THE ATHENS RECEIVES THE KING, AND IS JOYOUS.
All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him: your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry,
While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,
Are smother’d up, leads fill’d, and ridges horsed,
With variable complexions; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him: seld’-shewn flamens
Do press among the popular throngs, and puff
To win a vulgar station: our veil’d dames
Commit the war of white and damask, in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks, to the wanton spoil
Of Phœbus’ burning kisses; such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
Were slily crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.--SHAKSPEARE.
EVERY one, who having heard of the splendour which is attendant upon
royalty while dwelling at a distance from the scene of its display,
has thence been induced to mingle himself with the crowd of ordinary
spectators, must have felt how much the reality falls short of the
anticipation. One sees a gaudy vehicle drawn slowly along, and within
it a human being, apparently but ill at his ease, and obviously feeling
the same danger of tumbling from his unnatural and elevated seat as
one perched upon the top of a pyramid. A crowd, usually formed of
the ill-dressed and the idle, run and roar about the carriage; the
trumpeters play “God save the King,” the attendants wave their hats
and cheer, and the spectacle, having passed through its routine, is no
more heeded. In London, for instance, those state processions which
the etiquette of the court inflicts upon the sovereign, are not more
imposing than a Lord-Mayor’s show; and even the most loyal, unless it
conduces in some way or other to their personal interest, care little
for a second display.
With this experience, I had prepared myself for being disappointed
in that spectacle which had brought Scotland together; and I _was_
disappointed. But my disappointment was of a new kind; for the
solemnity, the grandeur, and the effect of the scene, were just as
much superior to what I had hoped for, as those of any analogous
scene that I had witnessed fell below the anticipation. The Scots
are, unquestionably, not a superstitious people; neither do they care
for parade. Upon ordinary occasions, too, they are a disputing and
quarrelling, rather than an united people; and with the exception of
those who are either paid or expect to be paid for it, they are by no
means inordinate in their loyalty. But they are a people whose feelings
have the depth, as well as the placidity, of still waters; the rocks,
the rivers, and even the houses, are things of long duration; there
is no portion of his country, upon which the foot of a Scotchman can
fall, that speaks not its tale or its legend; and there is no Scotchman
who does not look upon himself as identified with the annals of his
country, and regard Edinburgh as the seat of a royal line, of which
no man can trace the beginning, and of which no Scotchman can bear to
contemplate the end; and which, though it has been bereaved of its
royal tenant by an unfortunate union with a more wealthy land, is yet
more worthy of him, and more his legitimate and native dwelling-place,
than any other city in existence.
The operation of those feelings, or prejudices, or call them what you
will, produced upon the occasion of which I am speaking, a scene, or
rather a succession of scenes, of a more intense and powerful interest
than any which I had ever witnessed, or, indeed, could have pictured to
myself in the warmest time and mood of my imagination. I had thought
the thronging of the people to Edinburgh a ridiculous waste of time;
I had laughed till every rib of me ached, at the fantastic fooleries
of the Celts and Archers, and the grotesque array of the official men;
and founding my expectations upon these, I had made up my mind that
the whole matter was to be a farce or a failure. But I had taken wrong
data: I had formed my opinion of Scotland from the same persons that,
to the injury and the disgrace of Scotland, form the channel through
which the British Government sees it; and therefore I was not prepared
for that solemn and soul-stirring display,--that rush of the whole
intellect of a reflective, and of the whole heart of a feeling people,
adorned and kept in measured order, by that intermixture of moral tact
and of national pride, which was exhibited to the delighted King, and
the astonished courtiers. It seemed as though hundreds of years of the
scroll of memory had been unrolled; and that the people, carrying the
civilization, the taste, and the science, of the present day along
with them, had gone back to those years when Scotland stood alone,
independent in arms, and invincible in spirit.
As, to the shame of the literature of Scotland, and more especially
to that of the Athens--who arrogates to herself the capability of
saying every thing better than any body else, no account of this
singular burst of national feeling has appeared, except the gossiping
newspaper-reports at the time, and a tasteless _pot pourri_, hashed
up of the worst of these, with scraps of gazettes, and shreds of
addresses,--in which, more especially the latter, it would be vain
to look for any trace of the spirit of the people,--it is but an act
of common justice in me to devote a few pages to it, though I know
well that I shall fail of the effect which I am anxious to produce.
In order, as much as I can, to guard against this, I shall divide the
remainder of this chapter, (which, in spite of me, will be rather a
long one,) into as many sections as there were acts in the drama of the
King’s visit. The first of these will of course be,
THE PROCESSION TO HOLYROOD.
----------“He comes, he comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.”
It seemed as though the lowering skies and sweeping storms, which had
made the longing people of Scotland almost despair of the pleasure of
the royal visit, and which had drenched them, and given them a whole
night of impatient delay, when the King was not many furlongs from the
Scottish shore, had been intended to heighten by their contrast the
splendour and eclât of the royal debarkation. The morning of Thursday,
the 15th of August, dawned in all the freshness of spring, and in all
the serenity of summer. The rains had given a renovated greenness to
the fields, and a thorough ablution to the city; and while the first
rays of the morning sun streamed through the curling smoke of fires
that were preparing the breakfast of three hundred thousand loyal and
delighted people, they painted upon the adjoining country that “clear
shining after rain,” which is, perhaps, the fairest and freshest guise
in which any land can be viewed. The soft west wind just gave to the
expanded Firth as much of a ripple as to shew that it was living
water, without curling the angry crest of a single billow. There was
a transparency in the air, of which those who are accustomed only to
the murky atmosphere of London, or the exhalations of the fat pastures
of England, could have no conception. Not only the colour of every
pendant in the roads, but the cordage of every ship, and the costume
of every one on board, was discernible from the elevated grounds about
Edinburgh; and, while standing on the Calton Hill, the royal squadron,
with thousands of boats and barges sporting around it, on the one
hand,--and the bustling crowd on the other, decked in their various and
gaudy attire, flitting past every opening, and filling every street
that was visible, composed a panorama of the most spirit-stirring
description.
