a park of artillery and a picquet of horsemen upon its summit, and its sides groaning under the weight of a multitude which no man could count. Sufficiently elevated at one place for throwing its more elevated objects against the sky, and rapid enough in its slope for bringing out at whole length the masses of people who occupied it, the Calton did not conceal either the royal squadron in Leith roads, or the majestic summits of the remote Grampians,—from which every cloud and every trace of mist had been brushed away, when I first ascended, while the strong and peculiar refraction that the atmosphere in such cases exerts, gave to them only half their distance and double their height, as if the mountains themselves had raised them from the beds of their primeval residence, and come near, to behold the splendour which the Athens had put on, and the glory with which she hoped to be blessed. Towards the south, Salisbury Craggs and Arthur’s Seat raised their summits to the mid heaven, and threw their broad shadows over the valley, into which the beams of light which poured in at the openings of the majestic wall of rock, seamed the blue shadow as the lapis lazuli is seamed by gold. The view this way was to me peculiarly sublime, not only from the great contrast that it formed with every thing around, and indeed every thing that one could conceive to exist in the vicinity of a city, but because of its own peculiar and inherent sublimity, and the wild accompaniments with which it had been decorated for the occasion. The crags rose rugged and perpendicular, with their profile dark as night, while standards, and tents, and batteries, and armed men on foot and on horseback, hung over the wild and airy steep. A flood of mellow light which came in from behind gave them the lineaments of giants, and a glory of colouring far exceeding any thing that limner ever tinted. Then rose the more sublime height of Arthur’s Seat, thrown back by the vapour which the sun was exhaling from the dew in the dell between, and having its summit haloed with a glory of radiant prismatic colours, through which the solitary stranger or flitting picquet seemed beings of another world. And, as the sun-beams came and went upon burnished helm or brazen cuirass, the whole seemed spotted with gold, or inlaid with costly stones. At my feet was the court of the palace, in which the royal standard was guarded by a fine body of highlanders, and the palace-gates kept by a goodly array of the Edinburgh archery, who, though they seemed not to be the least important part of the spectacle in their own eyes, were yet intent upon procuring for their favoured fair those situations from which they would best view the glories of the archers and of the king.

Before me, the Athens herself clustered her buildings, and shot up her towers, her spires, and her castles, with a witchery of effect, which can be equalled by the view of no other British city, and surpassed by that of the Athens from no other point. When one, for instance, ascends the top of St. Paul’s, one wonders at the business and bustle that is around; but the eye is tired with the interminable lines of dull brick, and the dingy clusters of puny steeples, and smoking chimney-stalks; while the sound, and the rushing, and the artificial origin of the whole, make one melancholy with the idea that it will not last. One should never look down upon a city: the sight is always dingy, and the view always produces melancholy.

From the leads whereon I stood, though I was high above the court of the palace, I was below all the city except that rubbish which was concealed; and never did the mere sight of houses produce such an effect upon me. The ground was so magical, and the buildings so different in form, that the whole seemed as though it had been moulded by the hands of giants, or commanded into existence by the fiat of a god; and, in firmness and colour, it was so like the rocks upon which it rested, and by which it was surrounded, that it looked as though it had lasted from the beginning of time, and would endure to the end. Right in front of me, the high street opened at intervals its deep ravine; upon the summit of a hill, but still, from the great height of the houses, appearing as if that hill had been cleft in twain, to open a way from the palace on which I stood to the castle, which, from its aged rock at the other extremity, looked proudly down as the monarch of the Athens, seated upon a throne which would out-exist those of all the monarchs of the nations. Around this were clustered palace and spire, each upon its terrace, while the spacious bridges, beneath whose arches the distant Pentland hills and the sky were visible, formed an aËrial path from the grandeur of one place to the grandeur of another.

There was something so novel, so wildly romantic, and so overpowering, in all this, that I retired to the most remote and elevated part of the roof, leaned me against a chimney-stalk, and, forgetting the king, the procession, the people, and myself, was in one of those reveries, in which the senses are too much gratified, and the judgment too much lost for allowing the fancy to sketch, and the memory to notice. “This is incomprehensibly fine!” were the words which I then ejaculated to myself; and now that the presence of the picture is gone, and the recollection such as no mind could retain, I can do nothing more than repeat them.

I stood thus absorbed till about mid-day, at which time the flash and the report of a solitary gun from the royal yacht caught my eye and my ear, and made me start into recollection. Just then, a cloud of the most impenetrable darkness had collected behind, or, as it appeared to me, around the castle, which made the Athens appear as if her magnitude stretched on into the impenetrable gloom of infinitude. But I had no time to pursue the train of feeling to which that would have given rise; for the volleyed cannon—flash upon flash and peal upon peal, and the huzzaing people—shout upon shout and cheer after cheer, made the cliffs and mountains ring around me, and the palace rock under my feet, as though the heavens and the earth had been coming together, and the Athens had been to be dashed to pieces in the maddening of her own joy. The ships in the roads first pealed out the tale, and the blue waters of the Forth were enshrouded in a vesture of silvery smoke. Anon the batteries upon the Calton took up the tidings; and their roar, all powerful as it was, was almost drowned in the voices of the thousands which thronged that romantic hill. In an instant, the same deafening sounds, and the same gleaming fires, burst away from the Craggs on the left; and the cannon and the cry continued to call and to answer to each other from the right hand and from the left, as—

