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Title: The Modern Athens - A dissection and demonstration of men and things in the Scotch Capital.
Author: Mudie, Robert
Language: English
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THE
MODERN ATHENS:
A DISSECTION AND DEMONSTRATION
OF MEN AND THINGS
IN
THE SCOTCH CAPITAL.
BY A MODERN GREEK.
_Ανδϱες Αϑηναῖοι, ϰατὰ ϖάντα ὡς δεισιδαιμονεστέϱους
ὑμᾶς ϑεωϱῶ._
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR KNIGHT AND LACEY,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCXXV.
LONDON:
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES,
Northumberland-court.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
The Author and the King set out for the Athens--The
Author arrives--The Gathering--Corporation-men--Glasgow,
Aberdeen, Perth, Dundee, &c.--The People page 1.
CHAPTER II.
Athenian Preparations for Majesty--Official Men--Royal
Society--Plan by the Ultras--Migration of the
Jews--Exercise of the Athenian Fair--Sir Walter
Scott--Storm at Sea--Anxiety in the Athens--Royal
Squadron arrives--Fresh anxiety p. 19.
CHAPTER III.
The King lands--Grandeur of the Scenery--Joy of
the People--Insult to Leith--Illuminations--The
Levee--The Court--Disappointment of
Official Men--The Athenian Ladies--Royal
Salutation--Dances--Pilgrimages--Dinners--Kirks--Vanity
of the Athens--National
Monument--Dispersion--Farewell p. 41.
CHAPTER IV.
The
Athens--Situation--Architecture--Environs--Self-idolatry
--Widowed State--Sundry Theories p. 149.
CHAPTER V.
Political State of Scotland--Counties--Burghs--The
Athens--Criminal Law--Lord Advocate--Athenian
Tories--Whigs p. 167.
CHAPTER VI.
Athenian Lawyers--Their overwhelming Influence--Their
Habits and Characters--Solemnity of the Scotch Criminal
Courts p. 187.
CHAPTER VII.
Athenian Learning--Causes of its
Decline--Professors--Philosophers--University--Patronage
--Athenian Parsons p. 206.
CHAPTER VIII.
Literature--Ramsay--Ferguson--Burns--The
Edinburgh Review--Blackwood’s Magazine--The
Scot’s Magazine--Miserable State of the Athenian
Press--Causes p. 225.
CHAPTER IX.
Education--Scotch Education generally--Its
Advantages--The Athenian Populace--Athenian
Education--Its doubtful Qualities p. 258.
CHAPTER X.
Athenian Manners--Religion p. 290.
CHAPTER XI.
Sundry Qualities in Supplement p. 305.
Throughout the Volume, there will be found _attic_ touches of real
character, in illustration of the general and local truths.
THE
MODERN ATHENS.
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR AND THE KING ARE INDUCED TO VISIT THE MODERN ATHENS.
“Ego et Rex meus.”--WOLSEY.
The renown of the Scottish Metropolis,--that city of wonders and of
wisdom, of palaces and of philosophy, of learned men and of lovely
women, had sounded so long and so loudly in their ears, that toward
the close of summer 1822, the Author of these pages and the Sovereign
of these realms, were induced to pay it a visit, each in that state
and with that pomp and circumstance which was becoming his station in
the world. The one, in that unmarked guise which is fitting for one
who lives more for the glory of others than of himself, and who sets
more value upon the single sentence which preserves his memory when he
is no more, than upon all that he can possess or enjoy in this world.
The other, in that glow and grandeur, which gains in intensity what
it stands some chance of losing in duration,--which is the grand idol
of its day; and which, when that day has closed, is gathered to the
sepulchre of its fathers, to make room for another--and the same.
The Author of these pages must not be blamed, or deemed disloyal, for
having given his own name the precedence of that of his Sovereign.
Every man in reality prefers himself before all the sovereigns in
the world; and wherefore should not one man state this preference in
words? The courtier declares that all his services are devoted to his
king,--but he devotes them no longer than that king can afford to
pay for them: the soldier swears that he will die in defence of the
crown,--but he never dies till he is compelled by the superior strength
or skill of another. Even upon general grounds, therefore, there is
candour if not courtesy in this order of precedence.
But, when the specialities of the case are considered,--when it is
borne in mind that the monarch, all-gracious and polite as he is,
visited the Athens, as well to dazzle the Athenians by his grandeur,
as to delight them by his bounty,--that the native luminaries of that
centre of many twinkling lights were shorn of their beams by his
overwhelming radiance,--that this instance of kingly condescension
taught the ΔΕΜΟΣ of Athena to regard as haply something less even than
men, those whom they had formerly looked upon as possessing some of
the attributes of divinity; and when, on the other hand, it is taken
into the account that the author of these pages made his visit solely
with a view of seeing with his own eyes, hearing with his own ears, and
proclaiming with his own lips, the truth of those reports which had
come to him through so many channels, and of which the fruition had
proved so much more delectable than the foretaste: then, assuredly,
ought Athena herself, from all the castles of her strength, the halls
of her wisdom, the drawing-rooms of her beauty, and the alleys of her
retirement, to confess that she owes to the author of these pages more
than kingly gratitude.--The King noticed but a few of her people,
enriched not many, and ennobled almost none: those pages are intended
to enwrap the whole in one pure and perennial blaze of glory.
It was on the evening of the same day that the Monarch took shipping
at Greenwich amid the shouts of assembled multitudes, and the Author
took his seat on the top of the Edinburgh mail, amid piles of tailors’
boxes, each containing a courtier’s habit, in which some fond, and
fawning, and fortune-desiring son of Caledonia was to bend the supple
knee in the presence of Majesty, within the ancient palace of the
Holyrood. The voyages of kings, and the velocity of mail-coaches, are
already known and appreciated; and thus there needs no more to be said,
than that here also the Author had by several days the precedence of
the King.
The jolting of the wooden cases of my courtly neighbours, together
with forty-eight hours’ exposure to drought by day and damp by night,
prepared me, in spite of all my burning anxiety to see the far-famed
city, for the enjoyment of several hours of repose; and, as Athena was
at this time too much excited for permitting me to enjoy this till
towards morning, the sun had risen high before I left my chamber.
Upon hurrying into the street,--into that Princes’ street, which, as
I afterwards learned, is at certain seasons of the year the favourite
lounge of the Athenian dandies, and at certain hours of the day the
favourite haunt of the Athenian fair, who resort thither as the
clock strikes four, to feast their fair and anxious eyes upon the
self-important forms of dashing advocates, the more dapper and pursey
ones of pawkie writers to his Majesty’s signet, or the attenuated
striplings of the quill--the future Clerks and Jefferys, who at that
hour are returning from the harvest of law and profits to such feast
as awaits them in ample hall or elevated cock-loft, according to their
talents, their connexions, or their purses;--upon hurrying into that
street, in the expectation of feasting my eyes upon the natural and
architectural glories of the city, I found that those glories were in
the mean time veiled in the maddening preparations of a whole people,
who had come from every portion of the main land, and from the remotest
isle of Thulè, to wonder at and to admire that mightiest marvel of
human nature--a king.
So novel and so varied were the costumes, so unexpected and so
singular were the features and expressions, and so uncouth and
Babylonish were the voices, that the eye and the ear were confounded,
the judgment could not understand, and the memory could preserve no
record. Here you might see some brawny and briefless barrister--the
younger son of a loyal family, with a pedigree at least twice as
long as its rental, with trowsers and jacket _à la_ Robin Hood,
and huge blue bonnet adorned with the St. Andrew’s cross and a
turkey-cock’s feather--looking for all the world like a chimney-sweep’s
Jack-o’-the-Green, or a calf dressed entire and garnished with
cabbage-leaves; while close by him trotted a loyal toast-composing
crown-lawyer, with his hinder end cased in a phillibeg, a feathered
bonnet, at least a third of his own height, an iron-hilted sword
somewhat more than the whole, and a dirk that might have served for
a plough-share, puffing and blowing under the weight of his own
importance, and the accoutrements of the Celtic society. In close
juxtaposition with these was a genuine _Glhuine dhu_, plaided, plumed,
and whiskered, and looking as if all the kings of the earth were
nothing to that swaggering chieftain, of whose _tail_ he formed no
inconsiderable portion. In another place you could catch the broad
face and broader bonnet of a lowland farmer of the old school, cased
in one uniform garb of home-made blue, with brass buckles to his
shoes, a brass key suspended to his watch by a tough thong of black
leather, greasy enough,--holding solemn colloquy with that reverend
member of the Scottish Kirk, to whom he acted in the capacity of ruling
elder, about the danger of compromising the interests of the Whig or
_high-flying_ part of that establishment, during the _avatar_ of so
many Tories. The reverend gentleman himself was no bad sight. His
general-assembly coat and et cetera’s were duly kept at home,--that
is to say, in his two-shillings-a-week apartments, up seven pair
of stairs, in College-street, or haply in the house of that town
acquaintance with whom he had found cheaper board,--till the eventful
days should arrive. Thus he was habited in his parson’s grey, the
breast of which, where it projected beyond the perpendicular, bore
testimony to the fall, both of broth and of punch, while his inferior
regions were shaded and shielded by dark-olive velveteens, a little
tarnished, worsted hose furrowed as neatly as the turnip-division of
his glebe, and cow-skin shoes of the most damp-defying power, which
borrowed no part of their lustre from Mr. Robert Warren. Still the good
man was clean in his linen; his chin was shorn like a new-mowed field;
his visage beamed forth gratitude for “a competent portion of the good
things of this life;” and his plump and ruddy hands slumbered with
much orthodox ease in the capacious pockets of the velveteens. Anon, a
highland laird, whose _tail_ comprised only his lady and half a dozen
of daughters, and who seemed to be meditating upon the roofless castle
and ill-stored larder, to which the expense of parading full thirty-six
feet of female charms before the King would subject him, during the
weary moons of the Highland winter, hurried past, not at all at his
ease.
