Chapter III (3)

I know not whether the Author of these pages, or the Sovereign of these realms, was the more delighted with the calm, sustained, and religious air of the people of the Athens and of Scotland, as they both proceeded from the palace of the Holyrood to the High Kirk, on the morning of Sunday, the 25th of August. A countless multitude thronged the street, and filled the windows and house-tops; they were habited in the neatest and cleanest manner; and their profound silence formed a wonderful contrast to the noise of their mirth upon the former occasions. There was not a cheer, a shout, or even a whisper; but, as the King passed along, the men lifted their hats, and the whole passed with the most sustained but respectful reverence. They appeared to respect their King, but to respect him less than they did the institutions of their God, and the simple sublimity of that religion which their own perseverance, faith, and courage, had gained them, in spite of the efforts of courtiers and kings, by whom its integrity, and even its existence, were menaced.

The extreme decorum of the people upon this day was the more creditable, that it had been arranged by none of the authorities; and those who formed the mass of the spectators were chiefly such as, on account of their distances or their pursuits, could not obtain a sight of their monarch upon any other day.

In the crowd I could distinguish a number, who, from their substantial blue garments, their broad bonnets, their lank uncut hair, their great staves, and their shoes dirty, as from a long journey, seemed to be true whigs of the covenant, who looked upon the descendant of Brunswick as a chosen one of Heaven’s appointment, whose ancestors had been the means of preventing that civil and religious slavery which had threatened them in 1715 and 1745.

As seemed to be the case with all parts of the ceremony which were left to the awkward and inexperienced official men of the Athens, the King’s accommodation, or at least his attendance in church, was by no means what it ought to have been. He had brought a hundred pounds to give to the poor, and he had some difficulty in getting it disposed of; and, delighted with the unassisted vocal music, which was really very good, he wished to join in the psalm, but he was unacquainted with the book, and there was nobody to point out the place for him. Still, judging from appearance as well as from all that I could hear afterwards, the King was better pleased with the stillness and solemnity of the Sunday than he had been with the shows of the other days. One reason of this no doubt was, that, on the Sunday, the King was not so belumbered by the aspiring loyalists thrusting themselves not only between him and the people, but between him and his own ease, comfort, and pleasure, as they had done in all those acts of the drama, of which themselves formed a leading or conspicuous part; and, as he had formerly expressed his high approbation of the appearance, and, which sounded more strange in the ears of a southern visitor, of the cleanliness of the Scottish people, he had an equal opportunity of complimenting them upon their decorum.

After the King had paraded, and dined, and heard sermon, there remained no further lion of Athens to afflict him but the theatre; which was arranged for his reception, as well as an Athenian theatre could be expected to be arranged for such a purpose, on the evening of Friday, the 27th of August.

The people of the Athens never have been able, and probably never will be able, to support a respectable theatrical establishment. The genius of the Scottish people generally is not theatrical. There are still many sects of religionists among them by whom the stage is denounced as a “tabernacle of Satan.” This is by no means confined to the provinces, or to the more austere or fanatical classes of dissenters; for, at the time when “I, and the King,” visited the Athens, her celebrated, and most deservedly-celebrated preacher, of the presbyterian establishment, was denouncing the sinfulness of stage-plays, both from the pulpit and the press; and though some of the courtly persons whom fashion had induced to became churchwardens or elders of his congregation, threatened to rebuke or leave him, because, in the true spirit of John Knox, he had preached a homily on kingly duties, in which there was not much of flattery, while the King was in the Athens, yet they let him denounce the theatre as he pleased.

The more aspiring cast of the Athenians lay claim to very superlative taste in theatrical matters, as indeed they do in every thing; and hence, they pretend that they do not patronise the theatre, because they cannot find a company of players, who come at all up to their standard of histrionic perfection; and they appeal for proof to the fact, that when any of the grand stars or comets of the London boards come to them for a night or two, they throng the theatre with their persons, and threaten to break it down with their plaudits. All this, however, proves nothing, but that they are unable to support a theatre, and that the crowding to see a strange actor for a night or two arises not from taste but from curiosity. The fact is, that, though England has produced the very best dramatic poet that ever lived, and some of the best dramatic performers, yet that the drama, as a matter of sentiment and feeling, and, as it were, of constitutional necessity, does not tally with the spirit even of the English people; and, as the Scotch have all the business habits of the English, together with a much greater degree of starchedness of character, and incapability of purse, the theatre cannot possibly flourish among them.