——“Jura answers through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, which call to her aloud,”

till every atom of the air was reverberating with sound, every cliff and every building returning its echo, the ground reeling to the noise, the fleecy smoke hanging upon the cliffs like the clouds of heaven, or settling down till the Athens put on the appearance of a sea, in which the more elevated buildings and spires seemed islets, and the castle, with her glaring fires, and her astounding volleys, towered like an Etna, burning, blazing, and thundering across the deep. What with the closing of the natural clouds, and the spreading of the artificial ones, the darkness which even at noon-day had settled over the city was awfully sublime; even the mass of the castle, large and lofty though it be, was shrouded in the thick vapour of the sky and of itself, so that all which the eye could discern, was the flashes of artillery contending with the flickering of distant lightning, and all that the ear could hear was the mingled peal and jubilee, in the pauses of which the voice of the distant thunder was too feeble for being heard. The darkness borrowed additional sublimity, if indeed that was possible, from the pure and unclouded light of the sun, which a few straggling beams that occasionally stole their way as far as the slopes of Arthur Seat, told me was sleeping upon the plains of Lothian; and the din of the joy received all the accession of contrast from the stilly silence which reigned in the deserted halls and desolated villages of that busy and blooming land. Amid this darkness and din, the royal barge rowed softly towards the Scottish strand, and the sovereign of these realms was the first to set his foot upon Scottish ground, while the author of these pages occupied the very pinnacle of the Scottish palace. The magistrates of Leith, all tingling and but ill at their ease, stood shaking and speechless to receive him; but their blushes were a good deal spared by those grand monopolists of Caledonian loyalty, the lords president, justice clerk, baron register, and advocate, and that mighty master of the ceremonies, and that mightier memorialist, (who, it was hoped, would cut the thing into everlasting brass,) Sir Walter Scott. But though the monopolizing lords blushed not, they blanched a little, when they found the eyes of the king turning everywhere with the same beaming delight upon the people, whose appearance and whose conduct showed him that Scotland, if not the most polished, was by no means the least polished jewel of his crown; and the baronet, who haply was brought there, chiefly from the eclÂt which his literary renown would confer upon his less gifted but more official associates, found perchance that the glory of an author, however high in itself, and however rewarded, is but a tiny instrument of Royal joy.

The guardsmen, who very judiciously were chiefly either Scottish citizens or Scottish soldiers, succeeded, not in keeping order among their countrymen, but in preventing breaches of it among themselves; but the Craggan nan phidiach,—the Raven of the Rock of Glengarry, was of too bold spirit, and too bustling wing, to be so restrained. To prevent accidents, this mighty personage, who had stood up bonnetted, dirked, and pistolled, at the King’s coronation, to the utter dismay of the ladies of England, had been sent upon this occasion to keep watch and ward upon the state-coach; but when the coach had taken its place in the procession, the chieftain stepped a little way out of his, bustling through the crowd to give Mac Mhic Alistair Mhor’s welcome; and it was not till the Lion of England had knitted his brows and shaken his mane, that the Raven of the Rock flew back to her station.

Onward moved the procession, through avenues of people, and arches of triumph,—one of which latter spoke as much as ten volumes upon the learning of the Athens, and the ignorance of the mercatores of Leith: “O felicem diem!” said that side of the first triumphant arch which looked towards the Athens; “O happy day!” quoth the one which smiled upon the lack-Latin lieges of Leith.

When the procession had cleared the town of Leith, and was moving gracefully along that broad and beautiful walk, which still keeps Leith at a respectful and proper distance from the Athens, the first presentation upon Scottish ground was made to the King—and perhaps none more honourable in its spirit, or honest in its intention, was made to him during his whole sojourn. There was presented to George the Fourth, a Parliament-cake,—not such a cake as is gleaned from the fields of a country, or baked in the oven of a royal burgh, and thence sent to St. Stephen’s Chapel as a well-leavened waive-offering, (and from which, by the way, Scotland has got by way of eminence the name of the Land of Cakes,) but something more luscious and learned still,—a cake of sweet and spicy ginger-bread, stamped with all the letters of the alphabet, and by combination and consequence, with the whole learning and literature of the united kingdom. The presentation alluded to happened thus: Margaret Sibbald, an able-bodied matron of Fisher-Row, had been induced, through the compound stimulus of curiosity and loyalty, to leave her home all unbreakfasted, in order to take her place in the royal procession; Margaret had stored her ample leathern pouch with a penny-worth of Parliament-cake, in order to support nature through this praise-worthy work; but Margaret’s eyes had been so much feasted, that Margaret’s stomach was forgotten. Seeing that the King wore a hue which she did not consider as the hue of health, and judging that it might arise from depletion induced by his rocking upon the waters, she elbowed her way through horsemen, Highland-men, archer-men, and official men, up to the royal carriage, and drawing forth her only cake, held it up to his Majesty, expressing sorrow that his royal countenance was so pale, and assuring him that if she had had any thing better he would have got it. A forward strippling of the guards charged Margaret sword in hand, to which Margaret replied, “Ye wearifu’ thing o’ a labster! Ye hae nae mense, I hae dune mair for the King than you can either do or help to do; I hae born him sax bonnie seamen as ere hauled a rope, or handled a cutlass.” It was, however, no time for prolonged hostilities, and so Margaret was lost in the crowd, and the guardsman not noticed in the procession.

Many were the events of the march ere the King arrived at the end of Picardy-Place, to receive the silver keys of the Athens, and hear the silvery tones of her chief magistrate; I shall mention only one: The pawky provost of a burgh of the extreme north, determined to see the whole, and yet not pay his half-guinea for a seat in one of the booths, had scrambled to the top of a tree at Greenside-Place, where he hung rocking like a crow’s nest. As the King approached, the provost swung himself to one side, waving his bonnet, and screeching his huzza, in strains which would have scared all the owls in England; and when the mass and the movement of this loyalty were in full effect, they proved too mighty for the support, so that the pine and the provost fell prostrate before the King. Even this was not much heeded: the procession moved on, and the provost moved off.

At last the King came to the wicker-gate of the city, the keys were presented, the speech was spoken, and the crowd in a great measure melted away, by the majority hurrying away toward the Calton-Hill, whence they could command a view of the whole during almost a mile of its march. This desertion fell like cold water upon the official men, and even the King himself seemed disappointed.

But the gloom and the disappointment were of no long duration, for no sooner did he turn the corner into St. Andrew’s-street, than the mass of shouting and ecstatic people who hung upon the whole beetling side of the hill, and covered every part of the buildings, came upon him with a shock of joy and a touch of exultation, which made the cold state of the monarch give way to the warm feelings of the man. “My God! that is altogether overpowering!” said he, snatching off his hat and essaying to join in the cheer, but his voice faltered, and tears, which were not tears of sorrow, suffused his eyes, and watered his cheeks.