But, to describe the individuals, strongly marked as they were,
would be altogether out of the question; and, indeed, to give any
thing like even a sketch of the groups and classes and knots of men,
women, and children, in all habits, of all ages, and in almost every
variety of shape, would bankrupt even a German vocabulary, although
in that language one be allowed, for clearness sake, to lump a score
of sentences into a single epithet. The cry was still “they come,”
and Caledonia, from fertile plain and far mountain,--from toiling
city and tiresome wilderness,--from rock, and glen, and river,--upon
the wings of the wind, urged on by steam, drawn in coach, chaise,
waggon, cart, and hurdle, riding upon horses, mules, and donkeys, and
running upon feet, shod and unshod,--came scudding and smoking, and
creaking and crashing, and reeking and panting, in one conglomerating
cloud, and one commingling din, to distract the attention from the
attic glories of Edinburgh, and for a time drown her classic sounds
in the discordant and untunable din of all the provinces. Here you
had the broad shoulders and bold bearing of the borderer, delving an
elbow, of the size and substance of a sirloin of beef, into the skinny
ribs of an Aberdonian professor of humanity, who all the time kept
squeaking like a sick fiddle, in response to the bellow of the other,
which reminded you of a bull confined in the vaulted hall of an old
castle. There grinned the fat face of an East Lothian farmer, between
a Perth baillie on the one hand, and a Stonehaven scribe on the other,
like a ram’s tail between the blades of a shepherd’s sheers. And,
yonder gaped and wondered the great face of a Glasgow negro-driver,
like a Gorgon’s head--not upon the shield of Minerva. Still there was
something interesting in the mighty and motley throng: it put one in
mind of Noah’s ark, which contained “clean beasts, and beasts that are
not clean, and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The most delectable part of the gathering was the combined clans and
the burgh corporations. The former belted like warriors and bellied
like weasels, and tricked out for the occasion in their respective
tartans of their names, each bearing a sprig of the symbolic tree in
his bonnet, a huge claymore in the one hand, and a relay of brogues
and stockings in the other, with a great horn snuff-mull thrust into
his _sporran_--open and ready for action--hurried along at the _pas
de charge_ to their headquarters for the time-being, where they were
instantly dispersed into the crowd, thence to reassemble when the
bagpipe should frighten the last shadow of night.
The corporation-men came in less military but more important guise.
Glasgow, the queen of the west, Aberdeen, the glory of the north,
Dundee and Perth, the rival empresses of the centre, with Cupar-Fife,
Crail, and a hundred others, each charged with a loyal and dutiful
address, which had been composed by the town-clerk, revised in the
spelling by the schoolmaster, and was to be discharged at the King,
in a manner so powerful and point-blank, as to procure knighthood if
not earldom for such candle-selling provost, breeches-manufacturing
baillie, or other chief magistrate “after his kind,” came on with a
splendour and an importance that Scotland never before witnessed.
Glasgow, as became her purse and her pride, came blazing like the
western star--or rather like a comet whose tail would have girdled half
the signs of the zodiac. The van was led by the magistrates, in a coach
which previously knew every street and lane of the city, but which was
relackered for the occasion, had the city arms emblazoned upon it as
large as a pullicate handkerchief, and was drawn by eight grey horses
of the genuine Lanarkshire breed,--the thunder of whose feet as they
dashed along shook the kirk of Shotts, and had nearly laid Airdrie and
Bathgate in ruins. The clatter which they made along Princes’ Street
was astounding; the crowd collected in thousands at the din; some
cried it was the king himself; but the final opinion was, that it was
“naebody but the magestrates o’ Glasgow.”
In the train of this goodly leading, there followed full fifty
thousand,--or to speak by measure, as number was quite out of the
question, full forty-four miles of merchants and makers of muslin; and
the vehicles which carried the car-borne part of them were more strange
and varied than ever appeared at the triumph of a Roman emperor upon
his return from smiting the barbarous nations, and carrying themselves
and all their utensils captive. Here you would see the equipage of a
rich dealer in turmeric or tobacco, fashionable enough except in its
contents; there you were presented with a Glasgow _Noddy_, squeezing
forward its lank form like a tile, and dragged by a steed with three
serviceable legs, and one eye the worse for the wear; in another place
you would meet with a hearse, with a tarpaulin over it to hide the
death’s head and the bones, and crammed full of the saints of the
Salt-market laid lengthways for the convenience of stowage; while the
rear was brought up by an enormous tilted waggon, which, though it was
at first conjectured to contain Polito’s collection of wild beasts,
was, upon examination, found to be charged very abundantly with that
more important and polished matter--the ladies and gentlemen of Paisley
and Greenock.
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.
“The young gudewife o’ Auchinblae,
She was a cannie woman;
She wiped her wi’ a wisp o’ strae,
When her gudeman was comin.”--OLD BALLAD.
THE movements of a people of so much gusto, and grace, and gravity,
as those who had interposed their thickening clouds between my vision
and those municipal and mental glories which I had come to see, could
not choose but do every thing according to the most approved canons of
philosophy; and thus the mighty matter of the royal visitation had to
be received in its beginning, its middle, and its end, before I could
proceed in my legitimate and laudatory vocation. Besides the people who
came, there were the preparations made and the deeds done,--each of
which is well worthy of a chapter.
The rumour of the high honour came upon the Athens like the light of
the morning,--beaming upon the most elevated points, while yet the
general mass remained in shadow. The Lord President of the Court of
Session, the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, the Lord Advocate,
Lady Macconochie, the very Reverend, and (by office and intuition,)
very learned Principal Baird, the Sheriff of the County, Deacon
Knox, of Radical-threshing renown, Mr. Archibald Campbell, and that
fair dame who watches and wipes in Queen Mary’s apartments at the
Holyrood, were the first upon whom the radiance broke; and, the summit
of Ben Nevis gilded by the morning sun, looks not more proudly down
upon the mists of Lochiel or the melancholy waste of Rannoch, than
each and all of those high personages did upon the ungifted sons and
daughters of Edinburgh. They were in a fidget of the first magnitude,
as to what was to be done, and who was to do it. Long and deep were
their deliberations; but, like the Areopagites of the Elder Athens,
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 as it ran.
The attitudes of things were a good deal more diversified and puzzling;
and, perhaps the shortest way of getting rid of them would be to
adopt the laundress’ phrase, and say they were “got up;” but this,
though summary and in the main correct, would neither be just nor
satisfactory,--because, in all modern stage displays, the actors would
cut but a sorry figure were it not for the scenery.
As, however, the scenery arises out of the drama itself, while the
actors have an existence and character off the boards, it will be
necessary to premise an outline of the plot. That was arranged into
the following acts, with as many interludes public and private as
could be crammed into the time and space. The King was to land--to be
received by whoever should be accounted the greatest and most loyal
man in Scotland, which some said was Lord President Hope, some Bailie
Blackwood, some Sir Walter Scott, others Sir Alexander Gordon, of
Culvennan, a few Principal Baird, and even Professor Leslie had his own
vote and another--he was to shake hands with Bailie Macfie, of Leith,
(with his glove on as it were,) then he was to pass along streets,
through triumphal arches, over bridges, and in at gates, to the ancient
palace of the Holyrood, where the old throne from Buckingham-House had
been darned and done up for his reception, by way of reading him an
introductory lecture upon Scotch economy. Such was to be the first act
of the drama, and the preparations for it were peculiarly splendid. The
line of progress, which was both long and broad, was to be thronged
with people; the devices and mottoes were to be got up, to let the
King know that an illumination was coming; the ladies were instructed
to fidget and wriggle in the windows, by way of hint that there would
be a dance; the presence of Sir William Curtis made it certain there
would be turtle-soup; the curl of the Reverend Dr. Lamond’s nose
threatened a sermon; the archery and men with white sticks pointed to
a procession; the hungry looks of the Burgh magistrates and local men
in authority, had obvious reference to a levee; the pouting lips of
the ladies rendered a drawing-room indispensable; and the bevies of
breechless Highlanders and bandy-legged Southerns in similar costume,
were pretty sure tokens of a theatrical exhibition,--and, from the
extreme officiousness of Glengarry, the Kouli Khan of all the Celts,
it was pretty apparent that that exhibition could be nothing else than
Rob Roy--that prince of chieftains and cow-stealers. Thus, while the
first act was to be perfect in itself, it was shrewdly contrived that
it should develop the sequence and economy of the others; but still, to
make assurance double-sure, the gazette writer for Scotland, who had
been a sinecurist since the creation, was kept drudging at delineations
of doings and programmes of processions from morning till night, and
sometimes from night till morning.
When the whole matter had been planned,--when the officers of the
household for Scotland had got their robes of state,--when the archers
had learned to walk without treading down the heels of each other’s
shoes,--when the tailor, the barber, and the dancing-master had done
the needful upon the Provost and Bailies,--when the tails of the
Highland chiefs had run quarantine,--when the edge of the parsons’
appetites had been a little blunted,--when the wonted tattoo had
ceased,--when lamps had been hung upon the front of every house,--when
the ladies had drilled themselves in train-bearing, by the help of
sheets and table-cloths, and learned to do their salutations without
any inordinate smacking,--and when the elements of dazzling and of din
had been collected upon all the heights, in the likeness of bone-fires,
and bombs, and bagpipes,--it wanted only the placing of the royal foot
upon the pier at Leith, to bring all those mighty things into forward
and fervent action.