The London theatres, excepting in the case of occasional and accidental runs upon a particular piece, or a particular actor, are uniformly miserable speculations for the proprietors; and it will be found, that even the poor support which the theatres in London get, is given them, not by the people of London so much as by that vast concourse of strangers who feel at a loss how to spend their evenings. Before the people, either of the Athens, or of any other part of the British dominions, can become theatrical, they must have a little more relaxation from hard labour than they can at present command. The national debt, and the immense public establishments, are the real causes why there are not only no Shakspeares now, but why the heroes of the old Shakspeare have given place to the wooden or real horses of a more buffooning race. The people must not only work, but work hard, during the live-long day; and when they have an hour which they can snatch from the abridged civilities of social life, for the purpose of looking at a theatrical exhibition, they very naturally prefer that which costs them no labour of thought, and which makes them laugh, to that which would impose upon them fatigue of the mind in addition to fatigue of the body. To say, therefore, that the Athens does not support the theatre, because she cannot find a _corps dramatique_ that comes up to her taste, has no surer a foundation than any other of those airy structures which she builds as the monuments of her glory. None of the fine arts, as a matter of abstract study and speculation, and apart from its contributing to the general comforts of life, can ever prosper in such a state of society as that of England at the present day; and if they languish in the British metropolis, where there is the greatest abundance both of money and of idle people, what must they do among a people who are comparatively so poor and so plodding as those of the Athens? If a London merchant, who goes to his place of business at one, and leaves it at three, does not encourage the drama, and the other fine arts; what can be expected from an Athenian special pleader, who drudges at Stair and Erskine, and thumbs Morison’s Dictionary of Decisions, from grey dawn to dark midnight, except during the hours that he is occupied in gossiping in the large hall of the parliament-house, or wrangling in the little courts, and less niches? It is true, that Mr. Clark, now Lord Eldin, could adorn his brief with drawings, even in those places,--that the Unknown, who is only a copying machine in his official capacity, can spin a chapter, or correct a proof sheet,--and that Jeffery has sometimes been caught writing an article for the Edinburgh Review, during the time that some long-winded proser was darkening the case on the other side; but still all this is done more as matter of business than of pleasure; and would, in almost all cases, be let alone, were it not for the fee that it produces.

Miserable, however, as is the support which the theatre of the Athens receives, and must continue to receive, the King was constrained to visit it; however, from the smallness of the house and the number of those who had legal admission as immediately belonging to his retinue, or his household, he could be for a long time gazed upon by the chosen, without any great admixture of the mere vulgar. The play was nothing; but there was something rather novel in the by-acting. The great chief of Glengarry, who has made himself conspicuous in many ways and upon many occasions, and who has proved his descent from Ronald, the elder of the two Vikings, who came robbing and remained royal in the Hebudæ, being thus, not only “every inch a king,” as well as George the Fourth, but a king of a much older and a more legitimate dynasty, stood up for the royal prerogative of wearing his bonnet, and keeping his seat, while the band was playing, and the audience shouting, “God save the King.” For this, he was complained of somewhat angrily, and, in my opinion, very unjustly; for, if they played and sung “God save the King,” in honour of George Augustus Frederick Guelph, King of Great Britain and Hanover, then they stinted others of their due, and showed a partiality not to be borne, when they did not strike up “God save the Chief,” in honour of Alexander Ronaldson Macdonell, of Glengarry and Clanronald, heir to the titles, the virtues, and the valour, of Donald of the Isles. This was omitted, however, and so after this dramatic scene, the Monarch of these realms staid not another hour in the Athens; but merely rested a day in the neighbourhood, and then took his departure, in manner as shall be set forth in another section.

THE NATIONAL MONUMENT.

“_Si monumentum queriris, Circumspice._”

Though the laying of the foundation-stone of the “National Monument of Scotland,” is to be regarded as a mere interlude in the royal acting, and of course as a mere parenthesis in my outline of the same, yet it merits a few sentences, not only on account of the curiosity of the thing itself, but because it throws some light upon the vanity of Scottish official men in general, and upon those of the Athens in particular.