His reception when he landed had been confined, and the people were too near for giving vent to their feelings; and the delivering of the keys, though there was a crowd there because the King halted a little, was a piece of mummery, about which so reflective a people as the Scotch cared little; but when the King was discerned in Prince’s Street, when the living hill-side beheld his approach, and when the assembled nation reflected that their Monarch was coming in peace to visit them,—it was then that Scotland welcomed the King, with a welcome which none that saw or heard it is likely ever to forget. The first shout was astounding, and it rose and rung till it was answered by voices of joy over a wide circumference.

During all this time I had not seen the procession, but I heard of it from one who was close by the royal person all the time, and whose character for truth and feeling is recognised as well by the world of letters as by the world of men. I must confess that, choice and chosen as was my place, the occupation of it was a pretty severe trial on my patience; and when I first saw the yellow plumes of the Braidalbanes, and the tall and majestic form of their leader, issuing from behind the monument of David Hume, and heard the notes of their bagpipes pealing “the Campbells are coming,” I had almost wished myself a Highlander, and in the procession. The King soon arrived at the Palace, had a hurried interview with some of the officers of state, and then drove off for Dalkeith-House, there to pause and recover from the fatigue of the voyage, and the excitement of the procession.

THE ILLUMINATION, THE LEVEE AND COURT, AND THE LADIES.

“Ten thousand tapers shone; ten thousand lords,
And squires, and yeomen, hungry clerks, and churchmen,
Bended the supple knee; ten thousand ladies,
With eyes of love, lit up the nether skies.”

Although each of these, no doubt, seemed to the parties themselves of sufficient importance to add to the shelves of literature a new volume, instead of being confined to a single chapter or section, yet I am induced to bring the three into juxtaposition, because I shall thereby preserve the unities,—have a beginning in light, a middle in somewhat of gruffness, if not of gloom, and an end as glorious as the congregated beauty of a whole nation, together with divers importations, could make it.

It may be thought that the burning of a certain number of candles, the hanging up of a certain number of coloured lamps, and the displaying of a few ill-daubed transparencies, could contain no trait of national character; and that therefore it ought to find no place in these pages. But there was, perhaps, no one scene during the whole solemnity which brought out the character of the Scotch more decidedly than the illumination of Edinburgh upon the evening after that on which the King landed. The town of Leith had indeed been both very generally and very finely illuminated on the evening before; but that haughty spirit of the Athens which makes her bear herself somewhat saucily toward all her compatriot (or if you will, com-provosted) cities and towns in general, and towards poor Leith in particular,—that spirit which made them taunt Leith with the translated side of the inscription, in the morning, made them reckon it high treason against the majesty of the Athens to look at, or talk of, her illumination in the evening; and thus, although the thing was no doubt very fine, there were few to wonder, and still fewer to put that wonder upon record. When the Athens, however, hung out her physical lamps, the emblems of her metaphysical light, all came, all saw, and all admired. It was a novelty to me: the illumination was so general, the streets were so thronged, and the people were so orderly. No doubt, there were wanting that profusion of daubed transparencies, and dangling festoons, tagged with classic mottoes and allusions, ill-quoted and worse applied, which are found in other places; but here, again, his Majesty would have had cause to exclaim, that the nation by which he was surrounded were all ladies and gentlemen. Excepting at the public buildings, the houses of official persons, the apartments of clubs and societies, and the houses of a few private individuals, the abode of peer and burgher were illuminated in the same style, and with the same brilliance. I waive the details as to who hung up a crown in white lamps, or a thistle in green and red, or who took up their motto in Latin, in English, or in Gaelic. I do not even dwell upon the general effect; for though, on account of the situations in Edinburgh, the state of the weather, and the zeal of all classes of the people, that was as fine as possible,—it was the people themselves that were the sight. Natives and visiters, three hundred thousand of every rank, age, and sex, thronged the streets to such a degree, that it was difficult in many of them to get a sight either of the pavement or the carriage-way. This immense mass put one very much in mind of bees; their noise at any point was scarcely louder than the hum of those insects, and in their varied motions they clashed as little with each other. Instead of brawling and wrangling, which almost invariably take place on such occasions, the most elegant escaped without a stain, and the most feeble without a jostle. The accommodation which they afforded each other in their progress was truly remarkable: When one came to any of the elevations so frequent in the streets of Edinburgh, one saw nothing but human beings, thick and reeling as the leaves in an autumnal whirlwind; and yet, if one chose, one’s progress could be as rapid and almost as free of interruption as if the street had been deserted. I did not remark a face in the whole assemblage that did not express the feeling of being pleased itself, and the desire of communicating pleasure to all around it. Just as was the case on the day of his Majesty’s entry, the conduct of the people was the same as if they had been engaged in a solemn and felicitous act of religious worship.

While the inhabitants of the Athens and their visiters were thus rejoicing in the light which themselves had kindled, (a species of joy which, by the way, is peculiarly congenial to the said Athenians,) they whispered, as any unknown personage of sufficient size for a monarch moved through the crowd, that that personage could be none other than the king himself in disguise. Indeed, I am not sure but a considerable portion of that decorum which marked Edinburgh upon this occasion was owing to the apprehension which every body had that the royal eye might be upon them, without their knowing any thing about it; but whatever might be the operating principle, whether a sense of decorum, or national or personal pride, the effect was equally striking, and the merit perhaps equally great. But still, though the illumination, especially when the spirit of the people is taken into the account, was a fine show, still it was only a show, and a show in which the king, or even the Athens, in her peculiar capacity, took no part, and in which official men cut no more figure than the common herd.

With the levee it was otherwise: that was one of the grand acts for which the king had been invited to Scotland; and it is utterly impossible to form even an idea of the hopes that were built upon it. From the very first blush of the business, the regular, thorough-going tories, (which, in Scotland, mean those who will take any public employment, and pocket any public money, however improperly or dirtily got,) fancied that the whole consequence of the land was to be entwined around their capacious heads, and the whole wealth of it crammed into their more capacious pockets; and thus, they had given themselves airs, at which an Englishman would have been perfectly thunderstruck. A very respectable and very independent proprietor of the county of Fife told me that, a personage who had acted as tell-tale of their village during the war, and who, for a long time after the peace, continued to sell plots (perhaps at a handsome discount) to the crown lawyers of Scotland, until the ministry put an end to the unavailing traffic, would occasionally be found pacing over his estate, tasting the soil of the fields, and noting down what he was to have sown in each of them, after the king should have put him in possession.