Amid all those mighty preparations, there was one thing which was very
remarkable, and which throws perhaps more light both upon the morale of
the spectacle and the feelings of the people, than any other that could
be mentioned. The Scots, generally, are allowed to be a people of song
and of sentiment. There is a feeling in their melodies, an alternate
pathos and glee in their songs, and an enthusiasm and romance in their
legends, which are perhaps not equalled, and certainly not surpassed
by those of any nation in the world. This may with truth be said of
the nation, taking the average of times and of places; and, when it is
considered that the Modern Athens holds herself up to the world as a
sort of concentrated tincture or spirit of all that is fine or feeling
in the country,--as being the throne of learning--the chosen seat of
sentiment and of song; furthermore, when upon this occasion there was
gathered in and about the Athens, all the lights which are acknowledged
as shining, and all the fires which are recognised as burning, in taste
and talent throughout Scotland; it must be acknowledged, that something
might have been expected to go upon record worthy of such a people at
such a time. It had been known that the great Seneschal of all those
royal musters,--the ears of the Lord Advocate, the mouth of the Lord
President, the eyes of the Lord Provost--to hear, to speak, and to
stare, at mighty things as it were;--it had been known that, at the
mere loosening of a bookseller’s purse-strings, his verse had flowed
rapid as the Forth, and his prose spread wide as its estuary; and
surely it was not too much to hope that he would consecrate in song,
or conserve in story, an event which was so congenial to his avowed
sentiments, and which must have been (from the fond and forward part
he played in it) so gratifying to his individual vanity. When, too, it
was recollected that this famed and favoured servant of the muse had
gone, invited or not invited, to London at the Coronation, lest the
Laureat should break down under the compound pressure of solemnity and
sack, and the glory slide into oblivion for the want of a fit recorder,
it was surely to be hoped that he would have done justice to the royal
show in his own country, and in his own city. But, _ecce ridiculus
mus!_ the pen which had been so swift, and the tongue which had been
so glib at the bidding of a mere plebeian bookseller, were still and
mute when a king was the god, and an assembled nation the worshippers.
He who had made the world to ring again with the shouts of Highland
freebooters, and the din of whose tournaments yet sounds in our ears,
failed at the very point of need! “Ah, where was Roderick then! One
blast upon _his_ bugle horn” had been worth all the senseless vulgarity
from Princes’-street, and all the piddling inanity of Tweedale-court.
It was wished for, it was called for, it was imperious upon every
principle--not of consistency merely, but of gratitude; but it came
not; and all that stands recorded as having come from his otherwise
fluent pen upon the occasion, is a paltry and vulgar drinking song,
which it would disgrace the most wretched Athenian _caddie_ to troll
in the lowest pot-house of the Blackfriars wynd.
If one whose piping is so gratefully received and so amply rewarded,
and whose loyalty has been withal so abundant and so profitable,
remained mute or degenerated into mere foolery upon the occasion, what
could be expected from the provincial and unhired dabblers in verse,
who write only to the casual inspiration of love or liquor, and melt in
madrigals or madden in catches according as Cupid or Bacchus holds the
principal sway! Nothing, I maintain, and therefore the Great Unknown is
guilty not only of his own omission, but of that of all his countrymen.
If he had done as he ought,--done in a way worthy of himself--putting
the occasion entirely out of the question, there is not a doubt but the
whole drove would have been at his heels. As the case stands, whatever
may be the comparative merits of the Whig _becks_ and Tory _booings_,
the poetic eclat of the visit of George the Fourth must succumb to that
of the descent of Jamie in sixteen hundred and eighteen.
How is this to be accounted for?--I can see why the mouths of the minor
poets must have remained shut; but, to find an apology for the master
one, is no such easy matter; and perhaps the safe way for all parties
would be to place his salvation in consternation by day, and cups by
night. Still, it is remarkable that, though this was the only royal
visit with which Scotland had, during the reigns of six monarchs, been
honoured, there is no where existing a single decent page, either in
verse or in prose, in commemoration of it; and, if the long preparation
which was made for it, the bustle which it occasioned, and the crowds
which it drew together, be considered, one would feel disposed thence
to conclude, that the Athenians, instead of being that literary people
which they are represented, are a set of ignorant barbarians. This
however is, as themselves say, not the fact, and therefore there must
be a cause for their supineness. That cause, however, being beyond the
depth of my philosophy, must be left to their own.
While the Athens was making all preparations to receive the king,
and the king all speed to visit the Athens, the elements, those
outlaws from even royal authority, created a little anxiety on both
sides. The weather, which had been propitious at the outset, became
(notwithstanding that the mayor of Scarbro’, in his zeal to present a
loyal address at the end of a long stick, had been chucked into the
sea, like another Jonah, and not swallowed up by a whale) not a little
unpleasant, as the royal squadron approached that singular rock, once
the abode of state prisoners, and now of Solon geese, denominated the
Bass, and resembling more than any thing else a great pigeon-pie riding
at anchor. The chosen had arranged that this same rock, emblematical of
the ancient manners as a prison-house, and haply of the modern men as a
gooserie, should be the first Scottish soil trodden by the royal foot.
Some said, that this was intended to show that, though the said chosen
were unable to contend with their political opponents in argument,
they had the power on their side, and could send them to prison; but
that is a point without the scope of my speculation, and it is of no
consequence, as the Father of the sea would not permit the Father of
the British people to land.
When a day and night more than had been calculated upon were expired,
without any tidings of the royal squadron, the gloom of the Athenian
authorities became sad in the extreme. Here you would find one wight
twining up the steep acclivities of Arthur’s Seat, jerking his fatigued
corpus upon the pile of coal which had been collected upon the top for
a bon-fire, and straining his owl-like eyes to penetrate the dense fog
of the eastern horizon, like a conjuror ogling the volume of futurity;
and there would go a frowsy bailie or fat sheriff hotching and blowing
to the observatory on the Calton Hill, keeping the anxious window of
his wisdom for ten minutes at the telescope, and leaving it with
a growl that he could “see nothing,”--and how could he, bless his
honest soul! for he had not removed the brass cap from its opposite
extremity? No matter: bailies and sheriffs must understand Erskine’s
Institutes, but a telescope was quite another thing. Amid this looking
and lamenting, the wind freshened, and it rained; and there were
also one or two distant growls of thunder, which fear very naturally
converted into signals of distress from his Majesty’s yacht. Upon this,
the mental agony became immense; and, saving an attempt on the part of
Kerne of the Clan Donnochie, to open with his dirk a free passage for
the soul of a Canon-gate constable, no event had broken the gloom of
that dismal Tuesday. “Mirk Monday” had long been a day accursed in the
Scottish calendar, and it was now feared that his younger brother was
to reign in his stead.
Next morning was little better; and though all the loyal spirits
of Athens scrambled to the heights to call the king from the
fog-enshrouded and “vasty deep,” there was no answer to their call,
save the hollow booming of the east wind, and the melancholy scream
of these sea-fowl which had escaped from the storm. They who had been
instrumental in bringing their sovereign into such peril, wist not what
to do; and, as is the case with most men in such a situation, they
did nothing,--at least nothing which could increase his safety, or
accelerate his arrival.
Still the preparations went on; and, in the sadness and anxiety of the
day, the drilling of the highlanders and archers--who had become so
expert as to face all possible ways at a single word of command--were
not a jot abated, while the gloom of the night was broken by the
clinking of hammers erecting scaffolding in every thoroughfare, as
well as by pattering feet of official and other men learning to “make
their legs” against the levee, and the scratching of grinders’ pens
translating, redacting, and otherways brushing up loyal and dutiful
addresses, which came before them on all complexions of paper, and in
all concatenations of orthography. Nor were these glimpses through
the gloom confined to sounds; the sights were equally delectable.
Here, one might catch a sight of some single star, not of the first
magnitude, twisting her face into all expressions, and her neck into
all attitudes, in order to find the barleycorn of beauty in the bushel
of chaff; and there again might be beheld a whole constellation,
bedraperied with sheets as aforesaid, streaming forward through some
long gallery, tailed and terrible as comets, and then retreating
backwards with perplexed and puzzled steps, tucking up the sheets as
they progressed, and occasionally dropping like falling stars from the
firmament of their practice.
Morning dawned; and the sleepless eyes and speculationless telescopes
again faired forth to scan the gloomy east. One from the top of the
Calton, cried “There is the Royal George! I know her by the spread of
her sails, and the sweep of her oars.” The crowd looked toward the
sea, and saw nothing. The observer looked at his telescope: a moth had
settled upon the object glass, with downy wings elevated above, and
feet and feelers extended below. Still the crowd collected, till every
height commanding a view of the point at which the Forth mingles its
broad waters with the ocean, was absolutely paved with human beings,
all worshipping towards the east, with more intense devotion than a
caravan of Moslem pilgrims in the desert.
Toward mid-day, the more experienced eye, or better-ordered glass
of the port-admiral at Leith, descried the smoke of the assisting
steam-boats. Up went the royal standard; every gun of every ship in the
roads told the tidings; and instantly the echoes of cliff and castle
rang to the shouts of an hundred thousand joyous voices. All was bustle
and scramble. Heralds marshalling here, clans mustering there, and
people crowding everywhere; while the royal squadron, now aided by
a gentle but favourable breeze, stood majestically toward the roads,
where it anchored about two o’clock. Anon the water was peopled with
loyalty; the splendour of dresses and of flags dazzled the eye; and the
swell of all sorts of noises deafened the ear. The equilibrium of the
clouds was unsettled; and, just as preparations were making for the
landing, rain fell in torrents. Lest so much finery should be spoiled
in the first scene of the drama, the grand ceremony was postponed till
the next morning. The king, in the mean time, received at the hands
of Sir Walter Scott, a St. Andrew’s cross, the gift of some ladies
of Scotland, whose names (prudently perhaps) never were distinctly
published. Nearly at the same time with this, came a messenger of
another description. He told that the Marquis of Londonderry was no
more; and thus, even the royal joy was not wholly unmingled. Still
the king showed himself to his aquatic visitors in the most courteous
manner; and, perhaps, the two events were the better borne that they
came together. Thus the Athens had another night for preparation; and,
as it was not a night of fear, that preparation went on with increased
activity and spirit. She had now seen the king; and but a night was to
elapse, ere the gratification was to be mutual, by the king seeing her.