To some people, the idea of building a national monument for Scotland, or in other words, a monument for the Scottish nation, may seem a work not of supererogation merely, but of folly; because the Scottish nation, so far from running any risk of becoming extinct and being forgotten, is in a very lively and flourishing state; and there are no people that, wherever they may go, cherish so carefully and proclaim so loudly, the praise of their country, as the Scotch. But this monument was intended to answer two very nice purposes,--the one for the glory of the loaf-and-fish politicians of Scotland, and the other for that of the Athens. So long as the country was in a state of distress, and it was doubtful whether the politics of the old or new system would ultimately triumph upon the Continent of Europe, a very large proportion of the leading men of Scotland, and of the Athens, joined the people in being Whigs. As such, they had no immediate share in the good things of the state; but they hoped that the wheel of hostilities would revolve, bring the party into office, and so feed them in proportion to the extent of their fasting and longing. Independently of their intrinsic value, Whig politics are a much better theme for declamation than Tory. In that faith, one can talk long and largely about the majesty and rights of the people, and when not in office, one can promise as largely as one pleases; while the most judicious plan for the Tory is to pocket his reward, and thank God; or if he boasts any thing it must be only to the choice few, and when the inspiration of a dinner looses his tongue. Under all those circumstances, the Tories of the Athens, though they had all the substantial things their own way, were confined to the actual enjoyers of office and emolument; and the tongues and pens of their opponents were so hard upon them that they had begun to be afraid to hold even their wonted meetings. Thus it became necessary that they should do something which should either win the hearts or dazzle the eyes of their countrymen. The former was without the compass of their speculations; so they set about the latter; and after floundering a long time from one scheme to another, they at last hit upon this wise one of the monument.

After the requisite number of ladies and gentlemen had licked the scheme into some sort of shape in private, they held a meeting in the Assembly-Rooms in George-Street, on the 24th of September, 1819, at which his Grace of Athol presided; and divers other persons, equally loyal, and almost equally tasteful and wise, gave their assistance. The time was well-chosen. It was in the very depth of those political clouds which, arising immediately from the sufferings of the people, and remotely, as was supposed, from the wasteful expenditure and unaccommodating pride of the Administration, were threatening to burst upon both ends of the island. The object, as set forth in the resolutions of that meeting, was threefold:--First, the erection of a monument to commemorate the great naval and military achievements of the British arms, during the late glorious and eventful war; secondly, in order to testify the gratitude of the projectors to the Almighty, they were to connect a church with the monument of the achievements, and endow two ministers to officiate therein; and thirdly, they were to set apart a certain number of the seats in this church for the benefit of pious strangers visiting the Athens. All which being settled, they set about a subscription for raising the funds. In those days, however, they were by no means such adepts in political arithmetic as they have since become, through the labours of Joseph Hume and others; and though they had their purses, they were neither so full nor so easily opened as their loyal intentions. As that moment, the monument to the achievements, the church, and the two ministers, would have cost them more than a hundred thousand pounds; and thus the monument, besides its more avowed and desired objects would have been the monument of all the disposeable cash of the whole of the Tories of Scotland,--a sepulture and a remembrance of which, they were not altogether so fond. Wherefore, finding that the subscriptions amongst themselves were in danger of becoming the monument of the project, they applied to the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk. That venerable constellation of churchmen, after grave deliberation, declared that the thing was “a most suitable and appropriate expression of gratitude to the Lord of Hosts,” and forthwith recommended a general address from the one thousand and one parish pulpits of the Kirk, for the purpose of obtaining collections and subscriptions from the one thousand and one parishes. But the parsons were not over hearty in the cause, and the people were less so; and thus the whole sum produced did not much exceed a hundred pounds--about two shillings for the prayers and pleading of each minister.