The people were quite full of stories of this kind; and I have no doubt that the desire of seeing how these men of high loyalty and higher hopes would act, was one of the chief causes that brought so many provincial people to the Athens; and that the humiliation that these persons met with was, next to the joy at seeing each other happy, one of the greatest boasts that the whole affair yielded. Without a previous knowledge of the political system of Scotland,—the way in which the few vicegerents in the Athens gobble up the loaves and the fishes, how lesser men over the country snap at the crumbs; and how they all growl, and worry, and snarl at other folks, it is quite impossible to form an idea of the insolence by which the little men of office were actuated. As, however, I shall have to discuss this matter when I come to treat of the politics of the Athens, (for it is there that the centre and focus of the system exists,) it would be both premature and unintelligible to notice them here. Wherefore, I shall confine myself to what I saw and heard as touching the levee.

The night which preceded that eventful day was an anxious and unclosing one to the men of hope and of office, from all parts of Caledonia; and baron and bailie, parson, provost, and professor, great judge and small attorney, eloquent advocate and uneloquent scribe,—all that the land of heath, of herrings, and of black cattle, could produce, was, with proud but palpitating heart, bedecking and bedizening itself, in all sorts of dresses, official, courtly, and nondescript, in order that they might, in seemly array, kiss that Kaaba of all loyal men’s worship, (and who would not be a loyal man upon such an occasion,) the hand of a king. Three dukes, the same tale of marquesses, sixteen earls, a brace of viscounts, twenty-nine barons, a pair of right honourables, four great officers of state, sixteen judges of the land, twenty-two who were honourable, and eleven who lengthened the fag end of the Scottish household, were there. Besides seventy-seven baronets, twelve members of parliament, thirty-eight lords lieutenant, a hundred head of provosts, bailies, counsellors, and deacons, “after their kinds,” with as many parsons, professors, physicians, and pleaders, as were sufficient to convert, and cultivate, and cure, from plethora both of person and of purse, the whole British empire, together with military men, who had fought and who had not fought, proprietors or kinsmen of the soil, and burgesses, “simple persons,” swelled the amount to not fewer than two thousand persons, who had to pass in wonderful procession before the wondering king. When it was considered, that the whole of this mighty and motley squad, charged with addresses to the number of nearly a hundred, each more loyal and laboured than another, had to pass muster, and read, and retire, in the space of one brief hour, it was apparent that the official men of Scotland would have to dance about and deliver themselves with somewhat more of alacrity, and somewhat less of that slow profundity of bowing than is usually the case. Dreading that the addresses, from the importance of their contents, and the orthoËpal powers of the readers, would of themselves have consumed more than a day, it was wisely resolved, that the persons who were charged with them should continue enceinte of them till the Monday, upon which day they should be allowed to deliver themselves before the throne, or behind it in the closet, according to their several conditions and importance; and thus the mighty tide of the levee was undisturbed by any prosing from parchment, and undisconcerted by any uncouthness of provincial speech. The muster of beast-drawn vehicles was tremendous; and, though the magisterial equipages were reduced in their number of cattle, those which they contained never looked so big in their lives as when they were in progress to the levee, or so little as when they were fairly there. A grievous mishap befel their worships the under-magistrates of Glasgow: The ruler of that city, who never bought or sold any thing less than a bale of cotton or a basket of figs, could not be expected to ride in the same carriage with the bailies, many of whom were fain to vend a sixpenny handkerchief, or an ounce of caraway seeds; so two carriages were prepared, the foremost for his lordship, and the hindermost for their not-lordships. The provost entered his state-coach, and both carriages simultaneously sought their places in the line of procession; the line threaded its way to the Holyrood; the provost alighted with true magisterial dignity, and the door was opened to let the bailie train come forth of their wagon. They had vanished! “Whare are my bailie bodies?” exclaimed the provost; “I knew they were taking a bit bowl to keep their hearts aboon; but I didna reckon on their gettin’ fou upon sic an occasion as this!” His lordship, however, was instantly relieved by a dozen of chairmen, hurrying across the area, while a well-known voice was bawling from each chair, “Whare’s the right and honourable lord provost o’ the wast?” It would be endless to recount all the little accidents of this nature that rippled the swelling waves of official joy; but it would be unjust not to mention the wig and staff of Dundee’s principal and vice. The wig of the principal which, ungainly as it was, was the most wise-looking thing about him, had been put under the curling irons before day-break, and thus was burned and cauterized to the lining in sundry places. These had been skilfully repaired with court plaster of the most glossy black; and thus, in reply to sundry pityings of the lacerated head of the burgh, the official man was forced to make it known, that he was of peace-seeking disposition, and, instead of a broken head, had only got a burned wig. The staff of the vice was a matter yet more serious. It had a diamond head, and the wearer, when at home, contrived to poke it under his left arm so skilfully, that it shone by all the world like the star of the order of the golden calf, at the button-hole of some foreign knight. The worshipful gentleman never dreamt that he would be prevented from bearing this splendid and symbolic staff into the presence of the King, and thus, in as far as stars were concerned, vying in magnitude with the Monarch himself; but he was sadly disappointed, had to leave the sacred cudgel in charge of the cook at Mackay’s Hotel, and thus grope his way to the royal presence as grim as a dark lantern.