On his part, indeed, it should have been greatest, as she had given
herself most trouble, and would continue longest to feel the cost.
CHAPTER III.
THE ATHENS RECEIVES THE KING, AND IS JOYOUS.
All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him: your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry,
While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows,
Are smother’d up, leads fill’d, and ridges horsed,
With variable complexions; all agreeing
In earnestness to see him: seld’-shewn flamens
Do press among the popular throngs, and puff
To win a vulgar station: our veil’d dames
Commit the war of white and damask, in
Their nicely-gawded cheeks, to the wanton spoil
Of Phœbus’ burning kisses; such a pother,
As if that whatsoever god, who leads him,
Were slily crept into his human powers,
And gave him graceful posture.--SHAKSPEARE.
EVERY one, who having heard of the splendour which is attendant upon
royalty while dwelling at a distance from the scene of its display,
has thence been induced to mingle himself with the crowd of ordinary
spectators, must have felt how much the reality falls short of the
anticipation. One sees a gaudy vehicle drawn slowly along, and within
it a human being, apparently but ill at his ease, and obviously feeling
the same danger of tumbling from his unnatural and elevated seat as
one perched upon the top of a pyramid. A crowd, usually formed of
the ill-dressed and the idle, run and roar about the carriage; the
trumpeters play “God save the King,” the attendants wave their hats
and cheer, and the spectacle, having passed through its routine, is no
more heeded. In London, for instance, those state processions which
the etiquette of the court inflicts upon the sovereign, are not more
imposing than a Lord-Mayor’s show; and even the most loyal, unless it
conduces in some way or other to their personal interest, care little
for a second display.
With this experience, I had prepared myself for being disappointed
in that spectacle which had brought Scotland together; and I _was_
disappointed. But my disappointment was of a new kind; for the
solemnity, the grandeur, and the effect of the scene, were just as
much superior to what I had hoped for, as those of any analogous
scene that I had witnessed fell below the anticipation. The Scots
are, unquestionably, not a superstitious people; neither do they care
for parade. Upon ordinary occasions, too, they are a disputing and
quarrelling, rather than an united people; and with the exception of
those who are either paid or expect to be paid for it, they are by no
means inordinate in their loyalty. But they are a people whose feelings
have the depth, as well as the placidity, of still waters; the rocks,
the rivers, and even the houses, are things of long duration; there
is no portion of his country, upon which the foot of a Scotchman can
fall, that speaks not its tale or its legend; and there is no Scotchman
who does not look upon himself as identified with the annals of his
country, and regard Edinburgh as the seat of a royal line, of which
no man can trace the beginning, and of which no Scotchman can bear to
contemplate the end; and which, though it has been bereaved of its
royal tenant by an unfortunate union with a more wealthy land, is yet
more worthy of him, and more his legitimate and native dwelling-place,
than any other city in existence.
The operation of those feelings, or prejudices, or call them what you
will, produced upon the occasion of which I am speaking, a scene, or
rather a succession of scenes, of a more intense and powerful interest
than any which I had ever witnessed, or, indeed, could have pictured to
myself in the warmest time and mood of my imagination. I had thought
the thronging of the people to Edinburgh a ridiculous waste of time;
I had laughed till every rib of me ached, at the fantastic fooleries
of the Celts and Archers, and the grotesque array of the official men;
and founding my expectations upon these, I had made up my mind that
the whole matter was to be a farce or a failure. But I had taken wrong
data: I had formed my opinion of Scotland from the same persons that,
to the injury and the disgrace of Scotland, form the channel through
which the British Government sees it; and therefore I was not prepared
for that solemn and soul-stirring display,--that rush of the whole
intellect of a reflective, and of the whole heart of a feeling people,
adorned and kept in measured order, by that intermixture of moral tact
and of national pride, which was exhibited to the delighted King, and
the astonished courtiers. It seemed as though hundreds of years of the
scroll of memory had been unrolled; and that the people, carrying the
civilization, the taste, and the science, of the present day along
with them, had gone back to those years when Scotland stood alone,
independent in arms, and invincible in spirit.
As, to the shame of the literature of Scotland, and more especially
to that of the Athens--who arrogates to herself the capability of
saying every thing better than any body else, no account of this
singular burst of national feeling has appeared, except the gossiping
newspaper-reports at the time, and a tasteless _pot pourri_, hashed
up of the worst of these, with scraps of gazettes, and shreds of
addresses,--in which, more especially the latter, it would be vain
to look for any trace of the spirit of the people,--it is but an act
of common justice in me to devote a few pages to it, though I know
well that I shall fail of the effect which I am anxious to produce.
In order, as much as I can, to guard against this, I shall divide the
remainder of this chapter, (which, in spite of me, will be rather a
long one,) into as many sections as there were acts in the drama of the
King’s visit. The first of these will of course be,
THE PROCESSION TO HOLYROOD.
----------“He comes, he comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.”
It seemed as though the lowering skies and sweeping storms, which had
made the longing people of Scotland almost despair of the pleasure of
the royal visit, and which had drenched them, and given them a whole
night of impatient delay, when the King was not many furlongs from the
Scottish shore, had been intended to heighten by their contrast the
splendour and eclât of the royal debarkation. The morning of Thursday,
the 15th of August, dawned in all the freshness of spring, and in all
the serenity of summer. The rains had given a renovated greenness to
the fields, and a thorough ablution to the city; and while the first
rays of the morning sun streamed through the curling smoke of fires
that were preparing the breakfast of three hundred thousand loyal and
delighted people, they painted upon the adjoining country that “clear
shining after rain,” which is, perhaps, the fairest and freshest guise
in which any land can be viewed. The soft west wind just gave to the
expanded Firth as much of a ripple as to shew that it was living
water, without curling the angry crest of a single billow. There was
a transparency in the air, of which those who are accustomed only to
the murky atmosphere of London, or the exhalations of the fat pastures
of England, could have no conception. Not only the colour of every
pendant in the roads, but the cordage of every ship, and the costume
of every one on board, was discernible from the elevated grounds about
Edinburgh; and, while standing on the Calton Hill, the royal squadron,
with thousands of boats and barges sporting around it, on the one
hand,--and the bustling crowd on the other, decked in their various and
gaudy attire, flitting past every opening, and filling every street
that was visible, composed a panorama of the most spirit-stirring
description.
The ancient standard of Scotland was hoisted at Holyrood; the ancient
crown and sceptre of Scotland were there ready to be lent to his
Majesty,--but, too sacred and too dear to Scotland as the symbols
of her old and loved independence, for being given to a king, whom
she had come from her utmost bourne, decked herself in her finest
apparel, and tuned her heart to its choicest song of joy, to welcome;
the royal household of Scotland, more showy in their attire, and more
self-important in their bearing, than is usual where kings are subjects
of daily exhibition, because the robes and the occupation were new,
were proceeding toward the place of their rendezvous by the longest and
most circuitous paths that they could find out, anxious to levy their
modicum of admiration ere the more transcendent splendour and dignity
of the king should draw all eyes towards itself, and leave them as
the forgotten tapers of the night, after the glorious orb of day has
climbed the east; the Caledonian fair were thronging to the casements,
(balconies there were none,) each looking more happy than another,
and one could easily perceive that faces, which, during a reasonable
lapse of years--either through the fault or the failure of Hymen--had
been stiffened by sorrow, and saddened by despair, were that day to
be decked in their earliest, their virgin smile,--a smile which, they
were not without hopes, might draw other eyes, and charm other hearts,
than those of their sovereign; and the maddening burghers and wondering
yeomen were trotting about from place to place; and, in their zeal for
obtaining the best sight of the king, running some risk of not seeing
him at all.
Having seen the muster of the official men--as well those who were to
proceed to the pier of Leith to receive his Majesty, as they who were
to deliver to him the keys of the city of Edinburgh, and thereupon
speak a speech, into which a full year’s eloquence of the whole
corporation, with some assistance of the crown lawyers, and a note or
two by Sir Walter Scott, was crammed,--having examined the facilities
which the people along the line of the procession had given the tenants
of a day for gratifying their eyes,--and having felt more joy at
heart than I had ever done at a public spectacle, at seeing so vast a
multitude so very happy, and so very worthy of happiness,--I set about
choosing my own station, in order that I might gaze, and wonder, and
be delighted with the rest; and, after very mature deliberation, I
resolved that that should be upon the leads of the palace of Holyrood,
provided I could get access to the same.
Access was by no means difficult to be obtained, nor was my ascent
to the top of the ancient structure without its pleasures. In the
first place, I passed through the apartments of the fair queen of
Scotland,--the fairest, and all things considered, perhaps, the
frailest of royal ladies; and there I found the whole localities of
Rizzio’s murder, well preserved both in appearance and in tradition. In
the second place, I had the pleasure of seeing upon the leads, dressed
in the plain tartan of her adopted clan, the fair Lady Glenorchy, who
possesses all the charms of Mary, without any of her faults. I am not
sure that I ever saw a finer woman; I am sure that I never saw one in
whose expression intellect was more blended with sweetness, or spirit
softened and enriched by modesty and grace.
