The pride of the north had been more than usually upon the qui vive. The Provost had been attitudenizing before a great mirror for a week, and getting his pronunciation translated into English by Mr. Megget, of the Academy, for at least a fortnight; the town-clerk had been drudging at “steps” in private with Mr. Corbyn for a month, and the learned Mr. Innes had been applied to, to cast the nativity of the city; and, from the horoscope—Saturn in conjunction with Mars, and Venus lady of the ascendant, it was sagely inferred by the clubbed wisdoms of King’s and Mareschal that the Provost “wad get a gryte mickle purse o’ siller, for the gueed o’ the ceety, forby a triffle to himsel’;” and that, if not a duke, the town-clerk would be a goose at any rate, if both eschewed during their sojourn that hankering after the sex which was portended by the lady Venus being in the middle house. Those polite and philosophic preparations having been made, the state coach, with two cats (the emblems of bon accord) the size of a couple of yeanling lambs, gilt with Dutch fulzie, and spotted with coffin black, “all for the sparin’ o’ the cost,” rattled along the bridge of Dee at the tail of six hardy shelties from the Cabrach, “which could mak’ a shift to live upo’ thristles, or fool strae, or ony thing that they cou’d pyke up at a dykeside.” Still, however, this mighty magisterial meteor streamed across Drumthwackit, along the “how o’ the Mearns,” and adoun Strathmore, like an aurora borealis flashing from the pole to the zenith, flickering and crackling, and smelling of brimstone. While its tail drew the third part of the wilie natives of the city; the other two-thirds took their way in barks and steam-boats, because it was “cheaper by the tae half.”
But what words can describe the grand array of the municipal authorities of Perth: Perth, the centre and heart of Scotland—the capital of the Picts, the delight of the Romans, who tumbled down in ecstasy when they first beheld it from the summit of Moncrief Hill, and, fancying that they saw in its green inches, its sweeping river, and its ample size, the Campagna, the Tiber, and the Eternal city, shouted in one voice “Ecce Tiber! Ecce Campus Martius!”—Perth, which looks upon Aberdeen as dry stubble, and Glasgow as the dust of the earth; and which has received within its halls and palaces more kings and mighty men, than the compass of these pages could hold, or the sages of its own Antiquarian society could number.
To pay due honour to the decorum, the sagacity, and the harmony of such a city, it is worth while to pause and learn a little, before speaking of the equipage. Well, what, gentle reader, shall we learn? Why that the same gentleman who sat in that splendid equipage as chief ruler of the city, put to the proof, as touching his Celtic or Sarmatian origin, no less a personage than the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother to the autocrat of all the Russias—the arbiter for the time being of all the legitimate monarchs upon the continent of Europe. The fame of the city of Perth being, of course, well known upon the banks of the Neva, and the Kremlin at Moscow having been burnt as the first portion of the funeral pile of Buonaparte, there was no place where the magnanimous Alexander could find a fit pattern after which to build the restored Kremlin, except this fine and far-famed city of Perth. The Grand Duke Nicholas, from his well-known architectural and other tastes, was deputed upon this important mission; and, having taken London, the Athens, and a few such places of inferior note in his way, he arrived at the city of all beauty; and was received by a bowing magistracy, and a gaping populace. During his stay at the George Inn, the superiority of the Tay salmon and “Athol brose,” over the caviere and quass of his own country, worked the imperial clay to the temperature of a very Vesuvius. He applied to the Lord Provost in his need. The Lord Provost convened his council. Their words were wise, and their faces were wiser; but they could determine nothing; and so they handed the case over to the ministers and elders of the kirk. These shut their eyes and opened their mouths; and having done so for a due season, they found that as the Grand Duke Nicholas was not in communion with their church, the Grand Duke Nicholas might, in all matters bodily or ghostly, do as the said Grand Duke Nicholas felt inclined. This response delighted the municipal authorities, and they hurried to the inn to communicate with their own lips this plenary indulgence. Provost Robertson hemmed, stroked his beard, and led off in words wherein the Saxon and the Celtic so perfectly neutralized each other, that the whole was as smooth as oil. But, though the Grand Duke Nicholas understood many single languages, the mouth even of a magistrate delivered of twins, was as new to him as it was incomprehensible. It was clear, from his lack-lustre eye, that he did not understand one word of what was said; and he tried to convey as much in Latin, French, German, Russ, and no one knows how many other outlandish tongues; but as the Grand Duke Nicholas could not ascend to a double language, so neither could the Provost of Perth descend to a single one; wherefore the mighty mountaineer, who during the Athenian display acted Perth, brushed up to him, tumbling down half a dozen of splay-foot councillors and ricketty deacons, and exclaiming, “Try her o’ the Gaelic, my Lord Provost! try her o’ the Gaelic!”
