Street back to the Holyrood, seemed, to judge from the state of the
weather, to be peculiarly alarming or offensive to the “prince of the
power of the air,” as well as to the monarch of the British isles.
In all the former doings there had been something beyond the mere
parading in the street. The procession from Leith was a matter of
necessity, and furthermore it was exceedingly novel and interesting
in itself; the levee, the court, and the drawing-room, were part of
the usual machinery of the state; the court before the throne, and
the closet behind, for the receipt of addresses, “according to their
generations,” were what the addressing parties could not have been
happy without, and though these had been disappointed of the honours
and rewards which they had fondly expected would result at the time,
yet they fondly hoped that they had “done a do” which would lead to
great things in the sequel; and even the dances had brought folks
together, and might also have their fruits thereafter; but that the
King should be drawn along the whole length of the Cannon-gate and
High Street, work his way through the ugly gates and awkward passages
to the half-moon battery of the castle, then pull off his hat, give
three cheers in concert with the bawlings of the crowd, and then go
back to Holyrood by a more circuitous route, was so profound a piece
of wisdom,--so much a masterstroke of the good taste of the Great
Unknown, and the sage politics of the Athenian tories, as to be by
much too deep even for royal comprehension. It seemed too, that none
of those counsellors which the King had taken with him from England
could fathom its profundity. Sir William Curtis indeed pleaded the
lord mayor of London’s pilgrimages to Kew and Rochester Bridge, as
being precedents exactly in point; but those who knew the etiquette
of courts better, scouted all precedents which could originate within
Temple Bar,--partly, because they originate with those who arrogate to
themselves the power of closing that gaping portal against the King,
and, partly, because nothing possessed in the city is at all acceptable
but its money. The King himself scouted the pilgrimage as a piece of
idle foolery: declared, that he had seen the assembled people in his
progress to the palace; that he had received the noblemen, gentlemen,
official men, and addressing men, at levees and courts; that he had
sustained a general attack of the ladies at the drawing-room, and
sundry particular attacks at the dances; and that, if his Scottish
subjects were not yet satisfied with gazing at him, he would hold other
levees and other drawing-rooms, till the humblest boors, burghers, and
baillies, with their wives, should pass muster before him, provided it
were done as a King ought to do such things, in his state apartments at
Holyrood; but, that to have him shown along the streets, as they would
show an elephant or a prize ox, would be a degradation both to himself
and his subjects. Having, as was said, expressed himself thus, he sped
away for Dalkeith with even more than wonted alacrity, wishing that he
could be permitted to spend his days in a way somewhat more agreeable
to good sense and his own inclinations.
The pilgrimage had, however, been resolved on, and those bodies which
it was judged expedient that the King should wonder at, in their
collective capacities, had clubbed their half-guineas, and erected
their booths along the whole line of the High Street; and as all this
had been done without consulting the King, it was resolved to _boo_ and
beseech him into compliance. The King, who had previously known the
persevering nature of the political “seekers” of the Athens, judged
that the easiest way would be to comply with their request, although,
during the whole pilgrimage, I thought he appeared to feel that what
his politeness had made him content to do, could add nothing to his
kingly dignity.
By this time I had become so little apprehensive of arrowless bows,
and dirks never intended to be unsheathed, and so much accustomed to
tartans and tails, that I pushed myself into the very centre of the
procession; and as there was nothing better I could do, I contrived, by
putting a bold face upon it, and huzzaing, as well to demonstrate my
loyalty as to keep myself warm in the rain, to proceed to the rampart
of the half-moon battery, close by the side of the King.
As this was the occasion upon which the _people_ of the Athens were to
make their nearest approach to their Sovereign, the preparations for
it were correspondingly general. Notwithstanding the unpropitiousness
of the morning, the streets, booths, windows, and house-tops, were
thronged at an early hour. The members of all the trades, corporations,
and friendly societies, came pressing to the line of the progression
by about eleven, and formed a double line for the progress, each
well-dressed, and armed with a white wand; behind them, in varied
phalanx, was that part of the _posse comitatus_ which could not afford
to pay for windows or seats, and here and there stood a special
constable, or Fifeshire yeoman, mounted. Outside, the ten-storied
houses of the High Street were tapestried with human faces; and to
prevent disturbance, all the cross-streets were filled by cavalry.