Besides those intellectual (is that the term?) pleasures, there were
other things which rendered my locality the best of any: First, it
commanded a larger and better view of the procession; and, secondly,
though Edinburgh looks romantic from my situation, there is none where
it becomes so perfect a fairy tale. While I paced along the leads
of the palace, and I had ample time to do it, I was more and more
rivetted, both in motion and in gaze, by the wonderful scene. Eastward
was the expanse of blue water, widening and having no boundary in
the extreme horizon, and confined every where else between the soft,
green, lovely, and productive shores of Lothian and Fife. Along the
whole visible portion of the waters, no ship was going forth upon
her voyage, but many were cruizing towards the port of Leith by the
combined powers of every thing that enables man to make his way upon
the deep. Northward rose the Calton Hill, ornamented with one of the
best and one of the worst specimens of modern architecture, having a
park of artillery and a picquet of horsemen upon its summit, and its
sides groaning under the weight of a multitude which no man could
count. Sufficiently elevated at one place for throwing its more
elevated objects against the sky, and rapid enough in its slope for
bringing out at whole length the masses of people who occupied it, the
Calton did not conceal either the royal squadron in Leith roads, or
the majestic summits of the remote Grampians,--from which every cloud
and every trace of mist had been brushed away, when I first ascended,
while the strong and peculiar refraction that the atmosphere in such
cases exerts, gave to them only half their distance and double their
height, as if the mountains themselves had raised them from the beds
of their primeval residence, and come near, to behold the splendour
which the Athens had put on, and the glory with which she hoped to be
blessed. Towards the south, Salisbury Craggs and Arthur’s Seat raised
their summits to the mid heaven, and threw their broad shadows over
the valley, into which the beams of light which poured in at the
openings of the majestic wall of rock, seamed the blue shadow as the
lapis lazuli is seamed by gold. The view this way was to me peculiarly
sublime, not only from the great contrast that it formed with every
thing around, and indeed every thing that one could conceive to exist
in the vicinity of a city, but because of its own peculiar and inherent
sublimity, and the wild accompaniments with which it had been decorated
for the occasion. The crags rose rugged and perpendicular, with their
profile dark as night, while standards, and tents, and batteries,
and armed men on foot and on horseback, hung over the wild and airy
steep. A flood of mellow light which came in from behind gave them the
lineaments of giants, and a glory of colouring far exceeding any thing
that limner ever tinted. Then rose the more sublime height of Arthur’s
Seat, thrown back by the vapour which the sun was exhaling from the
dew in the dell between, and having its summit haloed with a glory
of radiant prismatic colours, through which the solitary stranger or
flitting picquet seemed beings of another world. And, as the sun-beams
came and went upon burnished helm or brazen cuirass, the whole seemed
spotted with gold, or inlaid with costly stones. At my feet was the
court of the palace, in which the royal standard was guarded by a
fine body of highlanders, and the palace-gates kept by a goodly array
of the Edinburgh archery, who, though they seemed not to be the least
important part of the spectacle in their own eyes, were yet intent upon
procuring for their favoured fair those situations from which they
would best view the glories of the archers and of the king.
Before me, the Athens herself clustered her buildings, and shot up her
towers, her spires, and her castles, with a witchery of effect, which
can be equalled by the view of no other British city, and surpassed by
that of the Athens from no other point. When one, for instance, ascends
the top of St. Paul’s, one wonders at the business and bustle that is
around; but the eye is tired with the interminable lines of dull brick,
and the dingy clusters of puny steeples, and smoking chimney-stalks;
while the sound, and the rushing, and the artificial origin of the
whole, make one melancholy with the idea that it will not last. One
should never look down upon a city: the sight is always dingy, and the
view always produces melancholy.
From the leads whereon I stood, though I was high above the court
of the palace, I was below all the city except that rubbish which
was concealed; and never did the mere sight of houses produce such
an effect upon me. The ground was so magical, and the buildings so
different in form, that the whole seemed as though it had been moulded
by the hands of giants, or commanded into existence by the fiat of a
god; and, in firmness and colour, it was so like the rocks upon which
it rested, and by which it was surrounded, that it looked as though it
had lasted from the beginning of time, and would endure to the end.
Right in front of me, the high street opened at intervals its deep
ravine; upon the summit of a hill, but still, from the great height of
the houses, appearing as if that hill had been cleft in twain, to open
a way from the palace on which I stood to the castle, which, from its
aged rock at the other extremity, looked proudly down as the monarch of
the Athens, seated upon a throne which would out-exist those of all the
monarchs of the nations. Around this were clustered palace and spire,
each upon its terrace, while the spacious bridges, beneath whose arches
the distant Pentland hills and the sky were visible, formed an aërial
path from the grandeur of one place to the grandeur of another.
There was something so novel, so wildly romantic, and so overpowering,
in all this, that I retired to the most remote and elevated part of
the roof, leaned me against a chimney-stalk, and, forgetting the king,
the procession, the people, and myself, was in one of those reveries,
in which the senses are too much gratified, and the judgment too much
lost for allowing the fancy to sketch, and the memory to notice. “This
is incomprehensibly fine!” were the words which I then ejaculated to
myself; and now that the presence of the picture is gone, and the
recollection such as no mind could retain, I can do nothing more than
repeat them.
I stood thus absorbed till about mid-day, at which time the flash and
the report of a solitary gun from the royal yacht caught my eye and my
ear, and made me start into recollection. Just then, a cloud of the
most impenetrable darkness had collected behind, or, as it appeared to
me, around the castle, which made the Athens appear as if her magnitude
stretched on into the impenetrable gloom of infinitude. But I had no
time to pursue the train of feeling to which that would have given
rise; for the volleyed cannon--flash upon flash and peal upon peal, and
the huzzaing people--shout upon shout and cheer after cheer, made the
cliffs and mountains ring around me, and the palace rock under my feet,
as though the heavens and the earth had been coming together, and the
Athens had been to be dashed to pieces in the maddening of her own joy.
The ships in the roads first pealed out the tale, and the blue waters
of the Forth were enshrouded in a vesture of silvery smoke. Anon the
batteries upon the Calton took up the tidings; and their roar, all
powerful as it was, was almost drowned in the voices of the thousands
which thronged that romantic hill. In an instant, the same deafening
sounds, and the same gleaming fires, burst away from the Craggs on the
left; and the cannon and the cry continued to call and to answer to
each other from the right hand and from the left, as--
----“Jura answers through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, which call to her aloud,”
till every atom of the air was reverberating with sound, every cliff
and every building returning its echo, the ground reeling to the noise,
the fleecy smoke hanging upon the cliffs like the clouds of heaven, or
settling down till the Athens put on the appearance of a sea, in which
the more elevated buildings and spires seemed islets, and the castle,
with her glaring fires, and her astounding volleys, towered like an
Etna, burning, blazing, and thundering across the deep. What with the
closing of the natural clouds, and the spreading of the artificial
ones, the darkness which even at noon-day had settled over the city was
awfully sublime; even the mass of the castle, large and lofty though
it be, was shrouded in the thick vapour of the sky and of itself, so
that all which the eye could discern, was the flashes of artillery
contending with the flickering of distant lightning, and all that the
ear could hear was the mingled peal and jubilee, in the pauses of which
the voice of the distant thunder was too feeble for being heard. The
darkness borrowed additional sublimity, if indeed that was possible,
from the pure and unclouded light of the sun, which a few straggling
beams that occasionally stole their way as far as the slopes of Arthur
Seat, told me was sleeping upon the plains of Lothian; and the din of
the joy received all the accession of contrast from the stilly silence
which reigned in the deserted halls and desolated villages of that busy
and blooming land. Amid this darkness and din, the royal barge rowed
softly towards the Scottish strand, and the sovereign of these realms
was the first to set his foot upon Scottish ground, while the author
of these pages occupied the very pinnacle of the Scottish palace. The
magistrates of Leith, all tingling and but ill at their ease, stood
shaking and speechless to receive him; but their blushes were a good
deal spared by those grand monopolists of Caledonian loyalty, the
lords president, justice clerk, baron register, and advocate, and that
mighty master of the ceremonies, and that mightier memorialist, (who,
it was hoped, would cut the thing into everlasting brass,) Sir Walter
Scott. But though the monopolizing lords blushed not, they blanched a
little, when they found the eyes of the king turning everywhere with
the same beaming delight upon the people, whose appearance and whose
conduct showed him that Scotland, if not the most polished, was by no
means the least polished jewel of his crown; and the baronet, who haply
was brought there, chiefly from the eclât which his literary renown
would confer upon his less gifted but more official associates, found
perchance that the glory of an author, however high in itself, and
however rewarded, is but a tiny instrument of Royal joy.
The guardsmen, who very judiciously were chiefly either Scottish
citizens or Scottish soldiers, succeeded, not in keeping order among
their countrymen, but in preventing breaches of it among themselves;
but the _Craggan nan phidiach_,--the Raven of the Rock of Glengarry,
was of too bold spirit, and too bustling wing, to be so restrained. To
prevent accidents, this mighty personage, who had stood up bonnetted,
dirked, and pistolled, at the King’s coronation, to the utter dismay
of the ladies of England, had been sent upon this occasion to keep
watch and ward upon the state-coach; but when the coach had taken its
place in the procession, the chieftain stepped a little way out of his,
bustling through the crowd to give Mac Mhic Alistair Mhor’s welcome;
and it was not till the Lion of England had knitted his brows and
shaken his mane, that the Raven of the Rock flew back to her station.
Onward moved the procession, through avenues of people, and arches of
triumph,--one of which latter spoke as much as ten volumes upon the
learning of the Athens, and the ignorance of the _mercatores_ of Leith:
“_O felicem diem!_” said that side of the first triumphant arch which
looked towards the Athens; “O happy day!” quoth the one which smiled
upon the lack-Latin lieges of Leith.