Having thus learnt from experience, that the scheme would not do, either as a party and political measure among themselves, or as a clerico-politico-religious one in the hands of the ministers of the kirk, they took up new ground altogether, and addressed themselves to a much more active and promising principle, the vanity of the Athens. They began with a long and learned parallel between the overthrow of Bonaparte and that of Darius and Xerxes; and then, coming gradually a little nearer home, they hinted, that, in his encouragement of the arts, Lord Melville was the express image of Pericles. This brought them to the marrow of the subject: Edinburgh was very much like Athens,--it was, in fact, the Modern Athens, or the Athens Restored; the Calton Hill was a far finer thing than the Acropolis; the freestone of Craigleith excelled in beauty and durability the marble of Pentelicus; the Firth of Forth outstretched and outshone the Egean or the Hellespont; the kingdom of Fife beat beyond all comparison Ionia and the Troad; Ida and Athos were mere mole-hills compared with North Berwick Law and the Lomonds; Platæa and Marathon had nothing in them at all comparable with Pinkie and Preston Pans; Sir George Mackenzie of Coull, excelled both Æschylus and Aristophanes; Macvey Napier was an Aristotle; Lord Hermand a Diogenes; Macqueen of Braxfield had been a Draco; the Lord President was a Solon; a Demosthenes could be found any where; and Lord Macconachie was even more than a Plato. Then, to make the parallel perfect, and indeed to make the Modern Athens every way outstrip the Athens of old, only one thing was wanting, and that was, that there should be erected upon the top of the Calton Hill, a copy of the Temple of Minerva Parthenon, to be called the national monument of Scotland, as that had been called the national monument of Greece; and that the independence of the modern city and the modern land should survive the building of the monument as long as that of the old had done.

The proposal took amazingly; for, in an instant, every quill was up to the feather in ink, every tongue was eloquent, and every lady and gentleman took an Athenian _nom de guerre_--Alcibiades there, Aspasia here, till they had Athenized the whole city. Still, however, fine as the situation was, and fond as they were of it, a Parthenon in speech was a cheaper thing than a Parthenon in stone; and so, though Edinburgh had, beyond all doubt or dispute, become the Modern Athens, it still wanted the temple of Minerva upon the Calton Hill as the national monument of Scotland.

It was still wished and resolved, however, that this finishing touch should be given to the likeness and the glory of the Modern Athens; and, as the tories, the ministers, and the dilettanti, had all failed in the accomplishment of the thing, it was resolved to call in royal aid; and have the assistance of his majesty at laying the basis of this mighty monument. But even here, there were obstacles in the way of this slow-going Parthenon: it would be too much to ask the King to lay the foundation-stone in person; and yet, if he were present, the laying of it would be a humiliation of the whole tories of the country in the sight of majesty; for it happened unfortunately for them, that the grand master of the mystic craft in Scotland was none other than the whig Duke of Hamilton: But wisdom has many ways of going to work; and so they resolved that the tory lords should act the King by deputation, and command the grand master to do the work. This was no sooner thought of than put in execution. An immense number of the craft formed a procession, and the stone was laid, leaving the structure to be built when time and funds should permit.

THE DISPERSION.

“To your tents, O Israel.”

Never was the philosophic adage of “soonest hot, soonest cold,” more completely verified, than in the case of the loyal official men of Scotland. At every point, and in every thing, they had been eclipsed; in most things they had felt a fancied neglect and disappointment; and never did Welsh squire or Highland chief, when justled by the London crowd in Cheapside or the Strand, sigh more for his white villa or grey fortalice, than they did for a return to the snug honours of their respective burghs. There was wormwood in the cup which they durst not throw away, and which they were unwilling to drink,--there were from each burgh, men whom they had formerly attempted to look down upon, in consequence of an assumed or presumed influence at court; and those men had seen with what indifference themselves and their very best addresses had been treated; and they would not fail to communicate this to the people at home. Where they had hoped to shine, they had only smoked; where they had made sure of rising, they had sunk; where they had counted upon honours and rewards, they had only incurred expense which their constituents would compel them to pay out of their own pockets; and where they had sown hopes the most sweet, they could reap nothing but disappointment the most bitter. It was piteous to see their looks,--blank and dull enough when they first came in the flush of their importance; but now doubly blank, and trebly dull.

“_Et tu Brute!_” The very magistrates of Edinburgh,--that provost Arbuthnot, the moment that he knew his own was to be the only “_gentry_” conferred upon a Scottish magistrate, cut his country cousins. Not even Glasgow herself, notwithstanding her lodgings hired at a thousand guineas a week, could be permitted to taste so much as a glass of cold water in the presence of the King. Perth “tried herself o’ the Gaelic,” and swore all the oaths of the mountains; the little, side-fidgetting, owl-faced provost of Inverness, who had come “over the hills and far away” in a dog-cart, in order that he might avoid the contamination of his bailies, poked out his under-lip like the edge of a singed pan-cake, and with his right hand gave a most fierce and ominous scratching to his left elbow. Aberdeen blasted the eyes of his own cats, and vowed that he would “vote for Josaph Heem, oat o’ pyure retrebeeshon.”