Nothing could exceed in breadth of humour, the countenances of many of Scotland’s important sons, as they came, with eyes and mouth set wide to worship and to wonder, into the presence-chamber. Not a few of them, when they raised their “leaden eyes that loved the ground,” in lack-lustre astonishment, from the drab-coloured drugget which had been nailed down by Mr. Trotter as fit carpeting for their feet, beheld more kings than were exhibited to Banquo in the wizard glass. As is not unfrequent with men whose wits are neither great, nor altogether at home, not a few of them mistook the right one; and the portly Sir William Curtis, who was “dressed in tartan sheen,” with a kilt marvellously scant in its longitude, and dangling a bonnet, in which was displayed a grey goose feather of the largest size, took the edge off the loyalty of a full third; while his great grace of Montrose, who was drudging at the honours of the day, monopolized another, leaving only thirty-three and one-third per cent. of the loyalty of Scotland to be inflicted directly upon the King. It is needless to tell how brief were the salutations: there were two thousand persons who had to make their entrÉe, their bow, and their exit, in about a hundred minutes, which was, as nearly as possible, one second to each act of each person; and thus, however discordant might be the bearing of the different bodies, the unity of time was admirably preserved. The ceremony came upon them like an electric shock, or rather they came upon it as moths come upon the flame of a candle,—a buz, a singe of the wings, and down they dropt into insignificance. “Hech, Sirs!” said a brawny yeoman from the kingdom of Fife, as he attempted in vain to squeeze his minimum of opera hat upon his maximum of skull,—“Hech, Sirs! but its quick wark this! We might hae gotten a snuff wi’ him at ony rate;” and, as he strode across the court, and found himself fairly without the great gate, he fumbled over his head-piece with his paws, saying, “I’m thankfu’ that it’s upo’ my shouthers after a’!” Those who attended the civic authorities, who stuck to each other as closely as if they had been in their council-chambers at home, wore faces of the most broad and boundless delight; for, of the men of more ample calibre, the tories looked blank, because they were elbowed and perhaps outnumbered by the whigs in the presence of the King. Some of the clods of the valley lost themselves in the long galleries and cold corridors of the Holyrood; and, after all was over, and the fatigued Monarch had retired to Dalkeith, a few of them were heard at the windows bawling, like Sterne’s Starling, “I can’t get out.” So ended the levee; and the King and the people rested for the sabbath without any thing of remarkable occurrence.

On Monday the hearts of the address men were lifted higher than ever; and, as the rapid and dumb show in which they passed before the King on Saturday, had taken off the first and deepest blush of their bashfulness, they went to the court in very masterly style: foremost, were a hundred ministers of the Scotch kirk, supported by about fifty ruling elders of the same; who, having met in solemn conclave in the Canon-gate church, said to be the most composing and soporific in all Edinburgh, they moved “dark as locusts o’er the land of Nile” across the sanctuary, not of churchmen but of insolvent debtors, approached the presence, bowed themselves with more than priestly reverence, and, by the mouth of David Lamont, D.D., their moderator, poured the honey and the oil of their adulation into the royal ear. Spirit of John Knox, wert thou then on the watch! and didst thou mark the silken cords in which thy degenerate sons were drawn to bend the knee before an earthly Monarch! Yes, how wouldst thou have exclaimed that the gold of the zeal of thy church had become dim, and the fine gold of its independence had changed, if thou hadst heard thy backsliding children tempering their temporizing address with the miry clay of earthly politics, calling the King “the bulwark of the church,” and promising to labour, not for the conversion of sinners, or for the glory of Him whom thou didst account the only Head of the church, but “to impress upon the people committed to their care, a high sense of the invaluable blessings of the glorious and happy constitution?” But, boldest spirit of the reformation, be not offended,—Think on the difference of the times. The times in which your earthly lot was cast, were times of wrestling and of reformation,—they required the heart of steel, the eye that turns not aside, and the hand which is never slackened; but the lines of thy followers have fallen in pleasant places, they have become full of the fatness of the earth, and therefore they recline at their ease under the refreshing shadow of temporal power.

After the Scottish kirk, came, laden with wisdom, the members of the four Scottish universities; and this having been done, the remaining individuals and classes of men who were charged with courtly sayings, disburthened themselves in the closet behind the throne; and the paper thus accumulated, having been deposited for use, this act of the drama closed, leaving less upon the memory than had been anticipated.

The monarch having thus opened a levee for the honour of his Scottish subjects generally, and allowed her official men to drop their honeyed papers and parchments at the court and in the closet,—having devoted two whole days to the hard hands of country lairds, and the greasy lips of parsons and bailies, it was naturally to be concluded, that he would be pretty well saturated of salutation from the men of Scotland, and long for the approach of Scottish women, as the traveller, in the sandy desert, longs for the green spot and the glassy spring. Nor could the desire have been wholly confined to his majesty. The anxiety of the Scottish fair was bent, like the bow of Diana when the arrow is drawn to the barbs; their preparations, positive and negative, for this high honour, had been long, laborious and self-denying; and they were not without feeling that four whole days should not have interposed their twelve-month-looking-lengths between the sight and salutation of their King. It is true, that in Scotland generally, and in the Athens in particular, woman, that grand barometer of civilization, has of late risen many degrees. The time has not long gone by, at which females were mere beasts of burden in rural affairs, and young girls were in many places obliged to ply as ferry-boats. I myself have seen half a score of stout and sinewy Highlanders lying snuffing upon a hillock of manure, while their wives and daughters were bearing heavy baskets of the same to the fields, while all that the lords of the creation condescended to do was to fill the baskets; and I have been—no, I have not been, I was only offered to be—carried across sundry Highland rivers, upon the shoulders of the fairest nymphs which adorned their banks. But the Athens has got the better of all this, and her daughters have not only reduced the tyranny of their husbands to “flytings” and frailties, but have learned to pay them back with interest even in these. Thus the delay which had taken place in consequence of the grand parade of the men, and the small extra drill of the official men, by no means tended to lessen the commodity of curtain-lectures. There were other causes of vexation: the means by which a sufficiency of beauty had been procured were more precious than permanent; the delay of hope not only made the heart sick, but tended to pucker the skin, and, what was more vexatious than all, these careful dames, after they had trimmed themselves for the royal salute, would submit themselves to the salutation of no mere man in the interim. Wherefore, if any casualty had prevented this glorious feast, or even protracted it, the primum mobile of the city might have stood still, and the Athens might have been the Athens no more.

