Chapter III (2)

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 manœuvring 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.

By this time I had become so little apprehensive of arrowless bows, and dirks never intended to be unsheathed, and so much accustomed to tartans and tails, that I pushed myself into the very centre of the procession; and as there was nothing better I could do, I contrived, by putting a bold face upon it, and huzzaing, as well to demonstrate my loyalty as to keep myself warm in the rain, to proceed to the rampart of the half-moon battery, close by the side of the King.

As this was the occasion upon which the _people_ of the Athens were to make their nearest approach to their Sovereign, the preparations for it were correspondingly general. Notwithstanding the unpropitiousness of the morning, the streets, booths, windows, and house-tops, were thronged at an early hour. The members of all the trades, corporations, and friendly societies, came pressing to the line of the progression by about eleven, and formed a double line for the progress, each well-dressed, and armed with a white wand; behind them, in varied phalanx, was that part of the _posse comitatus_ which could not afford to pay for windows or seats, and here and there stood a special constable, or Fifeshire yeoman, mounted. Outside, the ten-storied houses of the High Street were tapestried with human faces; and to prevent disturbance, all the cross-streets were filled by cavalry. About one, the procession began to form in the area of Holyrood, and the progress commenced a little after two. The procession was formed of nearly the same individuals who composed that on the King’s landing, and they held nearly the same places. There was one addition, however, which excited a good deal of interest: the ancient regalia of Scotland, the _crown_, said to have been made for the Bruce and thus doubly dear as a national relic, and the sceptre and sword of state. The regalia were borne immediately in front of the royal carriage. First, the sword of state, borne by the Earl of Morton, in lord-lieutenant’s uniform; then the Sceptre, by the Hon. John Morton Stuart, second son to the Earl of Moray; and last, the crown, by the Duke of Hamilton, in right of the Earldom of Angus.

During the whole progress along the High-Street it rained, and thus the spectacle was a good deal injured; but still, the immense crowd of people, their orderly conduct, their happy faces, the immense height at which some of them were posted, the gorgeous array of the cavalcade, and, as much as any thing, the antique grandeur of the street, had a fine effect. The King was every where greeted by shoutings, not loud, but sustained; and he conducted himself with dignity. Next to the King, the object of attention was the Duke of Hamilton, who was cheered along the whole line, partly on his own account, and partly from his carrying the ancient symbol of Scottish independence. It was well that the first time that symbol was borne publicly in the streets of the Scottish capital, after having been missing for a century, should have been in the hands of a nobleman who feels for, and supports the remnant of that independence. The robes of the Lord Lyon were so fine, and his coronet so showy, that he was by many of the people mistaken for the King; nor did the beautiful black barb which bore the Knight Mareschal want his due share of admiration.

Upon the King’s leaving the Cannon-gate, and passing the building where, in English, in Latin, and in Greek, is recorded the escape of John Knox from assassination, several buxom and well-dressed damsels scattered flowers in the street, the music in the mean time playing the King’s Anthem. The Tron-kirk and St. Giles’ successively tingled their bells, and every thing demonstrated the satisfaction of the people. The _bodies_ which had their booths about St. Giles’ now did reverence, and lifted their voices just as his Majesty was passing over the spot which long groaned beneath the mass of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. When the King had arrived at the Castle-Hill, the procession turned aside, and he passed between the assembled _counties_, who were very fervent in their demonstrations of joy. He alighted on a platform covered with crimson, received the keys from the Governor, returned them, walked over the draw-bridge with a few of his train, was received there by the grenadiers of the 66th, entered his carriage, (all his attendants on foot,) and drove to the Half-Moon battery, where, from a platform erected for the occasion, it was hoped that he would have enjoyed a _coup-d’œil_ of the whole loyalty and beauty of Edinburgh.