Never, indeed, was bold beginning brought to so lame and impotent a conclusion; but it was a conclusion which any person, except a Scotch burgh magistrate, might have anticipated. Even the Lord-Mayor of London is a commoner at Hampstead or Brixton, and what, then, could an Inverness or a Perth Bailie, or even a Glasgow Provost, be in the modern Athens, and while the whole of the official men there were bowing before the King, in the hope of securing all the advantage to themselves? If neglect be the portion of the man who can afford to place upon the table at his election-dinner as much turtle as would float a seventy-four, and who sends over the world,

----“Argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,”

what could be expected of the man who retailed pig-tail tobacco by the yard, or played the leach to the breechless urchins of the mountains? “Nothing,” will be the answer of any uninterested spectator or hearer; but to put any corporation man, more especially if he be Scotch, in possession of this part of his utter insignificance without his own burgh, or indeed, to any rational purpose, within it, would be as hard and hopeless a task as ever was undertaken by man.

Thus the chances are, that though these poor innocents (and to have beheld their rueful looks on their neglect and disappointment, would have created bowels in a Turk, or made Burdett pity, if not love, borough-mongers,) felt all the bitterness of the infliction, they would profit nothing by the wholesome hint of the lesson,--just as in a school, the blockheads get all the whipping, and none of the Latin.

Even as early as the levee day, those persons had found that they were not in their proper element, and the discovery had become more plain and palpable every day. Their first and fondest hopes were that each would be made a peer; then they came down to baronets; next to simple knights; and again each would have been pleased if the King had given him a snuff-box,--or even, latterly, a pinch of snuff. But all that the King gave was an Irish giving--he gave himself no trouble about them; and the whole court, or, as tails were the fashion, the whole royal tail, from the Right Honourable Robert Peel, Secretary of State for the Home Department, to Sir Patrick Walker, Knight, Usher (not, as some say, of the white feather,) but of the White Rod, followed at the hinder parts of its royal master. Even with regard to the counties, there were few of the men in office who met with much regard. A Scotch lord-lieutenant has commonly a very capacious swallow himself; thus whatever the minor officers happen to pick up is only at second hand through him; and upon the occasion alluded to, a few wary wights who gave themselves airs haughty and tyranic enough, while in their own localities, might be seen twittering after the great man who made them, just as Irish beggars twitter after a mail-coach. But hope is like the sun, it ever rises the soonest, and sets the latest, upon the most elevated point; and so, ere the last and lingering ray had gone down upon the pinnacle of royalty, the middle men of Scotland and of the Athens were dark as Erebus. Long before that feast of which they were forbidden to eat, and that solitary honour to Provost Arbuthnot which they were forbidden to witness, the greater part of the “bodies” had taken their knapsacks and their departure.

For a day or two previous, they who one little week before had looked down not only upon great merchants and little squires, but absolutely upon the nobles of the land, might be found at the corners and crossings of streets, begging a bow from the poorest of their townsmen.

On the morning preceding the pilgrimage, I took an early walk round the Calton-Hill; and I cannot say that I ever met with a spectacle more ludicrously pathetic than the chief magistrate of a royal burgh, who sat in brown and stony meditation there. A large stone formed his seat; and, but for his resemblance to human nature, and the chain of office that was about his neck, I might have supposed that the seat and the sitter were of the same senseless material. The north-east wind swept coldly upon him, but he appeared to heed it not; as little did he notice me, as I went close up to scan his singular appearance. In shape, in size, and in colour, his face more resembled a brick than any other similitude that I could find. One hand hung upon his knee and held a snuff-box, by the inscription upon which I could perceive that he had been a colonel of volunteers; while the other hand, arrested in middle course, as it bore its load from the silver to the brazen repository, was relaxed in its hold, and dropping upon the cravat that with which he meant to powder the intellect. His speculationless eye was directed across the blue Firth, and to the brown mountains, among which I should presume he had his residence; and, heedless of any passer by, he was taking up his Ecclesiastes like another Solomon: “Deil’s i’ that King! could not he hae staid at hame, and let us continue to tell him a’ abaut the countrie? We hae put ourselves to nae sma’ fash an’ expense, and it has a’ come to a bonnie upshot. Our business negleckit, half the siller cuinzied out a’ our ain pooches, naething but lookit doon upon here; an’ a’ for the sake o’ bein’ taunted and worried by the folk at hame, for sax months at the least.” Thus saying, he bounced up, buttoned his coat, trotted away to the coach-office, and, instead of returning at the tails of four greys as he had come, was fain to ride outside the stage-coach, and smuggle himself into his burgh under cloud of night.