When the procession had cleared the town of Leith, and was moving
gracefully along that broad and beautiful walk, which still keeps
Leith at a respectful and proper distance from the Athens, the first
presentation upon Scottish ground was made to the King--and perhaps
none more honourable in its spirit, or honest in its intention, was
made to him during his whole sojourn. There was presented to George
the Fourth, a _Parliament-cake_,--not such a cake as is gleaned from
the fields of a country, or baked in the oven of a royal burgh, and
thence sent to St. Stephen’s Chapel as a well-leavened waive-offering,
(and from which, by the way, Scotland has got by way of eminence the
name of the _Land of Cakes_,) but something more luscious and learned
still,--a cake of sweet and spicy ginger-bread, stamped with all the
letters of the alphabet, and by combination and consequence, with the
whole learning and literature of the united kingdom. The presentation
alluded to happened thus: Margaret Sibbald, an able-bodied matron
of Fisher-Row, had been induced, through the compound stimulus of
curiosity and loyalty, to leave her home all unbreakfasted, in order
to take her place in the royal procession; Margaret had stored her
ample leathern pouch with a penny-worth of Parliament-cake, in order
to support nature through this praise-worthy work; but Margaret’s
eyes had been so much feasted, that Margaret’s stomach was forgotten.
Seeing that the King wore a hue which she did not consider as the hue
of health, and judging that it might arise from depletion induced by
his rocking upon the waters, she elbowed her way through horsemen,
Highland-men, archer-men, and official men, up to the royal carriage,
and drawing forth her only cake, held it up to his Majesty, expressing
sorrow that his royal countenance was so pale, and assuring him that if
she had had any thing better he would have got it. A forward strippling
of the guards charged Margaret sword in hand, to which Margaret
replied, “Ye wearifu’ thing o’ a labster! Ye hae nae mense, I hae dune
mair for the King than you can either do or help to do; I hae born him
sax bonnie seamen as ere hauled a rope, or handled a cutlass.” It was,
however, no time for prolonged hostilities, and so Margaret was lost in
the crowd, and the guardsman not noticed in the procession.
Many were the events of the march ere the King arrived at the end of
Picardy-Place, to receive the silver keys of the Athens, and hear the
silvery tones of her chief magistrate; I shall mention only one: The
pawky provost of a burgh of the extreme north, determined to see the
whole, and yet not pay his half-guinea for a seat in one of the booths,
had scrambled to the top of a tree at Greenside-Place, where he hung
rocking like a crow’s nest. As the King approached, the provost swung
himself to one side, waving his bonnet, and screeching his huzza, in
strains which would have scared all the owls in England; and when
the mass and the movement of this loyalty were in full effect, they
proved too mighty for the support, so that the pine and the provost
fell prostrate before the King. Even this was not much heeded: the
procession moved on, and the provost moved off.
At last the King came to the wicker-gate of the city, the keys were
presented, the speech was spoken, and the crowd in a great measure
melted away, by the majority hurrying away toward the Calton-Hill,
whence they could command a view of the whole during almost a mile of
its march. This desertion fell like cold water upon the official men,
and even the King himself seemed disappointed.
But the gloom and the disappointment were of no long duration, for no
sooner did he turn the corner into St. Andrew’s-street, than the mass
of shouting and ecstatic people who hung upon the whole beetling side
of the hill, and covered every part of the buildings, came upon him
with a shock of joy and a touch of exultation, which made the cold
state of the monarch give way to the warm feelings of the man. “My God!
that is altogether overpowering!” said he, snatching off his hat and
essaying to join in the cheer, but his voice faltered, and tears, which
were not tears of sorrow, suffused his eyes, and watered his cheeks.
His reception when he landed had been confined, and the people were too
near for giving vent to their feelings; and the delivering of the keys,
though there was a crowd there because the King halted a little, was
a piece of mummery, about which so reflective a people as the Scotch
cared little; but when the King was discerned in Prince’s Street, when
the living hill-side beheld his approach, and when the assembled nation
reflected that their Monarch was coming in peace to visit them,--it
was then that Scotland welcomed the King, with a welcome which none
that saw or heard it is likely ever to forget. The first shout was
astounding, and it rose and rung till it was answered by voices of joy
over a wide circumference.
During all this time I had not seen the procession, but I heard of it
from one who was close by the royal person all the time, and whose
character for truth and feeling is recognised as well by the world of
letters as by the world of men. I must confess that, choice and chosen
as was my place, the occupation of it was a pretty severe trial on my
patience; and when I first saw the yellow plumes of the Braidalbanes,
and the tall and majestic form of their leader, issuing from behind the
monument of David Hume, and heard the notes of their bagpipes pealing
“the Campbells are coming,” I had almost wished myself a Highlander,
and in the procession. The King soon arrived at the Palace, had a
hurried interview with some of the officers of state, and then drove
off for Dalkeith-House, there to pause and recover from the fatigue of
the voyage, and the excitement of the procession.
THE ILLUMINATION, THE LEVEE AND COURT, AND THE LADIES.
“Ten thousand tapers shone; ten thousand lords,
And squires, and yeomen, hungry clerks, and churchmen,
Bended the supple knee; ten thousand ladies,
With eyes of love, lit up the nether skies.”
Although each of these, no doubt, seemed to the parties themselves
of sufficient importance to add to the shelves of literature a new
volume, instead of being confined to a single chapter or section, yet
I am induced to bring the three into juxtaposition, because I shall
thereby preserve the unities,--have a beginning in light, a middle
in somewhat of gruffness, if not of gloom, and an end as glorious
as the congregated beauty of a whole nation, together with divers
importations, could make it.
It may be thought that the burning of a certain number of candles, the
hanging up of a certain number of coloured lamps, and the displaying
of a few ill-daubed transparencies, could contain no trait of national
character; and that therefore it ought to find no place in these
pages. But there was, perhaps, no one scene during the whole solemnity
which brought out the character of the Scotch more decidedly than the
illumination of Edinburgh upon the evening after that on which the
King landed. The town of Leith had indeed been both very generally
and very finely illuminated on the evening before; but that haughty
spirit of the Athens which makes her bear herself somewhat saucily
toward all her compatriot (or if you will, com-_provosted_) cities
and towns in general, and towards poor Leith in particular,--that
spirit which made them taunt Leith with the translated side of the
inscription, in the morning, made them reckon it high treason against
the majesty of the Athens to look at, or talk of, her illumination in
the evening; and thus, although the thing was no doubt very fine, there
were few to wonder, and still fewer to put that wonder upon record.
When the Athens, however, hung out her physical lamps, the emblems of
her metaphysical light, all came, all saw, and all admired. It was a
novelty to me: the illumination was so general, the streets were so
thronged, and the people were so orderly. No doubt, there were wanting
that profusion of daubed transparencies, and dangling festoons, tagged
with classic mottoes and allusions, ill-quoted and worse applied, which
are found in other places; but here, again, his Majesty would have had
cause to exclaim, that the nation by which he was surrounded were all
ladies and gentlemen. Excepting at the public buildings, the houses
of official persons, the apartments of clubs and societies, and the
houses of a few private individuals, the abode of peer and burgher
were illuminated in the same style, and with the same brilliance.
I waive the details as to who hung up a crown in white lamps, or a
thistle in green and red, or who took up their motto in Latin, in
English, or in Gaelic. I do not even dwell upon the general effect;
for though, on account of the situations in Edinburgh, the state of
the weather, and the zeal of all classes of the people, that was as
fine as possible,--it was the people themselves that were the sight.
Natives and visiters, three hundred thousand of every rank, age, and
sex, thronged the streets to such a degree, that it was difficult in
many of them to get a sight either of the pavement or the carriage-way.
This immense mass put one very much in mind of bees; their noise at
any point was scarcely louder than the hum of those insects, and in
their varied motions they clashed as little with each other. Instead
of brawling and wrangling, which almost invariably take place on such
occasions, the most elegant escaped without a stain, and the most
feeble without a jostle. The accommodation which they afforded each
other in their progress was truly remarkable: When one came to any of
the elevations so frequent in the streets of Edinburgh, one saw nothing
but human beings, thick and reeling as the leaves in an autumnal
whirlwind; and yet, if one chose, one’s progress could be as rapid and
almost as free of interruption as if the street had been deserted. I
did not remark a face in the whole assemblage that did not express
the feeling of being pleased itself, and the desire of communicating
pleasure to all around it. Just as was the case on the day of his
Majesty’s entry, the conduct of the people was the same as if they had
been engaged in a solemn and felicitous act of religious worship.
While the inhabitants of the Athens and their visiters were thus
rejoicing in the light which themselves had kindled, (a species of joy
which, by the way, is peculiarly congenial to the said Athenians,) they
whispered, as any unknown personage of sufficient size for a monarch
moved through the crowd, that that personage could be none other than
the king himself in disguise. Indeed, I am not sure but a considerable
portion of that decorum which marked Edinburgh upon this occasion was
owing to the apprehension which every body had that the royal eye
might be upon them, without their knowing any thing about it; but
whatever might be the operating principle, whether a sense of decorum,
or national or personal pride, the effect was equally striking, and
the merit perhaps equally great. But still, though the illumination,
especially when the spirit of the people is taken into the account, was
a fine show, still it was only a show, and a show in which the king, or
even the Athens, in her peculiar capacity, took no part, and in which
official men cut no more figure than the common herd.
With the _levee_ it was otherwise: that was one of the grand acts
for which the king had been invited to Scotland; and it is utterly
impossible to form even an idea of the hopes that were built upon it.
From the very first blush of the business, the regular, thorough-going
tories, (which, in Scotland, mean those who will take any public
employment, and pocket any public money, however improperly or dirtily
got,) fancied that the whole consequence of the land was to be entwined
around their capacious heads, and the whole wealth of it crammed into
their more capacious pockets; and thus, they had given themselves airs,
at which an Englishman would have been perfectly thunderstruck. A very
respectable and very independent proprietor of the county of Fife
told me that, a personage who had acted as tell-tale of their village
during the war, and who, for a long time after the peace, continued
to sell plots (perhaps at a handsome discount) to the crown lawyers
of Scotland, until the ministry put an end to the unavailing traffic,
would occasionally be found pacing over his estate, tasting the soil of
the fields, and noting down what he was to have sown in each of them,
after the king should have put him in possession.