About one, the procession began to form in the area of Holyrood, and
the progress commenced a little after two. The procession was formed of
nearly the same individuals who composed that on the King’s landing,
and they held nearly the same places. There was one addition, however,
which excited a good deal of interest: the ancient regalia of Scotland,
the _crown_, said to have been made for the Bruce and thus doubly dear
as a national relic, and the sceptre and sword of state. The regalia
were borne immediately in front of the royal carriage. First, the sword
of state, borne by the Earl of Morton, in lord-lieutenant’s uniform;
then the Sceptre, by the Hon. John Morton Stuart, second son to the
Earl of Moray; and last, the crown, by the Duke of Hamilton, in right
of the Earldom of Angus.
During the whole progress along the High-Street it rained, and thus
the spectacle was a good deal injured; but still, the immense crowd of
people, their orderly conduct, their happy faces, the immense height at
which some of them were posted, the gorgeous array of the cavalcade,
and, as much as any thing, the antique grandeur of the street, had a
fine effect. The King was every where greeted by shoutings, not loud,
but sustained; and he conducted himself with dignity. Next to the King,
the object of attention was the Duke of Hamilton, who was cheered along
the whole line, partly on his own account, and partly from his carrying
the ancient symbol of Scottish independence. It was well that the first
time that symbol was borne publicly in the streets of the Scottish
capital, after having been missing for a century, should have been in
the hands of a nobleman who feels for, and supports the remnant of that
independence. The robes of the Lord Lyon were so fine, and his coronet
so showy, that he was by many of the people mistaken for the King; nor
did the beautiful black barb which bore the Knight Mareschal want his
due share of admiration.
Upon the King’s leaving the Cannon-gate, and passing the building
where, in English, in Latin, and in Greek, is recorded the escape of
John Knox from assassination, several buxom and well-dressed damsels
scattered flowers in the street, the music in the mean time playing the
King’s Anthem. The Tron-kirk and St. Giles’ successively tingled their
bells, and every thing demonstrated the satisfaction of the people. The
_bodies_ which had their booths about St. Giles’ now did reverence,
and lifted their voices just as his Majesty was passing over the spot
which long groaned beneath the mass of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. When
the King had arrived at the Castle-Hill, the procession turned aside,
and he passed between the assembled _counties_, who were very fervent
in their demonstrations of joy. He alighted on a platform covered with
crimson, received the keys from the Governor, returned them, walked
over the draw-bridge with a few of his train, was received there by
the grenadiers of the 66th, entered his carriage, (all his attendants
on foot,) and drove to the Half-Moon battery, where, from a platform
erected for the occasion, it was hoped that he would have enjoyed a
_coup-d’œil_ of the whole loyalty and beauty of Edinburgh.
The day, however, was very unfavourable, a fog shrouded the city,
and it rained heavily; still, the King stood up, waved his hat, and
spoke to the people, while the cannon from the lower batteries of the
Castle, and from the Calton-Hill, and Salisbury Craggs, told the news.
Dark as was the scene, it was most sublime. Through one opening of the
clouds, one could catch a glimpse of Arthur’s Seat; through another,
the smoke of a cannon from the Craggs, and through a third, some tower
or turret of the city. Among these, by the way, the finest is the
monument erected in St. Andrew’s-Square, to the late Lord Melville.
It is a fluted Doric column, with a rich base and capital, and most
appropriately surmounted by a bee-hive, in testimony, doubtless, of
the countless friends and relatives for whom the noble lord had the
means of providing. When the King had escaped from the pleasure of this
inspection, he filed off for Dalkeith-House, and the _pecus_, who had
been ducked and delighted, retired to evaporate the external moisture
by moisture within. The _plebs_ of different places have different
modes of expressing their joy or their grief; those of the Athens,
whatever be their rank or denomination, and whether in weal or in woe,
close the most social as well as the most sad of their exhibitions, by
pouring out a drink-offering, and pouring it out abundantly.