The rout soon became general: Glasgow, in great wrath, took her coach, and her lamentation, and drove so furiously, that the cries of “make way for the duke,” and “stop thief!” resounded alternately at the hamlets and turnpike-gates; while the echo of the western city, emptied as it still was of a great part of its inhabitants, was the most dismal that can be imagined. Aberdeen tarried not the wheels of her chariot, until she had reached her own Castle Street; where the answer that she made to the many inquiries as to what she had gotten was, “It wad nae mak ony body vera fat.” Nor was disappointment the only misery against which they had to bear up. Perth got her head broken by thrusting herself in the way at the peer’s ball. Poor Dundee got her pocket picked at some place she did not mention. Inverness was put on quarantine when she went home. Inverbernie found that during her absence, a radical barber and breeches-maker had established himself next door, and monopolized the whole custom; and, in short, every one had a tale of woe, which, while it pleaded for pity, found only derision.

Towards the close of the exhibition, a number even of the people seemed to get heartily tired of the business; and notwithstanding all the scramble that was made by those whose interest it was to preserve appearances as much as possible, every succeeding act fell off in interest, and, had George the Fourth remained in the Athens for but one brief month, it is probable that the people of Scotland would have returned to their own homes, and the Athenians to the worship of their own idols.

THE PARTING.

“Adieu, Adieu, Adieu! remember me.--SHAKSPEARE.”

The streets of the Athens, which had been thinning of people ever since the King’s arrival, were, on the morning of Friday the 30th of August, the day on which he was to take his departure, as still and silent as though the chariot-wheel of majesty had never been heard in them. The constables, lacqueys, and laced porters at the gates of the Holyrood had dwindled to a small and feeble remnant; no merry archer, in broad bonnet of blue, and doublet of green tartan, demanded the pass-word, with bent bow and pheon ready for the string; the foot of the casual house-maid wakened the old and melancholy echo in its deserted halls; and those apartments which were so recently gladdened by the gorgeous train of the King, and made lovely and gay by the presence of all that Scotland could boast of the fair and the noble, were in sure progress to being as usual “furr’d round with mouldy damp and ropy slime,” over which the faint recollection (for even then it was waxing faint,) that the King had been there, “let fall a supernumerary horror,” which, to those who during the King’s stay had been raised to office, and put on the guise of courtiers, only served to make the night of his absence “more irksome.” The cannon, which, for the previous fourteen days, had ever and anon been pealing royal salutes, began to be dragged from the heights of Salisbury Crags and the Calton Hill; and the royal standard was taken down, leaving the bare widowed staff bleaching in the air. The guns of the venerable castle too, had subsided into the common office of chronicling the several holidays and anniversaries, as though they had been a mere kalendar; the last booths and benches were in the act of being pulled down; and, excepting in shop-keepers’ books, in the blackening of a few houses in the illumination, and in the baronet’s patent of Sir William Arbuthnot, and the knighthood of Raeburn, a painter, and Fergusson, deputy-king of the Athenian beefeaters, the Athens retained no external trace of the royal visit, even when the royal cavalcade was barely escaping from the suburbs.