The people were quite full of stories of this kind; and I have no
doubt that the desire of seeing how these men of high loyalty and
higher hopes would act, was one of the chief causes that brought so
many provincial people to the Athens; and that the humiliation that
these persons met with was, next to the joy at seeing each other happy,
one of the greatest boasts that the whole affair yielded. Without
a previous knowledge of the political system of Scotland,--the way
in which the few vicegerents in the Athens gobble up the loaves and
the fishes, how lesser men over the country snap at the crumbs; and
how they all growl, and worry, and snarl at other folks, it is quite
impossible to form an idea of the insolence by which the little men
of office were actuated. As, however, I shall have to discuss this
matter when I come to treat of the politics of the Athens, (for it is
there that the centre and focus of the system exists,) it would be both
premature and unintelligible to notice them here. Wherefore, I shall
confine myself to what I saw and heard as touching the levee.
The night which preceded that eventful day was an anxious and unclosing
one to the men of hope and of office, from all parts of Caledonia;
and baron and bailie, parson, provost, and professor, great judge and
small attorney, eloquent advocate and uneloquent scribe,--all that the
land of heath, of herrings, and of black cattle, could produce, was,
with proud but palpitating heart, bedecking and bedizening itself, in
all sorts of dresses, official, courtly, and nondescript, in order
that they might, in seemly array, kiss that Kaaba of all loyal men’s
worship, (and who would not be a loyal man upon such an occasion,)
the hand of a king. Three dukes, the same tale of marquesses, sixteen
earls, a brace of viscounts, twenty-nine barons, a pair of right
honourables, four great officers of state, sixteen judges of the land,
twenty-two who were honourable, and eleven who lengthened the fag end
of the Scottish household, were there. Besides seventy-seven baronets,
twelve members of parliament, thirty-eight lords lieutenant, a hundred
head of provosts, bailies, counsellors, and deacons, “after their
kinds,” with as many parsons, professors, physicians, and pleaders,
as were sufficient to convert, and cultivate, and cure, from plethora
both of person and of purse, the whole British empire, together with
military men, who had fought and who had not fought, proprietors or
kinsmen of the soil, and burgesses, “simple persons,” swelled the
amount to not fewer than two thousand persons, who had to pass in
wonderful procession before the wondering king. When it was considered,
that the whole of this mighty and motley squad, charged with addresses
to the number of nearly a hundred, each more loyal and laboured than
another, had to pass muster, and read, and retire, in the space of
one brief hour, it was apparent that the official men of Scotland
would have to dance about and deliver themselves with somewhat more
of alacrity, and somewhat less of that slow profundity of bowing than
is usually the case. Dreading that the addresses, from the importance
of their contents, and the orthoëpal powers of the readers, would
of themselves have consumed more than a day, it was wisely resolved,
that the persons who were charged with them should continue enceinte
of them till the Monday, upon which day they should be allowed to
deliver themselves before the throne, or behind it in the closet,
according to their several conditions and importance; and thus the
mighty tide of the levee was undisturbed by any prosing from parchment,
and undisconcerted by any uncouthness of provincial speech. The muster
of beast-drawn vehicles was tremendous; and, though the magisterial
equipages were reduced in their number of cattle, those which they
contained never looked so big in their lives as when they were in
progress to the levee, or so little as when they were fairly there. A
grievous mishap befel their worships the under-magistrates of Glasgow:
The ruler of that city, who never bought or sold any thing less than a
bale of cotton or a basket of figs, could not be expected to ride in
the same carriage with the bailies, many of whom were fain to vend a
sixpenny handkerchief, or an ounce of caraway seeds; so two carriages
were prepared, the foremost for his lordship, and the hindermost for
their not-lordships. The provost entered his state-coach, and both
carriages simultaneously sought their places in the line of procession;
the line threaded its way to the Holyrood; the provost alighted with
true magisterial dignity, and the door was opened to let the bailie
train come forth of their wagon. They had vanished! “Whare are my
bailie bodies?” exclaimed the provost; “I knew they were taking a bit
bowl to keep their hearts aboon; but I didna reckon on their gettin’
fou upon sic an occasion as this!” His lordship, however, was instantly
relieved by a dozen of chairmen, hurrying across the area, while a
well-known voice was bawling from each chair, “Whare’s the right and
honourable lord provost o’ the wast?” It would be endless to recount
all the little accidents of this nature that rippled the swelling
waves of official joy; but it would be unjust not to mention the wig
and staff of Dundee’s principal and vice. The wig of the principal
which, ungainly as it was, was the most wise-looking thing about
him, had been put under the curling irons before day-break, and thus
was burned and cauterized to the lining in sundry places. These had
been skilfully repaired with court plaster of the most glossy black;
and thus, in reply to sundry pityings of the lacerated head of the
burgh, the official man was forced to make it known, that he was of
peace-seeking disposition, and, instead of a broken head, had only got
a burned wig. The staff of the vice was a matter yet more serious. It
had a diamond head, and the wearer, when at home, contrived to poke
it under his left arm so skilfully, that it shone by all the world
like the star of the order of the golden calf, at the button-hole of
some foreign knight. The worshipful gentleman never dreamt that he
would be prevented from bearing this splendid and symbolic staff into
the presence of the King, and thus, in as far as stars were concerned,
vying in magnitude with the Monarch himself; but he was sadly
disappointed, had to leave the sacred cudgel in charge of the cook at
Mackay’s Hotel, and thus grope his way to the royal presence as grim as
a dark lantern.
Nothing could exceed in breadth of humour, the countenances of many
of Scotland’s important sons, as they came, with eyes and mouth set
wide to worship and to wonder, into the presence-chamber. Not a few
of them, when they raised their “leaden eyes that loved the ground,”
in lack-lustre astonishment, from the drab-coloured drugget which had
been nailed down by Mr. Trotter as fit carpeting for their feet, beheld
more kings than were exhibited to Banquo in the wizard glass. As is
not unfrequent with men whose wits are neither great, nor altogether
at home, not a few of them mistook the right one; and the portly
Sir William Curtis, who was “dressed in tartan sheen,” with a kilt
marvellously scant in its longitude, and dangling a bonnet, in which
was displayed a grey goose feather of the largest size, took the edge
off the loyalty of a full third; while his great grace of Montrose, who
was drudging at the honours of the day, monopolized another, leaving
only thirty-three and one-third per cent. of the loyalty of Scotland
to be inflicted directly upon the King. It is needless to tell how
brief were the salutations: there were two thousand persons who had
to make their entrée, their bow, and their exit, in about a hundred
minutes, which was, as nearly as possible, one second to each act of
each person; and thus, however discordant might be the bearing of the
different _bodies_, the unity of time was admirably preserved. The
ceremony came upon them like an electric shock, or rather they came
upon it as moths come upon the flame of a candle,--a buz, a singe of
the wings, and down they dropt into insignificance. “Hech, Sirs!” said
a brawny yeoman from the kingdom of Fife, as he attempted in vain to
squeeze his minimum of opera hat upon his maximum of skull,--“Hech,
Sirs! but its quick wark this! We might hae gotten a snuff wi’ him at
ony rate;” and, as he strode across the court, and found himself fairly
without the great gate, he fumbled over his head-piece with his paws,
saying, “I’m thankfu’ that it’s upo’ my shouthers after a’!” Those who
attended the civic authorities, who stuck to each other as closely as
if they had been in their council-chambers at home, wore faces of
the most broad and boundless delight; for, of the men of more ample
calibre, the tories looked blank, because they were elbowed and perhaps
outnumbered by the whigs in the presence of the King. Some of the clods
of the valley lost themselves in the long galleries and cold corridors
of the Holyrood; and, after all was over, and the fatigued Monarch had
retired to Dalkeith, a few of them were heard at the windows bawling,
like Sterne’s Starling, “I can’t get out.” So ended the levee; and
the King and the people rested for the sabbath without any thing of
remarkable occurrence.
On Monday the hearts of the address men were lifted higher than ever;
and, as the rapid and dumb show in which they passed before the King
on Saturday, had taken off the first and deepest blush of their
bashfulness, they went to the court in very masterly style: foremost,
were a hundred ministers of the Scotch kirk, supported by about fifty
ruling elders of the same; who, having met in solemn conclave in the
Canon-gate church, said to be the most composing and soporific in all
Edinburgh, they moved “dark as locusts o’er the land of Nile” across
the sanctuary, not of churchmen but of insolvent debtors, approached
the presence, bowed themselves with more than priestly reverence, and,
by the mouth of David Lamont, D.D., their moderator, poured the honey
and the oil of their adulation into the royal ear. Spirit of John Knox,
wert thou then on the watch! and didst thou mark the silken cords in
which thy degenerate sons were drawn to bend the knee before an earthly
Monarch! Yes, how wouldst thou have exclaimed that the gold of the zeal
of thy church had become dim, and the fine gold of its independence had
changed, if thou hadst heard thy backsliding children tempering their
temporizing address with the miry clay of earthly politics, calling
the King “the bulwark of the church,” and promising to labour, not for
the conversion of sinners, or for the glory of Him whom thou didst
account the only Head of the church, but “to impress upon the people
committed to their care, a high sense of the invaluable blessings
of the glorious and happy constitution?” But, boldest spirit of the
reformation, be not offended,--Think on the difference of the times.
The times in which your earthly lot was cast, were times of wrestling
and of reformation,--they required the heart of steel, the eye that
turns not aside, and the hand which is never slackened; but the lines
of thy followers have fallen in pleasant places, they have become full
of the fatness of the earth, and therefore they recline at their ease
under the refreshing shadow of temporal power.
After the Scottish kirk, came, laden with wisdom, the members of the
four Scottish universities; and this having been done, the remaining
individuals and classes of men who were charged with courtly sayings,
disburthened themselves in the closet behind the throne; and the paper
thus accumulated, having been deposited for use, this act of the drama
closed, leaving less upon the memory than had been anticipated.