It being the only time during a century and a half, at the least, when the daughters of Scotia have had the flattering opportunity of flaunting their trains, flourishing their plumes, bowing in the presence of Majesty, and, finally, giving their cheeks to the glory and honour of the royal basial salutation,—and certainly the only time when a native royal drawing-room has been held in Scotland, since she had either much wealth or population to display,—it is not to be wondered at, that it produced corresponding anxiety among the fair. A random female here and there may, no doubt, have been in the royal presence, and there may be one or two cheeks which have before been made happy by the royal impress; but the greater, by far the greater part of the roses and lilies of Scotland were, up to this happy 21st of August, 1822, in virgin, but pitiable, ignorance of so much honour. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the preparations of this eventful day had their sources remote in the past, and the hopes of the fair ones groped their way far into the future; and if they had not made themselves gay upon the occasion, it would have been alien alike to the honour of their country and the disposition of the sex. Morning, noon, and night, had accordingly been spent at the mirror, and many a projection has been squeezed, and furrow smoothed, in order that for “Scotland’s glory,” and their own, they might appear as splendid, as gay, and as bewitching as possible, in the presence of their King and his nobles, and their own admirers. All this was most laudable; and as the fair ones, with their eyes, their candles, and their mirrors, literally frightened the reign of “old Night,” they merited forgiveness though they encouraged a little of that of “Chaos.”

So much of the fire of Scotland’s moral electricity, moving in such prime conductors, could not be supposed to confine either itself or its effects to the earth. Ere grey dawn, the sky wept at the eclipse of so many of its moons and stars by the radiance of the Venuses and Lunas of the Athens rising to their culmination; and, as it had not recovered in the morning, there was somewhat of pains-taking and pouting ere the coaches and chairs could receive the whole of their delectable burthens. Still, however, the ceremony was one which could not be put off, and so the ocean-swell of beauty collected, and nathless the drizzling rain, poured its eager tide toward the palace. When they arrived at the entrÉe-room, some of the colloquies which they held with each other were not a little amusing. If I could judge from the general strain of what I heard of them, the kiss—the downright and bona fide smack at royalty, without any of the leaven even of suspicion in it, was the thing which pleased them the most. Each was making sure too, (for there is a wonderful foresight in the women of Scotland as well as in the men,) that the jealousy which this high honour would excite, would procure a goodly harvest of future salutation. Some female Humes (not in name but in nature,) were propounding “sceptical doubts” upon the subject; and stating, with tears in their eyes, and terror on their brows, their apprehension, that it would be “but a sham after a’.”

One great object with the Caledonian fair seemed to be to prevent, as much as they could, the possibility of the ceremony’s being bungled, through the youth or inexperience of those who were to apply it. It had indeed been rumoured that the King hated all lips but such as had been mellowed by the suns, and mollified by the frosts, of forty seasons, and that young girls, as smelling of bread and butter, were peculiarly offensive to the royal organs; whereupon it was said, that the young maidens of Scotland were enjoined to abstain from the ceremony altogether, and that the full grown ones abstained from bread and butter during the whole period of their drill.

In consequence, while there never was a royal drawing-room so fresh and new in the dresses and ignorance of the fair attendants, there never perhaps was one in which the appearance of those attendants themselves was more sage and matured. Every lonely tower, in a remote glen, around whose grey battlements the hollow wind had whistled, “Nobody coming to marry me,” for more returnings of the falling leaf than it would be seemly to mention, poured forth its tall and time-learned damsels,—erewhile as grey as its walls, but now as green as the lichen with which they are incrusted, and as gorgeous as the sun whose beams find out the old tower the more easily, and gild them the more copiously, in proportion to the leaflessness of all around. With those mingled the dowagers and despairers of George’s Square, upon the thresholds of whose doors, and the graves of whose hopes, the grass had for more than moons waxed green apace. Nor were there wanting a few of somewhat more juvenile an aspect; abundance of manoeuvring dames, who had exposed the precious wares of their own manufacture at all the marts and bazaars in the island; with other languishing and loving ladies whose number it were difficult to count.

But, in their zeal to suit the royal taste in the maturity of the greater part of the muster, they had rather overshot the mark. If the tale of that taste says sooth, the word “forty,” which is to be found in every country, and which, in single dignity and desire, is found more abundantly in Scotland, and especially in the Athens, than in any country, is preceded by the words “fat and fair,” which, in that land, and pre-eminently in that city, are among the desiderata. Hence, there perchance was never collected before a pair of royal eyes so many tall, gaunt, and ungainly figures, and never offered to the salutation of a pair of royal lips, so many sunken and sinewy cheeks. In their costumes, they were uncommonly splendid: sweeping trains of white satin, over spangled robes of various fancies, (in nowise emblematical of “white without and spotted within,”) were the predominant costumes; and, in number and in magnitude, the plumes of feathers which waved and nodded above, might have furnished all the beds, bolsters, and pillows, to the court of Og, the giant king of Bashan. In the dresses, too, there were all the advantage of contrast with the wearers: the one were as fresh and as new as the others were furrowed and old. And this did not escape the discriminating eye of the King, who, though he prudently abstained from all commendation on the score of beauty, was copious on that of cleanliness.

In their previous estimate of the royal taste, they had not calculated with their usual wisdom. To the more sage and skinny dames, the appulse was so slight and so brief, that before the agitation was over, the impression was gone; and, of the whole that attended, only one little and lovely girl could boast of a palpable and positive kiss.

I could not help being struck with the extreme solemnity of the whole. There was none of that jaunty lightness of step, and that soft and flexible twining of body, which I have remarked on similar occasions in other places. The whole moved on, solemn and erect, as though it had been the Scotch Greys approaching to a charge, or the Forty-second to a crossing of bayonets. Their features expressed intelligence in many instances, and pride in all, but I saw not such that I could call beauty. Their looks were highly characteristic: they were staid even to demureness, and they sailed toward the state apartment without a single movement of the eyes, or any thing which could be called a smile upon the countenance. Never perhaps did so great and so mingled an assembly of females display so much modesty,—modesty too which was not the modesty of subdued fire, but that of coal which seemed capable of resisting all powers of ignition. In the elder ones, the mouth had a character which no one could overlook: the days of labour which had been spent in giving plumpness to the lip were, in a great measure, rendered unavailing, by the force with which the corners of the mouth were drawn back, and the firmness with which its thread-like furnishings were brought together. It seemed indeed that they had been anxious to bring as much of this commodity to the solemnity, and set it apart as exclusively as possible for the use of their sovereign; for, fearful of deficiency in plumpness and breadth, they had laboured to make up for it in an extension of length; and two deep and decided curves, hedged it in, as though for the time it had been parenthetical,—set apart to the service of the King, and fortified by fosse and rampart against all the rest of the world.