The ancient standard of Scotland was hoisted at Holyrood; the ancient
crown and sceptre of Scotland were there ready to be lent to his
Majesty,--but, too sacred and too dear to Scotland as the symbols
of her old and loved independence, for being given to a king, whom
she had come from her utmost bourne, decked herself in her finest
apparel, and tuned her heart to its choicest song of joy, to welcome;
the royal household of Scotland, more showy in their attire, and more
self-important in their bearing, than is usual where kings are subjects
of daily exhibition, because the robes and the occupation were new,
were proceeding toward the place of their rendezvous by the longest and
most circuitous paths that they could find out, anxious to levy their
modicum of admiration ere the more transcendent splendour and dignity
of the king should draw all eyes towards itself, and leave them as
the forgotten tapers of the night, after the glorious orb of day has
climbed the east; the Caledonian fair were thronging to the casements,
(balconies there were none,) each looking more happy than another,
and one could easily perceive that faces, which, during a reasonable
lapse of years--either through the fault or the failure of Hymen--had
been stiffened by sorrow, and saddened by despair, were that day to
be decked in their earliest, their virgin smile,--a smile which, they
were not without hopes, might draw other eyes, and charm other hearts,
than those of their sovereign; and the maddening burghers and wondering
yeomen were trotting about from place to place; and, in their zeal for
obtaining the best sight of the king, running some risk of not seeing
him at all.
Having seen the muster of the official men--as well those who were to
proceed to the pier of Leith to receive his Majesty, as they who were
to deliver to him the keys of the city of Edinburgh, and thereupon
speak a speech, into which a full year’s eloquence of the whole
corporation, with some assistance of the crown lawyers, and a note or
two by Sir Walter Scott, was crammed,--having examined the facilities
which the people along the line of the procession had given the tenants
of a day for gratifying their eyes,--and having felt more joy at
heart than I had ever done at a public spectacle, at seeing so vast a
multitude so very happy, and so very worthy of happiness,--I set about
choosing my own station, in order that I might gaze, and wonder, and
be delighted with the rest; and, after very mature deliberation, I
resolved that that should be upon the leads of the palace of Holyrood,
provided I could get access to the same.
Access was by no means difficult to be obtained, nor was my ascent
to the top of the ancient structure without its pleasures. In the
first place, I passed through the apartments of the fair queen of
Scotland,--the fairest, and all things considered, perhaps, the
frailest of royal ladies; and there I found the whole localities of
Rizzio’s murder, well preserved both in appearance and in tradition. In
the second place, I had the pleasure of seeing upon the leads, dressed
in the plain tartan of her adopted clan, the fair Lady Glenorchy, who
possesses all the charms of Mary, without any of her faults. I am not
sure that I ever saw a finer woman; I am sure that I never saw one in
whose expression intellect was more blended with sweetness, or spirit
softened and enriched by modesty and grace.
Besides those intellectual (is that the term?) pleasures, there were
other things which rendered my locality the best of any: First, it
commanded a larger and better view of the procession; and, secondly,
though Edinburgh looks romantic from my situation, there is none where
it becomes so perfect a fairy tale. While I paced along the leads
of the palace, and I had ample time to do it, I was more and more
rivetted, both in motion and in gaze, by the wonderful scene. Eastward
was the expanse of blue water, widening and having no boundary in
the extreme horizon, and confined every where else between the soft,
green, lovely, and productive shores of Lothian and Fife. Along the
whole visible portion of the waters, no ship was going forth upon
her voyage, but many were cruizing towards the port of Leith by the
combined powers of every thing that enables man to make his way upon
the deep. Northward rose the Calton Hill, ornamented with one of the
best and one of the worst specimens of modern architecture, having a
park of artillery and a picquet of horsemen upon its summit, and its
sides groaning under the weight of a multitude which no man could
count. Sufficiently elevated at one place for throwing its more
elevated objects against the sky, and rapid enough in its slope for
bringing out at whole length the masses of people who occupied it, the
Calton did not conceal either the royal squadron in Leith roads, or
the majestic summits of the remote Grampians,--from which every cloud
and every trace of mist had been brushed away, when I first ascended,
while the strong and peculiar refraction that the atmosphere in such
cases exerts, gave to them only half their distance and double their
height, as if the mountains themselves had raised them from the beds
of their primeval residence, and come near, to behold the splendour
which the Athens had put on, and the glory with which she hoped to be
blessed. Towards the south, Salisbury Craggs and Arthur’s Seat raised
their summits to the mid heaven, and threw their broad shadows over
the valley, into which the beams of light which poured in at the
openings of the majestic wall of rock, seamed the blue shadow as the
lapis lazuli is seamed by gold. The view this way was to me peculiarly
sublime, not only from the great contrast that it formed with every
thing around, and indeed every thing that one could conceive to exist
in the vicinity of a city, but because of its own peculiar and inherent
sublimity, and the wild accompaniments with which it had been decorated
for the occasion. The crags rose rugged and perpendicular, with their
profile dark as night, while standards, and tents, and batteries,
and armed men on foot and on horseback, hung over the wild and airy
steep. A flood of mellow light which came in from behind gave them the
lineaments of giants, and a glory of colouring far exceeding any thing
that limner ever tinted. Then rose the more sublime height of Arthur’s
Seat, thrown back by the vapour which the sun was exhaling from the
dew in the dell between, and having its summit haloed with a glory
of radiant prismatic colours, through which the solitary stranger or
flitting picquet seemed beings of another world. And, as the sun-beams
came and went upon burnished helm or brazen cuirass, the whole seemed
spotted with gold, or inlaid with costly stones. At my feet was the
court of the palace, in which the royal standard was guarded by a
fine body of highlanders, and the palace-gates kept by a goodly array
of the Edinburgh archery, who, though they seemed not to be the least
important part of the spectacle in their own eyes, were yet intent upon
procuring for their favoured fair those situations from which they
would best view the glories of the archers and of the king.
