The Modern Athens. Robert Mudie

themselves and their deliberations were in the dark. Hence, as hope is the grand resource in such cases, they deputed the Lord President to seek aid from the Royal Society of Edinburgh,—a society which, composed of the wisest heads, and prosecuting the wisest subjects, always says and does the very wisest things in the very wisest manner.

      Fortunately the Society was sitting,—doing its incubation, upon a refutation of Aristotle’s poetics by Sir George M’Kenzie, of Coul, Bart., and a proposal for lighting all the roads in Scotland with putrid fish-heads, by Sir John Sinclair. The Lord President opened his mouth and his case; and each learned head nodded with the solemnity of that of a Jupiter. The trumpet-call, blown through the nose by a bandana handkerchief, summoned to the charge the commodity of brains that each possessed; and each having returned the bandana to its place, looked as wise as the goddess of the Elder Athens, or even as her sacred bird. The general question propounded to them ran thus,—“What was to be done, and by whom?” and the deliverance of their wisdoms was, that “Every thing ought to be done, and every body ought to do it”—a response surpassing in profoundity any thing ever uttered by the Pythoness herself. The countenance of the dignified delegate was brought parallel to the ceiling; his eyes and mouth had a contest as to which could become the wider; and, he Macadamized the question by breaking it into smaller pieces: “What should they say to the King; what should they give him to eat; and how should they demean themselves?” It was resolved, as touching the first, that they should say very little, for fear of errors in propriety or in grammar; but that they should put in motion the addressing-machinery, of which official men in Scotland had so often felt the benefit, and give, in “change for a Sovereign” as it were, two hundred and forty of those copper coins, for their own benefit, and that of the royal closet. The second point was more puzzling: A king would not care for sheep’s-head or haggis, and as for French cookery, that would be no rarity. Some lamented that the Airthrie whale was petrified, and that Dr. Barclay’s elephant was nothing but bones; and Sir John Sinclair recommended three mermaids dressed entire,—of which he assured them there were plenty on the coast of Caithness. Upon this point there was a difference of opinion; and they resolved to board the King upon the enemy, by getting ten fat bucks from that notorious Whig the Honourable W. Maule, as his Grace of Montrose had only one to spare. Upon the third point their decision was equally summary and clear, “Every one was to do the best that he could.”

      Those sage counsels having been given and received, the loyalty of Athens was set fire to in a number of places, and anon the whole city was in a blaze. Lords of session, spies, men who had eaten flesh and drank wine for the glory of the throne, excisemen, crown-lawyers, holders and expectants of crown-patronages, address-grinders, beaconeers, and all the interminable file of that which had supported the loyalty and existence of Scotland in the worst of times, shone forth with first and fiercest lustre. In that great tattle-market (hereafter to be described,) the Parliament-house, you would have found the Tory barristers—the current of whose loyalty is seldom much broken by briefs, clubbing together, cackling as though they had been the sole geese of salvation to the capitol, and stretching their mandibles, and showing their feathers at the more-employed and laborious Whigs, as a race soon to be exterminated. The disposal of majesty himself was committed to the Great Unknown, who sagely counselled that they should make a still greater unknown of the King, by mewing him up in Dalkeith-house, where he could commune only with a few of the chosen; and, that they should bring him before the public only once or twice, to be worshipped and wondered at, more as a favour of their procuring, than of his own Royal pleasure. How little they knew of his Majesty, and how much they had overrated their own importance occurred not to them at the time, but they found it out afterwards.