I must now say something of that act of the royal drama in which the
official and loyal men of Scotland gave, before the King, ocular
demonstration of how substantially they could eat, and how copiously
they could drink. Eating and drinking are, in all civilized countries,
and more especially, perhaps, in the British dominions, so closely
allied with loyalty, that the bason and the bowl would perhaps be its
most appropriate symbols. Corporations have ever been pre-eminent for
those demonstrations of support to the throne; and as the Athenian
corporation is pre-eminent among corporations in the northern part of
this island, so the feastings of that corporation have ever been the
fullest and the fattest.
A feast of the corporation of the Athens is a thing altogether
different from a feast of the corporation of London. In both places
it is, no doubt, more sentient than sentimental; and the belly must
be put to sleep ere the soul be awakened to heroic deeds; but a feast
of the corporation of London is, notwithstanding all its abundance, a
merely plebeian thing,--it emanates from the people, is partaken of by
the people, and if royal or courtly persons be there, they are in the
humble attitude of guests. It is a matter, in short, not only different
from, but in opposition to, those cold collations which obtain in the
kingly circles; and it is calculated to inspire the people more with
sentiments of independence, and a consciousness of their own worth,
than with that bowing down of the honour for the sake of rising in
office, and that beggaring of the heart for the sake of filling the
purse with the gains of office, which invariably accompany banquets of
exclusive loyalty. The feastings of the Athenian corporation, on the
other hand, are feastings which the people do not originate, and of
which they are not allowed to partake. They are of two kinds,--which
may be distinguished as well as characterized by the two epithets
of “dinners of the flagon,” and “dinners of the scrip;” the former
having reference to nothing else than the filling of the belly, the
latter having an ultimate view to the replenishing of the purse. The
feast of the flagon is by much the more ancient; it is characteristic
of the whole genus of corporation men; and it is because they have a
much greater propensity to feed the flesh than either to cultivate
or to exercise the understanding, that corporations are every where
denominated _bodies_,--as much as to say, that though they may have
souls, these are not worth taking into the account. In ancient times,
when kings held their regular courts in Scotland, and when these
eclipsed all that could be done by the delegated moons of the Athenian
corporation, that corporation had the same leaning toward the people
which other corporations near the seat of royalty are supposed to
possess, and in those days the feast of the flagon was almost the only
one known to the corporation men of the Athens. Now, however, as the
royal household in Scotland has become a mere cipher, and since the
second-hand vessels into which the delegation of the royal authority
has been poured have become such as not easily to be contaminated
by any association, the feasts of the scrip--a sort of clubbing of
stomachs and of tongues among all the Attic worthies, have come into
use, more and more in proportion as the times have been more and more
trying and troublesome, and the price of the expression of loyalty
has been enhanced, upon the ground of its alleged scarcity;--since
this has been the case, a complete separation has taken place even
in the feasts of the flagon, between the corporated bodies and the
uncorporated spirits of the Athens; and in this the “bodies” have
found ample compensation, in the greater frequency of their own
peculiar gastronomizings, as well as in the tagging of themselves
to the tails of the Lord-President, the Lord-Advocate, and the Lord
knows who--keeper for the time being of the secret influence of
Scotland,--who at all times form the tripod upon which the incense-pot
of Scottish loyalty is sustained.
No better idea of the nature and occasions of the feasts of the
flagon can be given than the well-known one of the bell-rope of the
Tron Kirk. For many years, a bell, which had been carefully cracked
lest the sound of it should disturb the official men, whose evening
retreats were deeply buried in the different closes, was tolled at the
tenth hour of every night to warn the populace from the streets, for
fear they should interrupt the march of that puissant corps of the
city-guard, who paraded the streets after that hour with bandy legs
and battle-axes, to conduct such of the lieges as could afford to pay
for it to any place of amusement they had a mind to visit. Nightly
exercise had worn the rope by which this bell was put in motion: it
broke one evening, and fell upon the head of a bailie who was passing,
rebounded from that without doing any damage, but floored an Athenian
damsel who was under his worship’s protection. This was, of course,
not to be borne; wherefore, a council was summoned, and a feast of the
flagon ordered; and when they had made themselves happy, they resolved
to adjourn till that day se’nnight, at which time they were to meet
and feast again, and receive estimates as to the expense of purchasing
a new rope and of splicing the old one. Having dined a second time,
they read the estimates, which were half-a-crown for the new rope, and
eighteen pence for splicing the old. A matter of so much importance
could not be settled at one meeting of council; wherefore, a second
adjournment and a third dinner were resolved upon. After that third
dinner, the tavern-bill, thirty-three pounds, six shillings, and
eight pence, for each of the three dinners, and the two estimates as
aforesaid, were laid upon the table. The treasurer of the city was
ordered first to pay the tavern-bill, and then to give orders that
the old rope should be spliced, because that would be a saving of
the public revenue, of which as faithful stewards, they ought to be
provident. The feasts of the scrip, again, are different,--bearing
a great resemblance to those associations of placemen, parsons, and
public stipendiaries, who from time to time meet all over the country,
and spend the price of a dinner with the same intention, and to the
same effect, that a farmer sprinkles grain in the furrows of his
field,--that in due time it may yield an abundant increase. During the
war, no sooner was a victory heard of, than away flew those supporters
of the Crown to a tavern, bumpered and bawled, till their loyalty and
every thing else appeared double, and then trotted off to beg a share
of the honour and emolument. If a tax or a scarcity pressed sore upon
the people, those persons were at their dining again, partly with a
view of diminishing the quantity of provision that might fall into the
hands of the enemy; partly because themselves are ever more courageous
in their cups; and partly because a report of their doings at a dinner
would sound much better than a report of their doings any where else.