Before me, the Athens herself clustered her buildings, and shot up her
towers, her spires, and her castles, with a witchery of effect, which
can be equalled by the view of no other British city, and surpassed by
that of the Athens from no other point. When one, for instance, ascends
the top of St. Paul’s, one wonders at the business and bustle that is
around; but the eye is tired with the interminable lines of dull brick,
and the dingy clusters of puny steeples, and smoking chimney-stalks;
while the sound, and the rushing, and the artificial origin of the
whole, make one melancholy with the idea that it will not last. One
should never look down upon a city: the sight is always dingy, and the
view always produces melancholy.
From the leads whereon I stood, though I was high above the court
of the palace, I was below all the city except that rubbish which
was concealed; and never did the mere sight of houses produce such
an effect upon me. The ground was so magical, and the buildings so
different in form, that the whole seemed as though it had been moulded
by the hands of giants, or commanded into existence by the fiat of a
god; and, in firmness and colour, it was so like the rocks upon which
it rested, and by which it was surrounded, that it looked as though it
had lasted from the beginning of time, and would endure to the end.
Right in front of me, the high street opened at intervals its deep
ravine; upon the summit of a hill, but still, from the great height of
the houses, appearing as if that hill had been cleft in twain, to open
a way from the palace on which I stood to the castle, which, from its
aged rock at the other extremity, looked proudly down as the monarch of
the Athens, seated upon a throne which would out-exist those of all the
monarchs of the nations. Around this were clustered palace and spire,
each upon its terrace, while the spacious bridges, beneath whose arches
the distant Pentland hills and the sky were visible, formed an aërial
path from the grandeur of one place to the grandeur of another.
There was something so novel, so wildly romantic, and so overpowering,
in all this, that I retired to the most remote and elevated part of
the roof, leaned me against a chimney-stalk, and, forgetting the king,
the procession, the people, and myself, was in one of those reveries,
in which the senses are too much gratified, and the judgment too much
lost for allowing the fancy to sketch, and the memory to notice. “This
is incomprehensibly fine!” were the words which I then ejaculated to
myself; and now that the presence of the picture is gone, and the
recollection such as no mind could retain, I can do nothing more than
repeat them.
I stood thus absorbed till about mid-day, at which time the flash and
the report of a solitary gun from the royal yacht caught my eye and my
ear, and made me start into recollection. Just then, a cloud of the
most impenetrable darkness had collected behind, or, as it appeared to
me, around the castle, which made the Athens appear as if her magnitude
stretched on into the impenetrable gloom of infinitude. But I had no
time to pursue the train of feeling to which that would have given
rise; for the volleyed cannon--flash upon flash and peal upon peal, and
the huzzaing people--shout upon shout and cheer after cheer, made the
cliffs and mountains ring around me, and the palace rock under my feet,
as though the heavens and the earth had been coming together, and the
Athens had been to be dashed to pieces in the maddening of her own joy.
The ships in the roads first pealed out the tale, and the blue waters
of the Forth were enshrouded in a vesture of silvery smoke. Anon the
batteries upon the Calton took up the tidings; and their roar, all
powerful as it was, was almost drowned in the voices of the thousands
which thronged that romantic hill. In an instant, the same deafening
sounds, and the same gleaming fires, burst away from the Craggs on the
left; and the cannon and the cry continued to call and to answer to
each other from the right hand and from the left, as--
----“Jura answers through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, which call to her aloud,”
till every atom of the air was reverberating with sound, every cliff
and every building returning its echo, the ground reeling to the noise,
the fleecy smoke hanging upon the cliffs like the clouds of heaven, or
settling down till the Athens put on the appearance of a sea, in which
the more elevated buildings and spires seemed islets, and the castle,
with her glaring fires, and her astounding volleys, towered like an
Etna, burning, blazing, and thundering across the deep. What with the
closing of the natural clouds, and the spreading of the artificial
ones, the darkness which even at noon-day had settled over the city was
awfully sublime; even the mass of the castle, large and lofty though
it be, was shrouded in the thick vapour of the sky and of itself, so
that all which the eye could discern, was the flashes of artillery
contending with the flickering of distant lightning, and all that the
ear could hear was the mingled peal and jubilee, in the pauses of which
the voice of the distant thunder was too feeble for being heard. The
darkness borrowed additional sublimity, if indeed that was possible,
from the pure and unclouded light of the sun, which a few straggling
beams that occasionally stole their way as far as the slopes of Arthur
Seat, told me was sleeping upon the plains of Lothian; and the din of
the joy received all the accession of contrast from the stilly silence
which reigned in the deserted halls and desolated villages of that busy
and blooming land. Amid this darkness and din, the royal barge rowed
softly towards the Scottish strand, and the sovereign of these realms
was the first to set his foot upon Scottish ground, while the author
of these pages occupied the very pinnacle of the Scottish palace. The
magistrates of Leith, all tingling and but ill at their ease, stood
shaking and speechless to receive him; but their blushes were a good
deal spared by those grand monopolists of Caledonian loyalty, the
lords president, justice clerk, baron register, and advocate, and that
mighty master of the ceremonies, and that mightier memorialist, (who,
it was hoped, would cut the thing into everlasting brass,) Sir Walter
Scott. But though the monopolizing lords blushed not, they blanched a
little, when they found the eyes of the king turning everywhere with
the same beaming delight upon the people, whose appearance and whose
conduct showed him that Scotland, if not the most polished, was by no
means the least polished jewel of his crown; and the baronet, who haply
was brought there, chiefly from the eclât which his literary renown
would confer upon his less gifted but more official associates, found
perchance that the glory of an author, however high in itself, and
however rewarded, is but a tiny instrument of Royal joy.