The people were intoxicated with its coming, and seemed for a time to have dreamed; but the dream had melted away, and the interest seemed to be measured exactly by the time that the King had to remain. Every day it waxed less and less, till, on the day of his departure, it had vanished altogether. I say this, of course, of the people generally,--of those who, in their minds and their circumstances, are independent, and not of them who basked in the sunshine of the court, or had realities or hopes from the royal munificence. These, of course, followed after the King to the last, and conveyed him to his barge, but the people stood by with the most provoking indifference, and, to the broadest hints that they should shout, returned only a few scattered murmurs of approbation. They turned to each other, and talked of the passing splendour as if it had been a common spectacle. At the same time, the King himself, and not the mere pomp, was certainly the object of their attention and solicitude. “Hech,” said the old bonneted sire to his neighbour, as the King passed them rapidly on the beautiful lawn at Hopetoun House, “Hech! an’ so that’s the real descendant o’ Brunswick, wha preserved us the Declaration of Rights, and the Protestant Succession, whilk allow ilka man, gentle and simple, to hae the keepin’ o’ his ain body, and, what’s muckle better, o’ his ain saul and conscience. God bless him, an’ keep him frae evil counsellors, and sinfu’ neebours, for they say that the gryte fouk about Lunnon are no’ just what they should be.” Thus did the rustics hold converse with one another; and it could not be expected that persons who had their minds in tone for such remarks, could bawl and shout like the unreflecting rabble, whose tongues, were it King George or King Crispin, would be equally loud.

That the loyalty of official men, of all conditions, in Scotland, is as fawning and obsequious, as in any country under the sun, I could not fail to observe: as little could I fail to observe, that that of the people of Scotland is of a very different character, and not to be judged of by their shouting or not shouting at a royal pageant. With them, loyalty is, like every thing else, a matter of reason and reflection, and not of mere impulse and passion; and they never lose sight of the original and necessary connexion between the King and the people. They do not look upon the King as one who is elevated above man and mortal law, and who holds a character directly from Heaven, in virtue of which, he can, at his pleasure, and without being accountable, put his foot upon the neck of millions of the human race. They consider him as originally set up by common consent, and for the common good, and they admit of the law of lineage and succession just because it saves the chance of civil war, and gives a centre and a rallying point to the strength and energy of the country.

The melancholy, which the now deserted state of the Athens, contrasted with its recent bustle and activity, was calculated to produce, was increased by the day of the King’s departure being one of the most gloomy and comfortless that it is possible to imagine. The wind alternately swept in hurricanes which drove immense masses of clouds over the city, and died away in dead calms which allowed those clouds to retain their positions and pour out their contents in torrents. Early as was the season, the leaves from the few trees in the vicinity of the Athens had begun to fall; and, as the wind freshened, they coursed each other along the dirty and deserted streets in ironical mimickry of those processions by which they had so lately been filled. It was no day either for examining the still life of the Athens, or for studying the manners of the Athenians; and so, as my chief purpose had been delayed by every display during the King’s visit, I thought it just as well to see the end,--to mark the difference of feeling and expression that the people would have at the time of a King’s coming and at that of his going. Accordingly, I set out for Hopetoun House, where royalty was to be refreshed, ere he again attempted the waters.

It had been expected, that the King would grace with his royal presence, Dalmeny Castle, the beautiful seat of Lord Roseberry, but he contented himself with a drive through the grounds. Nor was the day such as to permit him to see the prospect in descending Roseberry Hill to Queensferry. The view there is peculiarly fine, and to Scotchmen it must be highly interesting. Immediately below is the Forth, spotted with islands and covered with shipping. To the left are the rich woods and extensive demesnes of Hopetown, with the ancient burgh of Queensferry at their entrance. To the right, are the bolder shores of Fife, over which rises the beautiful ridge of Ochills. The towers of Stirling, long the seat of kings, rise in the centre; and at no great distance is the field of Bannockburn; and to the right, amid the grey pinnacles of Dunfermline, sleep the ashes of the Bruce. Further off Benledi, Ben-an, and Ben-voirlich raise their lofty crests, and the noble peak of Ben-lomond pierces the most distant cloud. Altogether it is a scene worthy of royal attention, and within its ample circuit are countless recollections not unworthy of kingly meditation. The place where Græme’s Dyke set bounds to the ambition of the Romans, till the Caledonians fell a prey to luxury and corruption, may tell that the strength of a people is not in walls and ramparts, but in courage, in virtue, and in freedom. The stone near the banks of Carron, where the royal standard of Scotland first was displayed triumphant after years of suffering and humiliation, and the spot at which the battle-axe of Bruce cleft the helm and head of the invader’s champion, tell what may be done by an independent people, under the conduct of a brave and virtuous prince; the veneration with which Scotchmen yet look towards the crumbling ruins of Dunfermline, proclaims that the patriotism of a King far outlives mere pomp and tinsel; and the fields of Falkirk and Sherriff-muir, might have whispered in the ear of George the Fourth, how hard Scotchmen had struggled in order that his family might wear the crown. It seemed, however, that Nature had refused his majesty a glance of the talismans of these recollections; and that, as he had confined his attentions (we mean his private attentions, which, of course, are exclusively at his own disposal,--in his public displays he was equally attentive to all,) to one family or party, so the glories of Scotland were shrouded from his view. During the whole day, a thick cloud lowered over the western horizon, through which only the nearest summit of the Ochills was but dimly seen. When his majesty came to Queensferry, it seemed as if “Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane,” for the whole fronts of the houses, with their appendages, were covered with boughs; boughs too were hung across the street, and showed like triumphal arches turned topsey-turvey, as in sorrow at the departure of the King. A small platform was erected at Port Edgar, a place a little to the west of Queensferry, about which there is some idle tradition of an ideal kingly visit, and deliverance from shipwreck. Thence to Hopetoun House, a distance of about two miles, a road was now made along the margin of the Forth. In the halls of the gallant Earl, a _dejeunér à la fourchette_ was prepared for the King, a select few of the nobility, and many of the neighbouring gentry. The country people had assembled on the lawn, to the amount of some thousands, and were regaled with two or three butts of October.