The day, however, was very unfavourable, a fog shrouded the city, and it rained heavily; still, the King stood up, waved his hat, and spoke to the people, while the cannon from the lower batteries of the Castle, and from the Calton-Hill, and Salisbury Craggs, told the news. Dark as was the scene, it was most sublime. Through one opening of the clouds, one could catch a glimpse of Arthur’s Seat; through another, the smoke of a cannon from the Craggs, and through a third, some tower or turret of the city. Among these, by the way, the finest is the monument erected in St. Andrew’s-Square, to the late Lord Melville. It is a fluted Doric column, with a rich base and capital, and most appropriately surmounted by a bee-hive, in testimony, doubtless, of the countless friends and relatives for whom the noble lord had the means of providing. When the King had escaped from the pleasure of this inspection, he filed off for Dalkeith-House, and the _pecus_, who had been ducked and delighted, retired to evaporate the external moisture by moisture within. The _plebs_ of different places have different modes of expressing their joy or their grief; those of the Athens, whatever be their rank or denomination, and whether in weal or in woe, close the most social as well as the most sad of their exhibitions, by pouring out a drink-offering, and pouring it out abundantly.

I must now say something of that act of the royal drama in which the official and loyal men of Scotland gave, before the King, ocular demonstration of how substantially they could eat, and how copiously they could drink. Eating and drinking are, in all civilized countries, and more especially, perhaps, in the British dominions, so closely allied with loyalty, that the bason and the bowl would perhaps be its most appropriate symbols. Corporations have ever been pre-eminent for those demonstrations of support to the throne; and as the Athenian corporation is pre-eminent among corporations in the northern part of this island, so the feastings of that corporation have ever been the fullest and the fattest.

A feast of the corporation of the Athens is a thing altogether different from a feast of the corporation of London. In both places it is, no doubt, more sentient than sentimental; and the belly must be put to sleep ere the soul be awakened to heroic deeds; but a feast of the corporation of London is, notwithstanding all its abundance, a merely plebeian thing,--it emanates from the people, is partaken of by the people, and if royal or courtly persons be there, they are in the humble attitude of guests. It is a matter, in short, not only different from, but in opposition to, those cold collations which obtain in the kingly circles; and it is calculated to inspire the people more with sentiments of independence, and a consciousness of their own worth, than with that bowing down of the honour for the sake of rising in office, and that beggaring of the heart for the sake of filling the purse with the gains of office, which invariably accompany banquets of exclusive loyalty. The feastings of the Athenian corporation, on the other hand, are feastings which the people do not originate, and of which they are not allowed to partake. They are of two kinds,--which may be distinguished as well as characterized by the two epithets of “dinners of the flagon,” and “dinners of the scrip;” the former having reference to nothing else than the filling of the belly, the latter having an ultimate view to the replenishing of the purse. The feast of the flagon is by much the more ancient; it is characteristic of the whole genus of corporation men; and it is because they have a much greater propensity to feed the flesh than either to cultivate or to exercise the understanding, that corporations are every where denominated _bodies_,--as much as to say, that though they may have souls, these are not worth taking into the account. In ancient times, when kings held their regular courts in Scotland, and when these eclipsed all that could be done by the delegated moons of the Athenian corporation, that corporation had the same leaning toward the people which other corporations near the seat of royalty are supposed to possess, and in those days the feast of the flagon was almost the only one known to the corporation men of the Athens. Now, however, as the royal household in Scotland has become a mere cipher, and since the second-hand vessels into which the delegation of the royal authority has been poured have become such as not easily to be contaminated by any association, the feasts of the scrip--a sort of clubbing of stomachs and of tongues among all the Attic worthies, have come into use, more and more in proportion as the times have been more and more trying and troublesome, and the price of the expression of loyalty has been enhanced, upon the ground of its alleged scarcity;--since this has been the case, a complete separation has taken place even in the feasts of the flagon, between the corporated bodies and the uncorporated spirits of the Athens; and in this the “bodies” have found ample compensation, in the greater frequency of their own peculiar gastronomizings, as well as in the tagging of themselves to the tails of the Lord-President, the Lord-Advocate, and the Lord knows who--keeper for the time being of the secret influence of Scotland,--who at all times form the tripod upon which the incense-pot of Scottish loyalty is sustained.