Men who had thus from time immemorial rested not only their civic
and their political importance, but almost their civic and political
existence, upon their capacity for dining, in whom it was most likely
the greatest wisdom to do so, could not be expected to let his Majesty
eat his venison and drink his _Glenlivet_ (which unfortunately had
been both furnished by a Whig) at his ease in Dalkeith-House, but
would needs have him see with his own eyes with what zeal they could
cut into a buttock of beef, and with what alacrity they could drain
a goblet of wine, for the glory and the establishment of his throne.
Accordingly, as the following Sunday would be a day of rest, the civic
and other authorities in the Athens resolved that a feast of fat things
should be furnished forth in the great hall of the Athenian Parliament
House, upon Saturday the 24th of August. In preparing the hall for
this occasion, not only had the whole of the Athens been spoiled of
its decorations, but they had been forced to borrow largely at all the
loyal houses in the vicinity. And as it was in old times the custom for
every guest at the humbler Scottish parties to be provided with his
own spoon, his own knife, and his own pair of five-pronged forks, so
upon the present occasion it might be said, that each noble or loyal
visiter lent his ice-pail or his pepper-box. This hall, which is as it
were the vital principle of the Athens, the place where the tongues
of all her speakers are loosed, the pockets of all her quibblers
filled, the curiosity of all her gossips gratified, and the eyes and
wishes of all her fair directed--was made more gay than ordinary for
the occasion; and in the selection of guests, so far as that could be
controlled, care was taken that none should be present who could in any
wise eclipse in wisdom, or in elegance, the loyal lords of Scotland and
of the Athens. Feasting, however motley and contrasted the feasters,
is not a subject to be written about, but, as is perhaps the case with
music and with painting, it is a mere matter of temporary sensation.
Still, however, those who know the strange materials out of which
an Athenian corporation is formed, (and I shall tell those who do
not know by and by,) can easily conceive what an ungainly breadth of
delight the lower extremities of that corporation would feel in being
allowed to gorge themselves till their buttons were starting again,
in the very presence of the King. It was pleasing for them, too, to
hear the notes of flutes and fiddles issuing from those crypts and
holes about the hall whence no sounds are accustomed to issue but the
dronings of the law. The King, with his selected (I am not bound to
say select) guests, had a sort of line of partition, but all “below
the salt,” there seemed to be no law of aggregation. The man who had
fought at almost every degree of the earth’s circumference sat in close
juxtaposition with him who had warred merely with words; he who had
done what in him lay to pull down the glory of the old Athens, was
amid those who would copy that glory for the new; the sinecurist was
at the very ear of him by whom all sinecures are denounced; he who had
ploughed the wave was companion to him who had only tilled the ground;
and the peer and the bailie were on the most friendly footing. Nor was
the varied _status_ in life and expression of countenance, the only
thing which gave richness to the harmony. The sober blush of the heads
of the Kirk, and the sombre gowns of the Edinburgh magistrates, made a
fine contrast with the brightness of stars and ribbons, and epaulettes
and lace, and the mingling colours of the Celtic chiefs. There were not
many in the Highland garb: the Earl of Fife, Sir Even Mac Gregor, and
the Macdonald, were the only three that fell under my inspection; and
from the number of uniforms that every where predominated, the party
had a good deal of a military air.
