When the King came to Edinburgh following on his coronation, making a pilgrimage of his realm, he came to St. Giles, as has come every sovereign of Scotland, from Malcolm who may have worshiped in the Culdee church, to George in whose honour the chapel of the Thistle and the Rose was unveiled.
"For noo, unfaithfu' to the Lord
Auld Scotland joins the rebel horde;
Her human hymn-books on the board
She noo displays,
An' Embro Hie Kirk's been restored
In popish ways."
INTERIOR OF ST. GILES.
On a Sunday morning I hurried to St. Giles to see the trooping of the colours. (Later, listening to Dr. White, in a recently built reformed church on Princes Street, I heard a sermon from the text, "You shall see the king in all his beauty." But, no mention of King George! It was even as it was in the old days.)
In truth it was a brave sight to find the High Street thronged with people, and the regiments marching down from St. Giles to Holyrood. The king did not enter town till next day. (I saw, with some resentment, over the door of a public house, the motto, "Will ye no come back again?") But, somehow, so many kings gone on, the play was rather better staged with the sovereign not there. I learned then how gorgeous the old days must have been with their colour and glitter and flash.
I suppose there was a tall land where in my day stood and still stands Hogg's hotel, just above the Tron Kirk; the lands on the south side the High burned a century ago. But, to the American gazing down on ancient memories and present sovereignties, there was a wonderful courtesy shown by the hotel. I had interrupted their quiet Sabbath; it can still be quiet in Edinburgh notwithstanding that a tram car carried me on my way hither. The dining-room of this hotel looked out on the High, and it was breakfast time for these covenanting-looking guests from the countryside. But I, an invader, was made welcome and given the best seat on the balcony; a stranger and they took me in. Sometime I shall take up residence in this Latin Quarter, and if not in Lady Stair's Close, then in Hogg's hotel. The name sounds sweeter if you have just come up from Ettrick.
Nor did I miss the King. For
"I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd—'La Belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!'"
It was the Belle Dame, it was the Queen, I saw most often on the High Street, riding to and fro from the time of the "haar" on her return from France, till that last terrible night and the ride to Loch Leven.