The guardsmen, who very judiciously were chiefly either Scottish
citizens or Scottish soldiers, succeeded, not in keeping order among
their countrymen, but in preventing breaches of it among themselves;
but the _Craggan nan phidiach_,--the Raven of the Rock of Glengarry,
was of too bold spirit, and too bustling wing, to be so restrained. To
prevent accidents, this mighty personage, who had stood up bonnetted,
dirked, and pistolled, at the King’s coronation, to the utter dismay
of the ladies of England, had been sent upon this occasion to keep
watch and ward upon the state-coach; but when the coach had taken its
place in the procession, the chieftain stepped a little way out of his,
bustling through the crowd to give Mac Mhic Alistair Mhor’s welcome;
and it was not till the Lion of England had knitted his brows and
shaken his mane, that the Raven of the Rock flew back to her station.
Onward moved the procession, through avenues of people, and arches of
triumph,--one of which latter spoke as much as ten volumes upon the
learning of the Athens, and the ignorance of the _mercatores_ of Leith:
“_O felicem diem!_” said that side of the first triumphant arch which
looked towards the Athens; “O happy day!” quoth the one which smiled
upon the lack-Latin lieges of Leith.
When the procession had cleared the town of Leith, and was moving
gracefully along that broad and beautiful walk, which still keeps
Leith at a respectful and proper distance from the Athens, the first
presentation upon Scottish ground was made to the King--and perhaps
none more honourable in its spirit, or honest in its intention, was
made to him during his whole sojourn. There was presented to George
the Fourth, a _Parliament-cake_,--not such a cake as is gleaned from
the fields of a country, or baked in the oven of a royal burgh, and
thence sent to St. Stephen’s Chapel as a well-leavened waive-offering,
(and from which, by the way, Scotland has got by way of eminence the
name of the _Land of Cakes_,) but something more luscious and learned
still,--a cake of sweet and spicy ginger-bread, stamped with all the
letters of the alphabet, and by combination and consequence, with the
whole learning and literature of the united kingdom. The presentation
alluded to happened thus: Margaret Sibbald, an able-bodied matron
of Fisher-Row, had been induced, through the compound stimulus of
curiosity and loyalty, to leave her home all unbreakfasted, in order
to take her place in the royal procession; Margaret had stored her
ample leathern pouch with a penny-worth of Parliament-cake, in order
to support nature through this praise-worthy work; but Margaret’s
eyes had been so much feasted, that Margaret’s stomach was forgotten.
Seeing that the King wore a hue which she did not consider as the hue
of health, and judging that it might arise from depletion induced by
his rocking upon the waters, she elbowed her way through horsemen,
Highland-men, archer-men, and official men, up to the royal carriage,
and drawing forth her only cake, held it up to his Majesty, expressing
sorrow that his royal countenance was so pale, and assuring him that if
she had had any thing better he would have got it. A forward strippling
of the guards charged Margaret sword in hand, to which Margaret
replied, “Ye wearifu’ thing o’ a labster! Ye hae nae mense, I hae dune
mair for the King than you can either do or help to do; I hae born him
sax bonnie seamen as ere hauled a rope, or handled a cutlass.” It was,
however, no time for prolonged hostilities, and so Margaret was lost in
the crowd, and the guardsman not noticed in the procession.
Many were the events of the march ere the King arrived at the end of
Picardy-Place, to receive the silver keys of the Athens, and hear the
silvery tones of her chief magistrate; I shall mention only one: The
pawky provost of a burgh of the extreme north, determined to see the
whole, and yet not pay his half-guinea for a seat in one of the booths,
had scrambled to the top of a tree at Greenside-Place, where he hung
rocking like a crow’s nest. As the King approached, the provost swung
himself to one side, waving his bonnet, and screeching his huzza, in
strains which would have scared all the owls in England; and when
the mass and the movement of this loyalty were in full effect, they
proved too mighty for the support, so that the pine and the provost
fell prostrate before the King. Even this was not much heeded: the
procession moved on, and the provost moved off.
At last the King came to the wicker-gate of the city, the keys were
presented, the speech was spoken, and the crowd in a great measure
melted away, by the majority hurrying away toward the Calton-Hill,
whence they could command a view of the whole during almost a mile of
its march. This desertion fell like cold water upon the official men,
and even the King himself seemed disappointed.
But the gloom and the disappointment were of no long duration, for no
sooner did he turn the corner into St. Andrew’s-street, than the mass
of shouting and ecstatic people who hung upon the whole beetling side
of the hill, and covered every part of the buildings, came upon him
with a shock of joy and a touch of exultation, which made the cold
state of the monarch give way to the warm feelings of the man. “My God!
that is altogether overpowering!” said he, snatching off his hat and
essaying to join in the cheer, but his voice faltered, and tears, which
were not tears of sorrow, suffused his eyes, and watered his cheeks.
His reception when he landed had been confined, and the people were too
near for giving vent to their feelings; and the delivering of the keys,
though there was a crowd there because the King halted a little, was
a piece of mummery, about which so reflective a people as the Scotch
cared little; but when the King was discerned in Prince’s Street, when
the living hill-side beheld his approach, and when the assembled nation
reflected that their Monarch was coming in peace to visit them,--it
was then that Scotland welcomed the King, with a welcome which none
that saw or heard it is likely ever to forget. The first shout was
astounding, and it rose and rung till it was answered by voices of joy
over a wide circumference.
