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,