No better idea of the nature and occasions of the feasts of the flagon can be given than the well-known one of the bell-rope of the Tron Kirk. For many years, a bell, which had been carefully cracked lest the sound of it should disturb the official men, whose evening retreats were deeply buried in the different closes, was tolled at the tenth hour of every night to warn the populace from the streets, for fear they should interrupt the march of that puissant corps of the city-guard, who paraded the streets after that hour with bandy legs and battle-axes, to conduct such of the lieges as could afford to pay for it to any place of amusement they had a mind to visit. Nightly exercise had worn the rope by which this bell was put in motion: it broke one evening, and fell upon the head of a bailie who was passing, rebounded from that without doing any damage, but floored an Athenian damsel who was under his worship’s protection. This was, of course, not to be borne; wherefore, a council was summoned, and a feast of the flagon ordered; and when they had made themselves happy, they resolved to adjourn till that day se’nnight, at which time they were to meet and feast again, and receive estimates as to the expense of purchasing a new rope and of splicing the old one. Having dined a second time, they read the estimates, which were half-a-crown for the new rope, and eighteen pence for splicing the old. A matter of so much importance could not be settled at one meeting of council; wherefore, a second adjournment and a third dinner were resolved upon. After that third dinner, the tavern-bill, thirty-three pounds, six shillings, and eight pence, for each of the three dinners, and the two estimates as aforesaid, were laid upon the table. The treasurer of the city was ordered first to pay the tavern-bill, and then to give orders that the old rope should be spliced, because that would be a saving of the public revenue, of which as faithful stewards, they ought to be provident. The feasts of the scrip, again, are different,--bearing a great resemblance to those associations of placemen, parsons, and public stipendiaries, who from time to time meet all over the country, and spend the price of a dinner with the same intention, and to the same effect, that a farmer sprinkles grain in the furrows of his field,--that in due time it may yield an abundant increase. During the war, no sooner was a victory heard of, than away flew those supporters of the Crown to a tavern, bumpered and bawled, till their loyalty and every thing else appeared double, and then trotted off to beg a share of the honour and emolument. If a tax or a scarcity pressed sore upon the people, those persons were at their dining again, partly with a view of diminishing the quantity of provision that might fall into the hands of the enemy; partly because themselves are ever more courageous in their cups; and partly because a report of their doings at a dinner would sound much better than a report of their doings any where else.

Men who had thus from time immemorial rested not only their civic and their political importance, but almost their civic and political existence, upon their capacity for dining, in whom it was most likely the greatest wisdom to do so, could not be expected to let his Majesty eat his venison and drink his _Glenlivet_ (which unfortunately had been both furnished by a Whig) at his ease in Dalkeith-House, but would needs have him see with his own eyes with what zeal they could cut into a buttock of beef, and with what alacrity they could drain a goblet of wine, for the glory and the establishment of his throne. Accordingly, as the following Sunday would be a day of rest, the civic and other authorities in the Athens resolved that a feast of fat things should be furnished forth in the great hall of the Athenian Parliament House, upon Saturday the 24th of August. In preparing the hall for this occasion, not only had the whole of the Athens been spoiled of its decorations, but they had been forced to borrow largely at all the loyal houses in the vicinity. And as it was in old times the custom for every guest at the humbler Scottish parties to be provided with his own spoon, his own knife, and his own pair of five-pronged forks, so upon the present occasion it might be said, that each noble or loyal visiter lent his ice-pail or his pepper-box. This hall, which is as it were the vital principle of the Athens, the place where the tongues of all her speakers are loosed, the pockets of all her quibblers filled, the curiosity of all her gossips gratified, and the eyes and wishes of all her fair directed--was made more gay than ordinary for the occasion; and in the selection of guests, so far as that could be controlled, care was taken that none should be present who could in any wise eclipse in wisdom, or in elegance, the loyal lords of Scotland and of the Athens. Feasting, however motley and contrasted the feasters, is not a subject to be written about, but, as is perhaps the case with music and with painting, it is a mere matter of temporary sensation. Still, however, those who know the strange materials out of which an Athenian corporation is formed, (and I shall tell those who do not know by and by,) can easily conceive what an ungainly breadth of delight the lower extremities of that corporation would feel in being allowed to gorge themselves till their buttons were starting again, in the very presence of the King. It was pleasing for them, too, to hear the notes of flutes and fiddles issuing from those crypts and holes about the hall whence no sounds are accustomed to issue but the dronings of the law. The King, with his selected (I am not bound to say select) guests, had a sort of line of partition, but all “below the salt,” there seemed to be no law of aggregation. The man who had fought at almost every degree of the earth’s circumference sat in close juxtaposition with him who had warred merely with words; he who had done what in him lay to pull down the glory of the old Athens, was amid those who would copy that glory for the new; the sinecurist was at the very ear of him by whom all sinecures are denounced; he who had ploughed the wave was companion to him who had only tilled the ground; and the peer and the bailie were on the most friendly footing. Nor was the varied _status_ in life and expression of countenance, the only thing which gave richness to the harmony. The sober blush of the heads of the Kirk, and the sombre gowns of the Edinburgh magistrates, made a fine contrast with the brightness of stars and ribbons, and epaulettes and lace, and the mingling colours of the Celtic chiefs. There were not many in the Highland garb: the Earl of Fife, Sir Even Mac Gregor, and the Macdonald, were the only three that fell under my inspection; and from the number of uniforms that every where predominated, the party had a good deal of a military air.