During all this time I had not seen the procession, but I heard of it
from one who was close by the royal person all the time, and whose
character for truth and feeling is recognised as well by the world of
letters as by the world of men. I must confess that, choice and chosen
as was my place, the occupation of it was a pretty severe trial on my
patience; and when I first saw the yellow plumes of the Braidalbanes,
and the tall and majestic form of their leader, issuing from behind the
monument of David Hume, and heard the notes of their bagpipes pealing
“the Campbells are coming,” I had almost wished myself a Highlander,
and in the procession. The King soon arrived at the Palace, had a
hurried interview with some of the officers of state, and then drove
off for Dalkeith-House, there to pause and recover from the fatigue of
the voyage, and the excitement of the procession.
THE ILLUMINATION, THE LEVEE AND COURT, AND THE LADIES.
“Ten thousand tapers shone; ten thousand lords,
And squires, and yeomen, hungry clerks, and churchmen,
Bended the supple knee; ten thousand ladies,
With eyes of love, lit up the nether skies.”
Although each of these, no doubt, seemed to the parties themselves
of sufficient importance to add to the shelves of literature a new
volume, instead of being confined to a single chapter or section, yet
I am induced to bring the three into juxtaposition, because I shall
thereby preserve the unities,--have a beginning in light, a middle
in somewhat of gruffness, if not of gloom, and an end as glorious
as the congregated beauty of a whole nation, together with divers
importations, could make it.
It may be thought that the burning of a certain number of candles, the
hanging up of a certain number of coloured lamps, and the displaying
of a few ill-daubed transparencies, could contain no trait of national
character; and that therefore it ought to find no place in these
pages. But there was, perhaps, no one scene during the whole solemnity
which brought out the character of the Scotch more decidedly than the
illumination of Edinburgh upon the evening after that on which the
King landed. The town of Leith had indeed been both very generally
and very finely illuminated on the evening before; but that haughty
spirit of the Athens which makes her bear herself somewhat saucily
toward all her compatriot (or if you will, com-_provosted_) cities
and towns in general, and towards poor Leith in particular,--that
spirit which made them taunt Leith with the translated side of the
inscription, in the morning, made them reckon it high treason against
the majesty of the Athens to look at, or talk of, her illumination in
the evening; and thus, although the thing was no doubt very fine, there
were few to wonder, and still fewer to put that wonder upon record.
When the Athens, however, hung out her physical lamps, the emblems of
her metaphysical light, all came, all saw, and all admired. It was a
novelty to me: the illumination was so general, the streets were so
thronged, and the people were so orderly. No doubt, there were wanting
that profusion of daubed transparencies, and dangling festoons, tagged
with classic mottoes and allusions, ill-quoted and worse applied, which
are found in other places; but here, again, his Majesty would have had
cause to exclaim, that the nation by which he was surrounded were all
ladies and gentlemen. Excepting at the public buildings, the houses
of official persons, the apartments of clubs and societies, and the
houses of a few private individuals, the abode of peer and burgher
were illuminated in the same style, and with the same brilliance.
I waive the details as to who hung up a crown in white lamps, or a
thistle in green and red, or who took up their motto in Latin, in
English, or in Gaelic. I do not even dwell upon the general effect;
for though, on account of the situations in Edinburgh, the state of
the weather, and the zeal of all classes of the people, that was as
fine as possible,--it was the people themselves that were the sight.
Natives and visiters, three hundred thousand of every rank, age, and
sex, thronged the streets to such a degree, that it was difficult in
many of them to get a sight either of the pavement or the carriage-way.
This immense mass put one very much in mind of bees; their noise at
any point was scarcely louder than the hum of those insects, and in
their varied motions they clashed as little with each other. Instead
of brawling and wrangling, which almost invariably take place on such
occasions, the most elegant escaped without a stain, and the most
feeble without a jostle. The accommodation which they afforded each
other in their progress was truly remarkable: When one came to any of
the elevations so frequent in the streets of Edinburgh, one saw nothing
but human beings, thick and reeling as the leaves in an autumnal
whirlwind; and yet, if one chose, one’s progress could be as rapid and
almost as free of interruption as if the street had been deserted. I
did not remark a face in the whole assemblage that did not express
the feeling of being pleased itself, and the desire of communicating
pleasure to all around it. Just as was the case on the day of his
Majesty’s entry, the conduct of the people was the same as if they had
been engaged in a solemn and felicitous act of religious worship.
While the inhabitants of the Athens and their visiters were thus
rejoicing in the light which themselves had kindled, (a species of joy
which, by the way, is peculiarly congenial to the said Athenians,) they
whispered, as any unknown personage of sufficient size for a monarch
moved through the crowd, that that personage could be none other than
the king himself in disguise. Indeed, I am not sure but a considerable
portion of that decorum which marked Edinburgh upon this occasion was
owing to the apprehension which every body had that the royal eye
might be upon them, without their knowing any thing about it; but
whatever might be the operating principle, whether a sense of decorum,
or national or personal pride, the effect was equally striking, and
the merit perhaps equally great. But still, though the illumination,
especially when the spirit of the people is taken into the account, was
a fine show, still it was only a show, and a show in which the king, or
even the Athens, in her peculiar capacity, took no part, and in which
official men cut no more figure than the common herd.
With the _levee_ it was otherwise: that was one of the grand acts
for which the king had been invited to Scotland; and it is utterly
impossible to form even an idea of the hopes that were built upon it.