In the arrangements too, the senses of the civic authorities, which are
not upon any occasion very great, appeared to be a little bewildered;
for there was no page to carry a bumper from the royal cup to the
Mordecais “whom the King delighted to honour.”
The only peculiarity of the feast, apart from the number and variety
of the guests, was the _reddendo_ of William Howison Craufurd, of
Braehead, who came with a basin and water, that his majesty might wash
his hands immediately after he had satisfied himself of the dainties
before him. There was a certain knot of persons who struck me as being
determined to monopolize the whole attention of the King; and, upon the
present occasion, two awkward boys, one a son and the other a nephew of
the Great Unknown, assisted the laird of Braehead in carrying the basin
and ewer, but they came and went unheeded. The tradition upon which
this service of the basin is founded, is worth repeating.
All the Jameses who lived and died kings of Scotland were fond of being
their own spies; and for this purpose, as well as for other purposes,
they were in the habit of travelling the country disguised and alone;
upon which occasions their doings had more of love or of war in them,
according to the disposition of the royal incognito. The rambles, and
amours, and songs, of James V. are well known, and so are some of the
brawls and battles of James II., not the second of England, who fought
by mercenaries for the purpose of slavery, but the second of Scotland,
who occasionally fought in prize battles with his subjects, by way of
experiment as to whether the sinews of a man or a monarch were the
better knit.
Upon one occasion, a gang of gypsies assailed him at Cramond, a few
miles west of Edinburgh; and, though he fought long and desperately, he
was beaten down. A ploughman, of the name of Howison, who was threshing
in a barn not far off, heard the noise, ran toward the place, and
seeing one man assailed, down, and all but defeated, by so many, began
to belabour the gypsies with his flail; and, having great strength
and skill at his weapon, soon put the gypsies to flight, lifted up
the King, carried him to his cottage, presented him with a towel and
water to remove the consequences of the fray, and then, declaring
that himself was “master there,” set the stranger at the head of his
humble board. “If you will call at the castle of Edinburgh,” said the
stranger, “and ask for Jamie Stuart, I will be glad to return your
hospitality.” “My hospitality,” said the farmer, “is nae gryte things
in itself; and it was gien without ony thought o’ a return, just as nae
doot you wad hae done to me in the same tacking; but I am obliged to
you for your offer, and wad like to see the castle at ony rate. The
King is a queer man, they say, and has queer things about him.” The
stranger upon this took his departure; and the rustic was well pleased
with the idea that he would get a sight of the inside of that strong
and majestic pile, of which he had so long admired the exterior.
A few days afterwards he repaired to the castle, inquired for “ane
Jamie Stuart, a stout gude-lookin chield, that could lick a dozen o’
gypsies, but not a score,” was admitted, and ushered into an apartment,
the splendour of whose furniture, and the number of whose company,
bewildered him not a little. At last, however, he recognised his old
guest Jamie Stuart, went up to him, shook him heartily by the hand,
inquired how he did, and expressed a very earnest wish to see the King,
if such an honour was at all possible for a man of his condition.
“The King is present now,” said Jamie Stuart, “and if you look round,
you will easily know him, for all the rest are bareheaded.” “Then,
I’m thinkin’ it maun either be you or me,” said Howison, pulling off
his bonnet, which till then his astonishment had prevented him from
thinking of; “and, as our acquaintance has begun by my fighting for
you, I had better keep to that when you need it, and let you keep to
bein’ King.” “Then, as you are so true and so trusty,” replied the
monarch, “you shall ride home the laird of Braehead.” “I like that
better than twa kingdoms,” said Howison, “but I canno’ accept o’ sae
much even frae your majesty, without gien’ something for’t.” “Well,
then,” said the King, “as long as we are kings of Scotland and lairds
of Braehead, let you and your’s present to me and mine, a basin and
towel to wash our hands, whenever we ask for it.”