In the arrangements too, the senses of the civic authorities, which are not upon any occasion very great, appeared to be a little bewildered; for there was no page to carry a bumper from the royal cup to the Mordecais “whom the King delighted to honour.”

The only peculiarity of the feast, apart from the number and variety of the guests, was the _reddendo_ of William Howison Craufurd, of Braehead, who came with a basin and water, that his majesty might wash his hands immediately after he had satisfied himself of the dainties before him. There was a certain knot of persons who struck me as being determined to monopolize the whole attention of the King; and, upon the present occasion, two awkward boys, one a son and the other a nephew of the Great Unknown, assisted the laird of Braehead in carrying the basin and ewer, but they came and went unheeded. The tradition upon which this service of the basin is founded, is worth repeating.

All the Jameses who lived and died kings of Scotland were fond of being their own spies; and for this purpose, as well as for other purposes, they were in the habit of travelling the country disguised and alone; upon which occasions their doings had more of love or of war in them, according to the disposition of the royal incognito. The rambles, and amours, and songs, of James V. are well known, and so are some of the brawls and battles of James II., not the second of England, who fought by mercenaries for the purpose of slavery, but the second of Scotland, who occasionally fought in prize battles with his subjects, by way of experiment as to whether the sinews of a man or a monarch were the better knit.

Upon one occasion, a gang of gypsies assailed him at Cramond, a few miles west of Edinburgh; and, though he fought long and desperately, he was beaten down. A ploughman, of the name of Howison, who was threshing in a barn not far off, heard the noise, ran toward the place, and seeing one man assailed, down, and all but defeated, by so many, began to belabour the gypsies with his flail; and, having great strength and skill at his weapon, soon put the gypsies to flight, lifted up the King, carried him to his cottage, presented him with a towel and water to remove the consequences of the fray, and then, declaring that himself was “master there,” set the stranger at the head of his humble board. “If you will call at the castle of Edinburgh,” said the stranger, “and ask for Jamie Stuart, I will be glad to return your hospitality.” “My hospitality,” said the farmer, “is nae gryte things in itself; and it was gien without ony thought o’ a return, just as nae doot you wad hae done to me in the same tacking; but I am obliged to you for your offer, and wad like to see the castle at ony rate. The King is a queer man, they say, and has queer things about him.” The stranger upon this took his departure; and the rustic was well pleased with the idea that he would get a sight of the inside of that strong and majestic pile, of which he had so long admired the exterior.

A few days afterwards he repaired to the castle, inquired for “ane Jamie Stuart, a stout gude-lookin chield, that could lick a dozen o’ gypsies, but not a score,” was admitted, and ushered into an apartment, the splendour of whose furniture, and the number of whose company, bewildered him not a little. At last, however, he recognised his old guest Jamie Stuart, went up to him, shook him heartily by the hand, inquired how he did, and expressed a very earnest wish to see the King, if such an honour was at all possible for a man of his condition. “The King is present now,” said Jamie Stuart, “and if you look round, you will easily know him, for all the rest are bareheaded.” “Then, I’m thinkin’ it maun either be you or me,” said Howison, pulling off his bonnet, which till then his astonishment had prevented him from thinking of; “and, as our acquaintance has begun by my fighting for you, I had better keep to that when you need it, and let you keep to bein’ King.” “Then, as you are so true and so trusty,” replied the monarch, “you shall ride home the laird of Braehead.” “I like that better than twa kingdoms,” said Howison, “but I canno’ accept o’ sae much even frae your majesty, without gien’ something for’t.” “Well, then,” said the King, “as long as we are kings of Scotland and lairds of Braehead, let you and your’s present to me and mine, a basin and towel to wash our hands, whenever we ask for it.”