From the very first blush of the business, the regular, thorough-going
tories, (which, in Scotland, mean those who will take any public
employment, and pocket any public money, however improperly or dirtily
got,) fancied that the whole consequence of the land was to be entwined
around their capacious heads, and the whole wealth of it crammed into
their more capacious pockets; and thus, they had given themselves airs,
at which an Englishman would have been perfectly thunderstruck. A very
respectable and very independent proprietor of the county of Fife
told me that, a personage who had acted as tell-tale of their village
during the war, and who, for a long time after the peace, continued
to sell plots (perhaps at a handsome discount) to the crown lawyers
of Scotland, until the ministry put an end to the unavailing traffic,
would occasionally be found pacing over his estate, tasting the soil of
the fields, and noting down what he was to have sown in each of them,
after the king should have put him in possession.
The people were quite full of stories of this kind; and I have no
doubt that the desire of seeing how these men of high loyalty and
higher hopes would act, was one of the chief causes that brought so
many provincial people to the Athens; and that the humiliation that
these persons met with was, next to the joy at seeing each other happy,
one of the greatest boasts that the whole affair yielded. Without
a previous knowledge of the political system of Scotland,--the way
in which the few vicegerents in the Athens gobble up the loaves and
the fishes, how lesser men over the country snap at the crumbs; and
how they all growl, and worry, and snarl at other folks, it is quite
impossible to form an idea of the insolence by which the little men
of office were actuated. As, however, I shall have to discuss this
matter when I come to treat of the politics of the Athens, (for it is
there that the centre and focus of the system exists,) it would be both
premature and unintelligible to notice them here. Wherefore, I shall
confine myself to what I saw and heard as touching the levee.
The night which preceded that eventful day was an anxious and unclosing
one to the men of hope and of office, from all parts of Caledonia;
and baron and bailie, parson, provost, and professor, great judge and
small attorney, eloquent advocate and uneloquent scribe,--all that the
land of heath, of herrings, and of black cattle, could produce, was,
with proud but palpitating heart, bedecking and bedizening itself, in
all sorts of dresses, official, courtly, and nondescript, in order
that they might, in seemly array, kiss that Kaaba of all loyal men’s
worship, (and who would not be a loyal man upon such an occasion,)
the hand of a king. Three dukes, the same tale of marquesses, sixteen
earls, a brace of viscounts, twenty-nine barons, a pair of right
honourables, four great officers of state, sixteen judges of the land,
twenty-two who were honourable, and eleven who lengthened the fag end
of the Scottish household, were there. Besides seventy-seven baronets,
twelve members of parliament, thirty-eight lords lieutenant, a hundred
head of provosts, bailies, counsellors, and deacons, “after their
kinds,” with as many parsons, professors, physicians, and pleaders,
as were sufficient to convert, and cultivate, and cure, from plethora
both of person and of purse, the whole British empire, together with
military men, who had fought and who had not fought, proprietors or
kinsmen of the soil, and burgesses, “simple persons,” swelled the
amount to not fewer than two thousand persons, who had to pass in
wonderful procession before the wondering king. When it was considered,
that the whole of this mighty and motley squad, charged with addresses
to the number of nearly a hundred, each more loyal and laboured than
another, had to pass muster, and read, and retire, in the space of
one brief hour, it was apparent that the official men of Scotland
would have to dance about and deliver themselves with somewhat more
of alacrity, and somewhat less of that slow profundity of bowing than
is usually the case. Dreading that the addresses, from the importance
of their contents, and the orthoëpal powers of the readers, would
of themselves have consumed more than a day, it was wisely resolved,
that the persons who were charged with them should continue enceinte
of them till the Monday, upon which day they should be allowed to
deliver themselves before the throne, or behind it in the closet,
according to their several conditions and importance; and thus the
mighty tide of the levee was undisturbed by any prosing from parchment,
and undisconcerted by any uncouthness of provincial speech. The muster
of beast-drawn vehicles was tremendous; and, though the magisterial
equipages were reduced in their number of cattle, those which they
contained never looked so big in their lives as when they were in
progress to the levee, or so little as when they were fairly there. A
grievous mishap befel their worships the under-magistrates of Glasgow:
The ruler of that city, who never bought or sold any thing less than a
bale of cotton or a basket of figs, could not be expected to ride in
the same carriage with the bailies, many of whom were fain to vend a
sixpenny handkerchief, or an ounce of caraway seeds; so two carriages
were prepared, the foremost for his lordship, and the hindermost for
their not-lordships. The provost entered his state-coach, and both
carriages simultaneously sought their places in the line of procession;
the line threaded its way to the Holyrood; the provost alighted with
true magisterial dignity, and the door was opened to let the bailie
train come forth of their wagon. They had vanished! “Whare are my
bailie bodies?” exclaimed the provost; “I knew they were taking a bit
bowl to keep their hearts aboon; but I didna reckon on their gettin’
fou upon sic an occasion as this!” His lordship, however, was instantly
relieved by a dozen of chairmen, hurrying across the area, while a
well-known voice was bawling from each chair, “Whare’s the right and
honourable lord provost o’ the wast?” It would be endless to recount
all the little accidents of this nature that rippled the swelling
waves of official joy; but it would be unjust not to mention the wig
and staff of Dundee’s principal and vice. The wig of the principal
which, ungainly as it was, was the most wise-looking thing about
him, had been put under the curling irons before day-break, and thus
was burned and cauterized to the lining in sundry places. These had
been skilfully repaired with court plaster of the most glossy black;
and thus, in reply to sundry pityings of the lacerated head of the
burgh, the official man was forced to make it known, that he was of
peace-seeking disposition, and, instead of a broken head, had only got
a burned wig. The staff of the vice was a matter yet more serious. It
had a diamond head, and the wearer, when at home, contrived to poke
it under his left arm so skilfully, that it shone by all the world
like the star of the order of the golden calf, at the button-hole of
some foreign knight. The worshipful gentleman never dreamt that he
would be prevented from bearing this splendid and symbolic staff into
the presence of the King, and thus, in as far as stars were concerned,
vying in magnitude with the Monarch himself; but he was sadly
disappointed, had to leave the sacred cudgel in charge of the cook at
Mackay’s Hotel, and thus grope his way to the royal presence as grim as
a dark lantern.