A person of this calibre, and having buttoned within his waistcoat the chief honour of a town of this fame, could not choose but exhibit a corresponding exterior. Accordingly, the coach was the size of a fly van; the horses would have done credit to Whitbread’s heaviest dray; and, in very deed, had a sportsman of the land of Cockaigne seen the emblazoned arms, pop would have gone Joseph Manton right and left at the displayed eagle of silver-white, as at a goose of kindred obesity, and fit for the Michaelmas board.
Of those civic exhibiters, Dundee must close the muster: Dundee, after these, was “filthy Dowlas.” The wig of her chief magistrate, (which seemed as though he had exchanged it with the Perth coachman, as they had been taking a groats-worth of swipes and thrippeny blue at Luckey Maccarracher’s Hotel, down three flights of stairs, in Shakspeare’s Square,) did not contain as much sand-coloured hair as would have stuffed a pincushion; and, as for the poll itself, not a barber in Petticoat-lane would have shown it in his window. Their equipage, which had once belonged to a celebrated radical, was whitewashed for the occasion, had two green salamanders marked upon it, as lank as though they had fed upon smoke—as much as to say that the lading within was proof against fire and brimstone. Four experienced cattle, which had been rescued or borrowed from the dogs’ meat-man, dragged forward the heavy and heartless array; and the brawling burghers took shipping at their new harbour; but Æolus was adverse, and so they who had hoped to see George the Fourth saw Holland, got fuddled with Scheidam gin, bought a cargo of flax, and returned, not much the wiser—that had been impossible.
This, and much more after the same fashion, was enough and more than enough to distract the attention from all the Athenses that ever were built or blazoned in story. But this, and much more like this, was not all: there was also much very unlike it,—so unlike, that when you turned from the one to the other, you felt as if seas had been crossed; ay, as if the very poles of the earth had been reversed, or as if you had passed from the depth of folly to the height of wisdom in the twinkling of an eye. There were the whole assembled people of Scotland,—of that people who, girt with no ill-suited authority, and tricked out with no incongruous and tawdry pomp, had come in the fullness of their hearts and the abundance of their curiosity, to look upon their liege lord the King. The magistrates in their coaches were senseless pomp; the Highland chiefs with their tartans and their tails, were a useless, and, in many instances where they had commanded the small farmers to leave their scanty crops to be scattered by the winds or rotted by the rains, a cruel parade; but the people,—the free and independent people who assembled of their own will, at their own cost, and for their own pleasure, formed a solemnity at which the eye could not fail to be delighted, and over which the heart could not fail to exult with the most ample and the most exquisite joy. To the hundred thousand inhabitants of Athens, there were added full twice as many strangers, all in their best array; and yet, among the whole there was nothing taking place at which either law or delicacy could be offended. Religious and political animosity had been laid aside, oppression had been forgiven, and meanness forgotten; the people seemed to compose but one family, and they spoke as if animated with only one wish,—namely, that the King should come: or if they had another, it was that his coming might be speedy and safe. Whatever other men may think of Edinburgh—of Scotland, as a place to be visited, it is a glorious place for being visited by a king; and, it will be no proof of wisdom in the future monarchs of Britain, if they allow the crown to pass to a successor without paying it a visit. Kings reign the more happily and the more secure, the more freely and frequently that they show themselves to their subjects.
CHAPTER II.
THE MODERN ATHENS, HAVING ALREADY RECEIVED THE AUTHOR, MAKES PREPARATIONS FOR RECEIVING THE KING.