The space which could be allotted to each for the doing of a salutation was excessively brief; and what with the solemnity of the ladies, and the scowling of the heavens, it had more the air of a funeral procession than of a festive assembly. When it was over, or perhaps a little before, the daughters of Caledonia found out, that though they could be gorgeous at a drawing-room, they could not be gay. They did not indeed look like “fishes out of the water;” but they looked like fishes that had never been in it. It was so novel in itself, and they had so exhausted themselves in the preparation, that the parade itself was gloomy; and though it furnished abundant evidence of the existence of high talents and higher pride among them, it also afforded proof that time and change would neither be idle nor in haste, if they were to be thoroughly prepared for gliding and glittering at court.

Themselves and their male relatives seemed indeed to have been aware of this,—to have known that there was another and more appropriate arena for the displaying of them to advantage; and, though it had not been set forth in the gazette, I could have discovered, from the looks of speculation that were quietly exchanged in the proximity, and even in the presence of majesty, that there would be a chapter of the Highland fling. Those tender telegraphings were as new to me as any part of the proceedings; and they led me to observe the unique and characteristic nature of a modern Athenian ogle.

The Athenian damsels, or dames, as it happens, cannot have so many of the soft propensities of the flesh as their more plump neighbours of the south, not having so much flesh wherein the same may be contained; but, from all that I could discover, they have not, upon the whole, less of the mater amoris in them; and being a more firm and substantial matter—more “bred in the bones” as it were, it is perchance more deep and more durable. Thus, while the dimple of an English cheek tells its soft tale of love, the jutting angle of an Athenian cheek-bone hints at the same; and there is often more amatory demonstration in a single Caledonian wrinkle, than in all the blushes of the most blooming dame southward of the Tweed. The extreme vigilance, too, with which the ladies of the Athens watch each other, and especially the cat-like lurkings which the plain and decaying have for those who have more of the species and are more in the season of bloom, gives a wariness to the character of every woman within that metropolis, and makes even the most accredited and creditable love an affair of mystery and intrigue. If a gentleman is detected walking with or speaking civilly to one lady, eyes, from loop-holes of which he dreams not, are instantly upon him, and the affair is handed about from coterie to coterie, as a marriage, or as something worse; while, if he is seen with two or more, he is a Don Juan of the first magnitude, and they, “poor dear lost things, are—very much to be pitied indeed.” So far as I know, they have no tendency to pity themselves in such cases; but this may be the very reason why they have so much of it to spare to their neighbours.

This propensity could not be restrained even by the counter-excitation of the royal presence; and while everybody upon whom the King was pleased to smile at the shows (and he was graciously pleased to smile upon a great number) was pitied, or, as it might have been, envied, as the object of regal flirtation, those blowsy country sisters and cousins, whom awkward accountants and spruce scribes kept lumbering along the streets upon the resting days, were, in the bitterness of the Athenian anguish, set down as spouses soon to be.

A handsome young gentleman from the south, whose form promised love, and whose appearance bespoke the wherewithal to support it, had brought down his mother and three sisters to amuse themselves, and see the sights. The matron, though her family were come to what are in the Athens termed the “years of discretion,” has still as much bloom as half a score of the six-flight-of-stairs virginity of that city; and, it so happened, that there was no family resemblance either in form or features among the young people. The gentleman appeared at one place with his mother, at another place with one or other of his sisters, sometimes with two, and sometimes with the whole; and the quantity of speculation, and wonder, and pity, and lamentation, which his so appearing excited, would have drained the tears, and exhausted the words of fifty Jeremiahs.

All those circumstances are enough, and more than enough, to impose upon the amatory signals of the Athenians a closeness and caution, of which those who live in a more free and liberal state of society can form no conception; and while they thus force the people to put on the semblance of intrigue where there is no necessity for it, they at the same time forward the reality of intrigue in cases of which perhaps scarcely another people would dream; and thus, in consequence of the very rigour of the external laws of decorum, the Athenians are, perchance, in fact and in secret, the most indecorous in the whole island of Great Britain,—the which would lead one fond of scandal and of similies to conclude, that the white trains and the spangled robes were not chosen in vain; but I am a novice in both, and therefore I shall say nothing about the matter.

The exhibition of faces and forms, and the actual contact with royalty, not being sufficient either to show off or to satisfy the ladies of Scotland, they resolved to make the general attack upon the King with their heels; and, as the Athens contained no hall ample enough for showing off the whole at once, and further, as the same parties might be shown off twice under different appellations, once as the planets of the peerage, and again as the comets of Caledonia, the assembly rooms in George Street were destined to be twice trodden by the same feet, in the two enactings of the Peers’ ball, and the Caledonian ball. These were not consecutive; but it will be no great anachronism to bring them together.

The Peers’ ball took place in the assembly rooms, on the evening of Friday the 23d of August; and, as there the people were more at home, and more employed than in the merely state ceremonies, its effect was at once more pleasing and more characteristic.