Nothing could exceed in breadth of humour, the countenances of many
of Scotland’s important sons, as they came, with eyes and mouth set
wide to worship and to wonder, into the presence-chamber. Not a few
of them, when they raised their “leaden eyes that loved the ground,”
in lack-lustre astonishment, from the drab-coloured drugget which had
been nailed down by Mr. Trotter as fit carpeting for their feet, beheld
more kings than were exhibited to Banquo in the wizard glass. As is
not unfrequent with men whose wits are neither great, nor altogether
at home, not a few of them mistook the right one; and the portly
Sir William Curtis, who was “dressed in tartan sheen,” with a kilt
marvellously scant in its longitude, and dangling a bonnet, in which
was displayed a grey goose feather of the largest size, took the edge
off the loyalty of a full third; while his great grace of Montrose, who
was drudging at the honours of the day, monopolized another, leaving
only thirty-three and one-third per cent. of the loyalty of Scotland
to be inflicted directly upon the King. It is needless to tell how
brief were the salutations: there were two thousand persons who had
to make their entrée, their bow, and their exit, in about a hundred
minutes, which was, as nearly as possible, one second to each act of
each person; and thus, however discordant might be the bearing of the
different _bodies_, the unity of time was admirably preserved. The
ceremony came upon them like an electric shock, or rather they came
upon it as moths come upon the flame of a candle,--a buz, a singe of
the wings, and down they dropt into insignificance. “Hech, Sirs!” said
a brawny yeoman from the kingdom of Fife, as he attempted in vain to
squeeze his minimum of opera hat upon his maximum of skull,--“Hech,
Sirs! but its quick wark this! We might hae gotten a snuff wi’ him at
ony rate;” and, as he strode across the court, and found himself fairly
without the great gate, he fumbled over his head-piece with his paws,
saying, “I’m thankfu’ that it’s upo’ my shouthers after a’!” Those who
attended the civic authorities, who stuck to each other as closely as
if they had been in their council-chambers at home, wore faces of
the most broad and boundless delight; for, of the men of more ample
calibre, the tories looked blank, because they were elbowed and perhaps
outnumbered by the whigs in the presence of the King. Some of the clods
of the valley lost themselves in the long galleries and cold corridors
of the Holyrood; and, after all was over, and the fatigued Monarch had
retired to Dalkeith, a few of them were heard at the windows bawling,
like Sterne’s Starling, “I can’t get out.” So ended the levee; and
the King and the people rested for the sabbath without any thing of
remarkable occurrence.
On Monday the hearts of the address men were lifted higher than ever;
and, as the rapid and dumb show in which they passed before the King
on Saturday, had taken off the first and deepest blush of their
bashfulness, they went to the court in very masterly style: foremost,
were a hundred ministers of the Scotch kirk, supported by about fifty
ruling elders of the same; who, having met in solemn conclave in the
Canon-gate church, said to be the most composing and soporific in all
Edinburgh, they moved “dark as locusts o’er the land of Nile” across
the sanctuary, not of churchmen but of insolvent debtors, approached
the presence, bowed themselves with more than priestly reverence, and,
by the mouth of David Lamont, D.D., their moderator, poured the honey
and the oil of their adulation into the royal ear. Spirit of John Knox,
wert thou then on the watch! and didst thou mark the silken cords in
which thy degenerate sons were drawn to bend the knee before an earthly
Monarch! Yes, how wouldst thou have exclaimed that the gold of the zeal
of thy church had become dim, and the fine gold of its independence had
changed, if thou hadst heard thy backsliding children tempering their
temporizing address with the miry clay of earthly politics, calling
the King “the bulwark of the church,” and promising to labour, not for
the conversion of sinners, or for the glory of Him whom thou didst
account the only Head of the church, but “to impress upon the people
committed to their care, a high sense of the invaluable blessings
of the glorious and happy constitution?” But, boldest spirit of the
reformation, be not offended,--Think on the difference of the times.
The times in which your earthly lot was cast, were times of wrestling
and of reformation,--they required the heart of steel, the eye that
turns not aside, and the hand which is never slackened; but the lines
of thy followers have fallen in pleasant places, they have become full
of the fatness of the earth, and therefore they recline at their ease
under the refreshing shadow of temporal power.
After the Scottish kirk, came, laden with wisdom, the members of the
four Scottish universities; and this having been done, the remaining
individuals and classes of men who were charged with courtly sayings,
disburthened themselves in the closet behind the throne; and the paper
thus accumulated, having been deposited for use, this act of the drama
closed, leaving less upon the memory than had been anticipated.