      The next weighty question was what the city should do in her municipal capacity; and, it was ordered in limine that the nightly tattoo of “The Flowers of Edinburgh,” which from time immemorial had been played in the streets, should be suspended during the solemnity, under pain of escheat of the instruments, allenarly for the private benefit and use of the Lord Provost and magistrates. Every one who has seen Edinburgh must know the perfect resemblance which her High-street—that street in which magistracy is pre-eminently dominant, and where shows are wont to be exhibited—bears to the back-bone of a red-herring. Westward you have the castle in form, in elevation, and in grandeur, the very type of the head; eastward, at the further extremity, you have the palace of Holyrood, which from its lowly situation among cesspools and bankrupts, and its usual gloomy and forlorn condition, may very properly be likened to the tail; the intermediate street is the spine; while the wynds and closes which stretch to the North Loch on the one side, and the Cow-gate on the other, are the perfect counterpart of the ribs. This High-street was cleared of some old incumbrances, had exhibition-booths erected along its whole extent; and it was expressly ordered that, as the King passed along, no frippery or foul linen should be exhibited from even the third garret windows; and, that during the whole sojourn of royalty, no man should enter the rendezvouses in the closes by the street end, but come in by the back stairs; more clerici, in the same fashion as during the sittings of the General Assembly. But, it would be endless to notice all the sagacious orders and prompt actings: suffice it to say, that every thing which could be thought of was ordered, and every thing ordered was done.

      The people of the Athens are, even upon ordinary occasions, much more attentive to their dress than to their address; and, therefore, it was to be expected that they should be so upon so momentous an occasion. Besides the tailors’ boxes of which I had felt a specimen on my journey, there was work for every pair of sheers and needle in the city. Webs of tartan, wigs, pieces of muslin, paste diamonds, ostrich feathers, combs as well for use as for ornament, were driving over the whole place like snow-flakes at Christmas. But, the hurry and harvest were by no means confined to the Caledonian shop-keepers. The rumour had reached the purlieus of Leicester-square, and had been heard in the fashionable repositories of Holywell. The remnant of Jacob gathered themselves together, resolving to come in for their share of the milk and honey which was flowing in the new-made Canaan of Scotland; while the daughters of Judah put tires upon their heads, and thronged away to spoil the Amorites northward of the Tweed. It were impossible to describe the wares brought by the sons of Jacob,—it were needless to tell of those brought by the daughters of Israel. The plume which had nodded upon the brows of fifty queens at Old Drury, was refurbished to adorn some proud and pedigreed dame of the north; swords of most harmless beauty—having nothing of steel about them but the hilts, were crossed most bewitchingly in every thoroughfare, accompanied by old opera-hats, bag-wigs, buttons, and every thing which could give the outward man the guise and bearing of a courtier. Before these elegant repositories slender clerks and sallow misses might be seen ogling for the live-long day, and departing in sorrow at nightfall, because the small tinkle in their pockets was unable to procure for them even one morning or evening’s use of that garb, the fee simple of which had cost Moses seven shillings and sixpence, and the translation and transmission a crown-piece. Moses indeed found that he had something else than Ludgate-hill and Regent-street to contend with; for, every ribbon-vending son of the North had garnished his windows with trinkets and ornaments which, in appearance, in quality, and in price, would have done honour to Solomon himself.

      But wherefore should I waste time on the ornaments of individuals, when the garnishing of the whole city was before my eyes,—when, from the pier of Leith to the farthest extremity of Edinburgh, every act of the coming drama stood rubric and impressed upon men and women, and things. The first, important enough upon all occasions, had now put on looks of ten-fold wisdom and sagacity. The second, all bewitching as they are in their native loveliness, were subjecting their necks to the process of bleaching by chlorine gas, laying their locks in lavender, sleeping in “cream and frontlets,” and applying all manner of salves and unctions to the lip, in order to make it plump and seemly for the high honour of royal salutation. I have no evidence that any daughter of the North fed upon the flesh of vipers in order to induce fairness in her own, as little have I evidence that there was need for such a regimen; I did hear, however, that the lady of one baronet took up her lodgings for two successive nights in a warm cow’s-hide, and that she of a senator of the college of justice wrought wonders upon her bust by a cataplasm of rump-steak, but I cannot vouch for the facts, or set my probatum to them as successful experiments in kaleiosophy. So much for the first blush of preparation with the men and women; I need not add, that like the streams of Edina, it became rich