The King arrived at the place of embarkation about three o’clock, walked to the platform, leaning on Lord Hopetoun’s arm, and was received on the platform by the venerable chief commissioner, Adam, as convener of the Queensferry trustees. He took his old friend cordially by both hands, and was by him conveyed to the royal barge, which he entered, and reached the yacht in about six minutes. Although the King’s “last speech” had been hawked through the streets of the Athens in the morning, there is no evidence that he made one; and, indeed, gradually to its close, the whole matter had melted away, like a dream from the recollection of the half-awakened. Scarcely, too, had his majesty got on board the yacht, when the dark clouds veiled his whole squadron like a curtain, and the incessent pelting of the rain scattered the remnant of the people.

It was with some difficulty, and at a late hour, that I was able to return to the Athens; and when I arose on the following morning, and sallied out to begin my survey, the contrast was too strong for my feelings. The whole line of George Street was unbroken, except by the hoary form of a beggar crawling along in front of those assembly-rooms which had lately been so gay; and the trim and active figure of the editor of the Edinburgh Review, who, with a great bundle of law-papers under one arm, and a new book under the other, shot along with as much rapidity, as though the most strong and skilful of the archer-band had discharged him from his bow. Queen Street was desolate; and in King Street, the only thing that I could notice was one or two of the personages who had lately flaunted their tails as highland chiefs, taking leave of their law-agents, with downcast and sorrowful looks. The regalia of Scotland were again consigned to their dull and greasy apartment in the castle; the High Street, which so recently had rung with the acclamations of serried multitudes, now echoed to the grating croak of the itinerant crockery-merchant, and the ear-piercing screams of the Newhaven fish-wife. The gewgaws, which for the last two weeks had glittered in the windows of the shop-keepers, had again given place to sober bombazines and webs of duffle; and the shop-keepers themselves were either leaning against the posts of their doors, and yawning to an extent which would have thrown any but Athenian jaws off the hinges, or sitting perked upon three-footed stools within, casting looks, in which hope formed no substantial ingredient, upon the long pages which their country friends had enabled them to write in their day-books; and of which, to judge from appearances, it was pretty plain that the term of payment would be to the full as long as the amount. Every where, in short, that I came, there was an air of desolation; not by any means that the Athens was mourning for the departure of the King, for among the few persons who were visible, his name was not so much as mentioned, but in her own appearance she was mournful indeed, and though she retained the same form as during the display and rejoicing, her spirit seemed to be clean gone; and it was quite evident that, in order to catch the average and peculiar likeness of this boasted city, I must tarry till the present appearance had passed off, or remove to a distance, till the natural one should return.

I preferred the latter alternative, and resolved, after resting for that day, to forget both the glory and the gloom in a month or two among the Scottish mountains; and then return to the Athens, when the return of business, of people, and of prate, should have been brought back to their ordinary channels.