The monarch having thus opened a levee for the honour of his Scottish
subjects generally, and allowed her official men to drop their honeyed
papers and parchments at the court and in the closet,--having devoted
two whole days to the hard hands of country lairds, and the greasy lips
of parsons and bailies, it was naturally to be concluded, that he would
be pretty well saturated of salutation from the men of Scotland, and
long for the approach of Scottish women, as the traveller, in the sandy
desert, longs for the green spot and the glassy spring. Nor could the
desire have been wholly confined to his majesty. The anxiety of the
Scottish fair was bent, like the bow of Diana when the arrow is drawn
to the barbs; their preparations, positive and negative, for this high
honour, had been long, laborious and self-denying; and they were not
without feeling that four whole days should not have interposed their
twelve-month-looking-lengths between the sight and salutation of their
King. It is true, that in Scotland generally, and in the Athens in
particular, woman, that grand barometer of civilization, has of late
risen many degrees. The time has not long gone by, at which females
were mere beasts of burden in rural affairs, and young girls were in
many places obliged to ply as ferry-boats. I myself have seen half a
score of stout and sinewy Highlanders lying snuffing upon a hillock
of manure, while their wives and daughters were bearing heavy baskets
of the same to the fields, while all that the lords of the creation
condescended to do was to fill the baskets; and I have been--no, I have
not been, I was only offered to be--carried across sundry Highland
rivers, upon the shoulders of the fairest nymphs which adorned their
banks. But the Athens has got the better of all this, and her daughters
have not only reduced the tyranny of their husbands to “flytings” and
frailties, but have learned to pay them back with interest even in
these. Thus the delay which had taken place in consequence of the grand
parade of the men, and the small extra drill of the official men, by no
means tended to lessen the commodity of curtain-lectures. There were
other causes of vexation: the means by which a sufficiency of beauty
had been procured were more precious than permanent; the delay of
hope not only made the heart sick, but tended to pucker the skin, and,
what was more vexatious than all, these careful dames, after they had
trimmed themselves for the royal salute, would submit themselves to the
salutation of no mere man in the interim. Wherefore, if any casualty
had prevented this glorious feast, or even protracted it, the _primum
mobile_ of the city might have stood still, and the Athens might have
been the Athens no more.
It being the only time during a century and a half, at the least,
when the daughters of Scotia have had the flattering opportunity
of flaunting their trains, flourishing their plumes, bowing in the
presence of Majesty, and, finally, giving their cheeks to the glory
and honour of the royal basial salutation,--and certainly the only
time when a native royal drawing-room has been held in Scotland, since
she had either much wealth or population to display,--it is not to be
wondered at, that it produced corresponding anxiety among the fair.
A random female here and there may, no doubt, have been in the royal
presence, and there may be one or two cheeks which have before been
made happy by the royal impress; but the greater, by far the greater
part of the roses and lilies of Scotland were, up to this happy 21st of
August, 1822, in virgin, but pitiable, ignorance of so much honour. It
is not to be wondered at, then, that the preparations of this eventful
day had their sources remote in the past, and the hopes of the fair
ones groped their way far into the future; and if they had not made
themselves gay upon the occasion, it would have been alien alike to
the honour of their country and the disposition of the sex. Morning,
noon, and night, had accordingly been spent at the mirror, and many a
projection has been squeezed, and furrow smoothed, in order that for
“Scotland’s glory,” and their own, they might appear as splendid, as
gay, and as bewitching as possible, in the presence of their King and
his nobles, and their own admirers. All this was most laudable; and
as the fair ones, with their eyes, their candles, and their mirrors,
literally frightened the reign of “old Night,” they merited forgiveness
though they encouraged a little of that of “Chaos.”
So much of the fire of Scotland’s moral electricity, moving in such
prime conductors, could not be supposed to confine either itself or its
effects to the earth. Ere grey dawn, the sky wept at the eclipse of so
many of its moons and stars by the radiance of the Venuses and Lunas of
the Athens rising to their culmination; and, as it had not recovered
in the morning, there was somewhat of pains-taking and pouting ere
the coaches and chairs could receive the whole of their delectable
burthens. Still, however, the ceremony was one which could not be put
off, and so the ocean-swell of beauty collected, and nathless the
drizzling rain, poured its eager tide toward the palace. When they
arrived at the entrée-room, some of the colloquies which they held with
each other were not a little amusing. If I could judge from the general
strain of what I heard of them, the kiss--the downright and _bona fide_
smack at royalty, without any of the leaven even of suspicion in it,
was the thing which pleased them the most. Each was making sure too,
(for there is a wonderful foresight in the women of Scotland as well
as in the men,) that the jealousy which this high honour would excite,
would procure a goodly harvest of future salutation. Some female Humes
(not in name but in nature,) were propounding “sceptical doubts” upon
the subject; and stating, with tears in their eyes, and terror on their
brows, their apprehension, that it would be “but a sham after a’.”
One great object with the Caledonian fair seemed to be to prevent, as
much as they could, the possibility of the ceremony’s being bungled,
through the youth or inexperience of those who were to apply it. It
had indeed been rumoured that the King hated all lips but such as had
been mellowed by the suns, and mollified by the frosts, of forty
seasons, and that young girls, as smelling of bread and butter, were
peculiarly offensive to the royal organs; whereupon it was said,
that the young maidens of Scotland were enjoined to abstain from the
ceremony altogether, and that the full grown ones abstained from bread
and butter during the whole period of their drill.
In consequence, while there never was a royal drawing-room so fresh and
new in the dresses and ignorance of the fair attendants, there never
perhaps was one in which the appearance of those attendants themselves
was more sage and matured. Every lonely tower, in a remote glen,
around whose grey battlements the hollow wind had whistled, “Nobody
coming to marry me,” for more returnings of the falling leaf than it
would be seemly to mention, poured forth its tall and time-learned
damsels,--erewhile as grey as its walls, but now as green as the
lichen with which they are incrusted, and as gorgeous as the sun
whose beams find out the old tower the more easily, and gild them the
more copiously, in proportion to the leaflessness of all around. With
those mingled the dowagers and despairers of George’s Square, upon the
thresholds of whose doors, and the graves of whose hopes, the grass had
for more than moons waxed green apace. Nor were there wanting a few
of somewhat more juvenile an aspect; abundance of 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.