This was the only occurrence which took place to break the dull
activity of the dinner. But when the cup circulated, a ceremony was
performed which delighted the corporation-men of the Athens, and
made the other corporation-men all over Scotland sad through sore
disappointment. The chief magistrate of Edinburgh, who had taken his
dinner as plain Mr. William Arbuthnot, took his drink as Sir William
Arbuthnot, Knight Baronet of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland,--the knighthood, as was alleged, having been, for the want
of a sword, inflicted by that much more appropriate weapon, a large
carving-knife, and the baronetage having subsequently issued from the
patent office in the usual form, and for the usual fee. All this having
been done, the King retired, and the corporation-men kept up the feast,
though not so long or so heartily but that all the rest finally went to
their homes _more sober than a judge_.
After the King had witnessed the devotedness of the Athenian
authorities at the table, it was proper that he should see the devotion
of the people in the church; and here again was one of those scenes
which struck me, and must have struck him, very forcibly, as to the
difference of a free people, and fawning courtiers, corporation fools,
and party slaves.
Becoming preparations having been made, and the King having been
furnished with a perspective sketch of the church, and a written
programme of the service, it was agreed that the Very Reverend David
Lamont, D.D., Moderator and Spiritual Head upon Earth of the Kirk of
Scotland, should preach before him, in the name and stead of all his
willing and worshipping brethren, while the “men,” the “leaders,” and
the people, should demean themselves with that decorum, which the day,
the service, and the occasion required.
When the services of the Scottish kirk are performed in a becoming
manner, there is a feeling, a sublimity, and a heavenliness about them,
of which one who considers only their simple and unadorned structure
could form no adequate idea; and when I observed the still and unbroken
solemnity of the service, and the effect which it obviously had, not
only upon those who are accustomed to it, but upon those strangers
who, in whatever predilection they had for one religion more than
another, were wedded to the more artificial and gaudy ritual of another
church--a church which had been at enmity with the Scottish kirk from
the beginning, and which, in dislike to the system of sober equality
among the Scottish clergy, and the democratic nature of their church
establishment, have attempted to hold up their form of worship as cold,
meagre, incapable of stirring up devotion in the hearts of men, and,
by consequence, not so gratifying to the Almighty as the more costly
and complicated ceremonial of others,--I could not help believing that,
of all forms of religion, the simplest is decidedly the best, and that
if the object of the propagators of Christianity was nothing but the
cultivation of the minds and the improvement of the morals of society,
they would carefully avoid all artifice and all show. Those, indeed,
who have considered the correspondence that exists between the forms
of religious worship, and the intellectual culture of the great body
of the people, cannot have failed to observe, that pompous shows and
gaudy ceremonies have ever been the concomitants of general ignorance
and superstition, and that a plain and unadorned system of worship, has
uniformly been characteristic of an intelligent people.
Scotland is an eminent example of this; and whoever takes the
trouble to investigate the structure of Scottish society will, to a
certainty, find that for half their virtues, and more than half their
information, they are indebted to the presbyterian kirk. Nor is it by
any means difficult to find out the reason: A religion of shows and of
sounds,--of mummeries and of music,--must ever be a religion of the
senses. How gaudy soever the trappings, and how fine soever the music,
they can afford nothing more than a gratification of the senses at the
time. Forms cannot exist vividly but in matter, and when the string
of an instrument ceases to vibrate on the ear, the pleasure which it
affords, however sweet or however delightful, is at an end: they enter
not into reflection; they stimulate not the more rational and permanent
faculties of the mind; and, though they may be made to influence, and
influence powerfully, the passions, while they last, they leave no
lesson which can be useful as a general rule of life. Hence, though the
churches of Scotland be, compared with those of England, rude in the
extreme; though the sacred music of Scotland be often the untutored
attempt of nature, without the aid of flutes, hautboys, and violins, as
in the poorer churches of England, or the solemn notes of the organ,
as in the richer ones; and though the prayers of the Scottish preacher
are generally couched in terms less stately and sublime than those
of the service-book of the English church, yet we have the clearest
proof that can be given of the superior efficacy of the Scottish mode
of worship, in the superior veneration which the people of Scotland,
without any hope or even possibility of earthly reward from it, pay
to the rites and ordinances of religion, and especially to that most
beneficial of all religious institutions, the setting apart of the
sabbath as a day of calm tranquillity and holy meditation.
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.