The portico of the rooms was tastefully illuminated, the columns being wreathed, and the pediments outlined, with golden-tinted lamps,—the emblems of royalty shining in the centre. The pillars in the ante-room were twined with flowers, surmounted by emblematical tablets, over which the dome glowed with coloured lights. The principal room, tea-room, and refectory, were very handsome: the first had a platform and throne, covered with crimson; the second was ornamented with paintings, in water-colour; and the third was well stored with viands. The whole was simple, but there was an air of freshness, neatness, and good taste about it. At rather an early hour, say eight o’clock, the elegantes began to pour in, and the people to throng to the adjoining street, in order to catch a glimpse of their fair forms and nodding plumes. By nine o’clock, the rooms were completely filled, and the downy feathers which now reeled to and fro in mid air, with the mingling darker lines of the other sex, and the sheen of tartan and gold lace, and ribbon, and star, and spangle, waved “like wave with crest of sparkling foam.” If Scotland had honour from the general appearance and conduct of the people upon this occasion, she had glory in her daughters. If they had not the light heart and laughing eye of the daughters of the south, they were fully equal to them in dignity and intellectual beauty. Their dresses were elegant rather than splendid, and their movements had perhaps as much of stateliness as of grace. The sustained and chastened joy which they all displayed, and the keen glance of intellect and national pride, which mingled with their mirth, threw an interest over it, which is unknown in lands of lighter skies, and warmer suns. The noblemen and gentlemen were in every variety of dress (meaning, of course, every elegant variety). The duke of Hamilton was splendidly attired in the Douglas tartan. And Mac Cailin Mhor was most conspicuous in the broad bands of the Sliabh nan Diarmid. The chiefs, too, were in their various tartans; but Sir William appeared in a plain court suit, abandoning the applying of “the kelt aËrial to his Anglian thighs,” with as much care as he would watch not to let “lignarian chalice, filled with oats, his orifice approach.” His majesty came at half after nine, just when the rooms were in the height of their splendour. He was greeted with a cheer by the people outside, and most respectfully received by those within. He remained about an hour, and then retired. Immediately after his departure, the company passed to the supper-room by sections, but without any distinction of rank.

I detail not the dancing, of which, by the way, there was much less than of promenading; but, in general, they were national enough, to “eschew both waltz and quadrille, and addict themselves to the good old orthodox fling.” In this their favourite and characteristic movement, they showed equal firmness of foot and flexture of limb; and though the room thinned a little upon his majesty’s departure, the evolutions were continued till full three hours beyond the “keystane o’ night’s black arch,” and thus, according to every canon of witchery, the charms of the ladies were overpowering and triumphant. Notwithstanding the great concourse of people, and the closeness with which they were wedged together, there was no confusion; and though a guard of cavalry was in readiness, it was not in the slightest degree required.

The Caledonian Hunt ball, which followed some evenings afterwards, had little of novelty in it, further than that the hunters were habited in a new uniform of royal invention; and that a sort of cage of brass wire permitted the whole wondering and waltzing charms of Scotland to view the King; and at the same time prevented them from pressing upon him with that ardent closeness which had oppressed and overheated the royal person upon the former occasion. This ball closed what may be considered as the exhibition of the King to the people of Scotland generally; and with it, I shall close this long Section.

THE PILGRIMAGE, THE FEAST, THE CHURCHING, AND THE THEATRE.

“March! march! pinks of election.”—Old Song.
“Now the King drinks to Hamlet.”—Shakspeare.
“The sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with.”—Isaiah.

——“The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”—

Shakspeare.

In the preceding Sections of this Chapter, I have given a skeleton of all those acts of the royal drama, in which the whole people of Scotland were supposed to take a part, and in which the Athens had no farther peculiar concern than as her locality furnished the scene, and the pride of her leading men (and women) thrust them forward among the actors. In this Section I shall have to notice those doings of which I have just cited the titles, and which may be considered as more particularly expressing the spirit, or, if you will, displaying the form of the Athens herself. In treating of these, I shall be able to be more brief, not because they ought to be considered as at all inferior in interest, but because, under other forms and titles, they will have again to come under review.

The pilgrimage from the Holyrood to the castle, and by Princes Street back to the Holyrood, seemed, to judge from the state of the weather, to be peculiarly alarming or offensive to the “prince of the power of the air,” as well as to the monarch of the British isles. In all the former doings there had been something beyond the mere parading in the street. The procession from Leith was a matter of necessity, and furthermore it was exceedingly novel and interesting in itself; the levee, the court, and the drawing-room, were part of the usual machinery of the state; the court before the throne, and the closet behind, for the receipt of addresses, “according to their generations,” were what the addressing parties could not have been happy without, and though these had been disappointed of the honours and rewards which they had fondly expected would result at the time, yet they fondly hoped that they had “done a do” which would lead to great things in the sequel; and even the dances had brought folks together, and might also have their fruits thereafter; but that the King should be drawn along the whole length of the Cannon-gate and High Street, work his way through the ugly gates and awkward passages to the half-moon battery of the castle, then pull off his hat, give three cheers in concert with the bawlings of the crowd, and then go back to Holyrood by a more circuitous route, was so profound a piece of wisdom,—so much a masterstroke of the good taste of the Great Unknown, and the sage politics of the Athenian tories, as to be by much too deep even for royal comprehension. It seemed too, that none of those counsellors which the King had taken with him from England could fathom its profundity. Sir William Curtis indeed pleaded the lord mayor of London’s pilgrimages to Kew and Rochester Bridge, as being precedents exactly in point; but those who knew the etiquette of courts better, scouted all precedents which could originate within Temple Bar,—partly, because they originate with those who arrogate to themselves the power of closing that gaping portal against the King, and, partly, because nothing possessed in the city is at all acceptable but its money. The King himself scouted the pilgrimage as a piece of idle foolery: declared, that he had seen the assembled people in his progress to the palace; that he had received the noblemen, gentlemen, official men, and addressing men, at levees and courts; that he had sustained a general attack of the ladies at the drawing-room, and sundry particular attacks at the dances; and that, if his Scottish subjects were not yet satisfied with gazing at him, he would hold other levees and other drawing-rooms, till the humblest boors, burghers, and baillies, with their wives, should pass muster before him, provided it were done as a King ought to do such things, in his state apartments at Holyrood; but, that to have him shown along the streets, as they would show an elephant or a prize ox, would be a degradation both to himself and his subjects. Having, as was said, expressed himself thus, he sped away for Dalkeith with even more than wonted alacrity, wishing that he could be permitted to spend his days in a way somewhat more agreeable to good sense and his own inclinations.

The pilgrimage had, however, been resolved on, and those bodies which it was judged expedient that the King should wonder at, in their collective capacities, had clubbed their half-guineas, and erected their booths along the whole line of the High Street; and as all this had been done without consulting the King, it was resolved to boo and beseech him into compliance. The King, who had previously known the persevering nature of the political “seekers” of the Athens, judged that the easiest way would be to comply with their request, although, during the whole pilgrimage, I thought he appeared to feel that what his politeness had made him content to do, could add nothing to his kingly dignity.