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.