This was the only occurrence which took place to break the dull activity of the dinner. But when the cup circulated, a ceremony was performed which delighted the corporation-men of the Athens, and made the other corporation-men all over Scotland sad through sore disappointment. The chief magistrate of Edinburgh, who had taken his dinner as plain Mr. William Arbuthnot, took his drink as Sir William Arbuthnot, Knight Baronet of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,--the knighthood, as was alleged, having been, for the want of a sword, inflicted by that much more appropriate weapon, a large carving-knife, and the baronetage having subsequently issued from the patent office in the usual form, and for the usual fee. All this having been done, the King retired, and the corporation-men kept up the feast, though not so long or so heartily but that all the rest finally went to their homes _more sober than a judge_.

After the King had witnessed the devotedness of the Athenian authorities at the table, it was proper that he should see the devotion of the people in the church; and here again was one of those scenes which struck me, and must have struck him, very forcibly, as to the difference of a free people, and fawning courtiers, corporation fools, and party slaves.

Becoming preparations having been made, and the King having been furnished with a perspective sketch of the church, and a written programme of the service, it was agreed that the Very Reverend David Lamont, D.D., Moderator and Spiritual Head upon Earth of the Kirk of Scotland, should preach before him, in the name and stead of all his willing and worshipping brethren, while the “men,” the “leaders,” and the people, should demean themselves with that decorum, which the day, the service, and the occasion required.

When the services of the Scottish kirk are performed in a becoming manner, there is a feeling, a sublimity, and a heavenliness about them, of which one who considers only their simple and unadorned structure could form no adequate idea; and when I observed the still and unbroken solemnity of the service, and the effect which it obviously had, not only upon those who are accustomed to it, but upon those strangers who, in whatever predilection they had for one religion more than another, were wedded to the more artificial and gaudy ritual of another church--a church which had been at enmity with the Scottish kirk from the beginning, and which, in dislike to the system of sober equality among the Scottish clergy, and the democratic nature of their church establishment, have attempted to hold up their form of worship as cold, meagre, incapable of stirring up devotion in the hearts of men, and, by consequence, not so gratifying to the Almighty as the more costly and complicated ceremonial of others,--I could not help believing that, of all forms of religion, the simplest is decidedly the best, and that if the object of the propagators of Christianity was nothing but the cultivation of the minds and the improvement of the morals of society, they would carefully avoid all artifice and all show. Those, indeed, who have considered the correspondence that exists between the forms of religious worship, and the intellectual culture of the great body of the people, cannot have failed to observe, that pompous shows and gaudy ceremonies have ever been the concomitants of general ignorance and superstition, and that a plain and unadorned system of worship, has uniformly been characteristic of an intelligent people.

Scotland is an eminent example of this; and whoever takes the trouble to investigate the structure of Scottish society will, to a certainty, find that for half their virtues, and more than half their information, they are indebted to the presbyterian kirk. Nor is it by any means difficult to find out the reason: A religion of shows and of sounds,--of mummeries and of music,--must ever be a religion of the senses. How gaudy soever the trappings, and how fine soever the music, they can afford nothing more than a gratification of the senses at the time. Forms cannot exist vividly but in matter, and when the string of an instrument ceases to vibrate on the ear, the pleasure which it affords, however sweet or however delightful, is at an end: they enter not into reflection; they stimulate not the more rational and permanent faculties of the mind; and, though they may be made to influence, and influence powerfully, the passions, while they last, they leave no lesson which can be useful as a general rule of life. Hence, though the churches of Scotland be, compared with those of England, rude in the extreme; though the sacred music of Scotland be often the untutored attempt of nature, without the aid of flutes, hautboys, and violins, as in the poorer churches of England, or the solemn notes of the organ, as in the richer ones; and though the prayers of the Scottish preacher are generally couched in terms less stately and sublime than those of the service-book of the English church, yet we have the clearest proof that can be given of the superior efficacy of the Scottish mode of worship, in the superior veneration which the people of Scotland, without any hope or even possibility of earthly reward from it, pay to the rites and ordinances of religion, and especially to that most beneficial of all religious institutions, the setting apart of the sabbath as a day of calm tranquillity and holy meditation.