The monarch having thus opened a levee for the honour of his Scottish
subjects generally, and allowed her official men to drop their honeyed
papers and parchments at the court and in the closet,--having devoted
two whole days to the hard hands of country lairds, and the greasy lips
of parsons and bailies, it was naturally to be concluded, that he would
be pretty well saturated of salutation from the men of Scotland, and
long for the approach of Scottish women, as the traveller, in the sandy
desert, longs for the green spot and the glassy spring. Nor could the
desire have been wholly confined to his majesty. The anxiety of the
Scottish fair was bent, like the bow of Diana when the arrow is drawn
to the barbs; their preparations, positive and negative, for this high
honour, had been long, laborious and self-denying; and they were not
without feeling that four whole days should not have interposed their
twelve-month-looking-lengths between the sight and salutation of their
King. It is true, that in Scotland generally, and in the Athens in
particular, woman, that grand barometer of civilization, has of late
risen many degrees. The time has not long gone by, at which females
were mere beasts of burden in rural affairs, and young girls were in
many places obliged to ply as ferry-boats. I myself have seen half a
score of stout and sinewy Highlanders lying snuffing upon a hillock
of manure, while their wives and daughters were bearing heavy baskets
of the same to the fields, while all that the lords of the creation
condescended to do was to fill the baskets; and I have been--no, I have
not been, I was only offered to be--carried across sundry Highland
rivers, upon the shoulders of the fairest nymphs which adorned their
banks. But the Athens has got the better of all this, and her daughters
have not only reduced the tyranny of their husbands to “flytings” and
frailties, but have learned to pay them back with interest even in
these. Thus the delay which had taken place in consequence of the grand
parade of the men, and the small extra drill of the official men, by no
means tended to lessen the commodity of curtain-lectures. There were
other causes of vexation: the means by which a sufficiency of beauty
had been procured were more precious than permanent; the delay of
hope not only made the heart sick, but tended to pucker the skin, and,
what was more vexatious than all, these careful dames, after they had
trimmed themselves for the royal salute, would submit themselves to the
salutation of no mere man in the interim. Wherefore, if any casualty
had prevented this glorious feast, or even protracted it, the _primum
mobile_ of the city might have stood still, and the Athens might have
been the Athens no more.
It being the only time during a century and a half, at the least,
when the daughters of Scotia have had the flattering opportunity
of flaunting their trains, flourishing their plumes, bowing in the
presence of Majesty, and, finally, giving their cheeks to the glory
and honour of the royal basial salutation,--and certainly the only
time when a native royal drawing-room has been held in Scotland, since
she had either much wealth or population to display,--it is not to be
wondered at, that it produced corresponding anxiety among the fair.
A random female here and there may, no doubt, have been in the royal
presence, and there may be one or two cheeks which have before been
made happy by the royal impress; but the greater, by far the greater
part of the roses and lilies of Scotland were, up to this happy 21st of
August, 1822, in virgin, but pitiable, ignorance of so much honour. It
is not to be wondered at, then, that the preparations of this eventful
day had their sources remote in the past, and the hopes of the fair
ones groped their way far into the future; and if they had not made
themselves gay upon the occasion, it would have been alien alike to
the honour of their country and the disposition of the sex. Morning,
noon, and night, had accordingly been spent at the mirror, and many a
projection has been squeezed, and furrow smoothed, in order that for
“Scotland’s glory,” and their own, they might appear as splendid, as
gay, and as bewitching as possible, in the presence of their King and
his nobles, and their own admirers. All this was most laudable; and
as the fair ones, with their eyes, their candles, and their mirrors,
literally frightened the reign of “old Night,” they merited forgiveness
though they encouraged a little of that of “Chaos.”
So much of the fire of Scotland’s moral electricity, moving in such
prime conductors, could not be supposed to confine either itself or its
effects to the earth. Ere grey dawn, the sky wept at the eclipse of so
many of its moons and stars by the radiance of the Venuses and Lunas of
the Athens rising to their culmination; and, as it had not recovered
in the morning, there was somewhat of pains-taking and pouting ere
the coaches and chairs could receive the whole of their delectable
burthens. Still, however, the ceremony was one which could not be put
off, and so the ocean-swell of beauty collected, and nathless the
drizzling rain, poured its eager tide toward the palace. When they
arrived at the entrée-room, some of the colloquies which they held with
each other were not a little amusing. If I could judge from the general
strain of what I heard of them, the kiss--the downright and _bona fide_
smack at royalty, without any of the leaven even of suspicion in it,
was the thing which pleased them the most. Each was making sure too,
(for there is a wonderful foresight in the women of Scotland as well
as in the men,) that the jealousy which this high honour would excite,
would procure a goodly harvest of future salutation. Some female Humes
(not in name but in nature,) were propounding “sceptical doubts” upon
the subject; and stating, with tears in their eyes, and terror on their
brows, their apprehension, that it would be “but a sham after a’.”
One great object with the Caledonian fair seemed to be to prevent, as
much as they could, the possibility of the ceremony’s being bungled,
through the youth or inexperience of those who were to apply it. It
had indeed been rumoured that the King hated all lips but such as had
been mellowed by the suns, and mollified by the frosts, of forty
seasons, and that young girls, as smelling of bread and butter, were
peculiarly offensive to the royal organs; whereupon it was said,
that the young maidens of Scotland were enjoined to abstain from the
ceremony altogether, and that the full grown ones abstained from bread
and butter during the whole period of their drill.
In consequence, while there never was a royal drawing-room so fresh and
new in the dresses and ignorance of the fair attendants, there never
perhaps was one in which the appearance of those attendants themselves
was more sage and matured. Every lonely tower, in a remote glen,
around whose grey battlements the hollow wind had whistled, “Nobody
coming to marry me,” for more returnings of the falling leaf than it
would be seemly to mention, poured forth its tall and time-learned
damsels,--erewhile as grey as its walls, but now as green as the
lichen with which they are incrusted, and as gorgeous as the sun
whose beams find out the old tower the more easily, and gild them the
more copiously, in proportion to the leaflessness of all around. With
those mingled the dowagers and despairers of George’s Square, upon the
thresholds of whose doors, and the graves of whose hopes, the grass had
for more than moons waxed green apace. Nor were there wanting a few
of somewhat more juvenile an aspect; abundance of manœuvring dames,
who had exposed the precious wares of their own manufacture at all the
marts and bazaars in the island; with other languishing and loving
ladies whose number it were difficult to count.
But, in their zeal to suit the royal taste in the maturity of the
greater part of the muster, they had rather overshot the mark. If the
tale of that taste says sooth, the word “forty,” which is to be found
in every country, and which, in single dignity and desire, is found
more abundantly in Scotland, and especially in the Athens, than in any
country, is preceded by the words “fat and fair,” which, in that land,
and pre-eminently in that city, are among the _desiderata_. Hence,
there perchance was never collected before a pair of royal eyes so many
tall, gaunt, and ungainly figures, and never offered to the salutation
of a pair of royal lips, so many sunken and sinewy cheeks. In their
costumes, they were uncommonly splendid: sweeping trains of white
satin, over spangled robes of various fancies, (in nowise emblematical
of “white without and spotted within,”) were the predominant costumes;
and, in number and in magnitude, the plumes of feathers which waved
and nodded above, might have furnished all the beds, bolsters, and
pillows, to the court of Og, the giant king of Bashan. In the dresses,
too, there were all the advantage of contrast with the wearers: the
one were as fresh and as new as the others were furrowed and old. And
this did not escape the discriminating eye of the King, who, though he
prudently abstained from all commendation on the score of beauty, was
copious on that of cleanliness.
In their previous estimate of the royal taste, they had not calculated
with their usual wisdom. To the more sage and skinny dames, the appulse
was so slight and so brief, that before the agitation was over, the
impression was gone; and, of the whole that attended, only one little
and lovely girl could boast of a palpable and positive kiss.
I could not help being struck with the extreme solemnity of the whole.
There was none of that jaunty lightness of step, and that soft and
flexible twining of body, which I have remarked on similar occasions
in other places. The whole moved on, solemn and erect, as though it
had been the Scotch Greys approaching to a charge, or the Forty-second
to a crossing of bayonets. Their features expressed intelligence in
many instances, and pride in all, but I saw not such that I could call
beauty. Their looks were highly characteristic: they were staid even
to demureness, and they sailed toward the state apartment without a
single movement of the eyes, or any thing which could be called a
smile upon the countenance. Never perhaps did so great and so mingled
an assembly of females display so much modesty,--modesty too which
was not the modesty of subdued fire, but that of coal which seemed
capable of resisting all powers of ignition. In the elder ones, the
mouth had a character which no one could overlook: the days of labour
which had been spent in giving plumpness to the lip were, in a great
measure, rendered unavailing, by the force with which the corners of
the mouth were drawn back, and the firmness with which its thread-like
furnishings were brought together. It seemed indeed that they had
been anxious to bring as much of this commodity to the solemnity,
and set it apart as exclusively as possible for the use of their
sovereign; for, fearful of deficiency in plumpness and breadth, they
had laboured to make up for it in an extension of length; and two deep
and decided curves, hedged it in, as though for the time it had been
parenthetical,--set apart to the service of the King, and fortified by
fosse and rampart against all the rest of the world.
The space which could be allotted to each for the doing of a salutation
was excessively brief; and what with the solemnity of the ladies,
and the scowling of the heavens, it had more the air of a funeral
procession than of a festive assembly. When it was over, or perhaps a
little before, the daughters of Caledonia found out, that though they
could be gorgeous at a drawing-room, they could not be gay. They did
not indeed look like “fishes out of the water;” but they looked like
fishes that had never been in it. It was so novel in itself, and they
had so exhausted themselves in the preparation, that the parade itself
was gloomy; and though it furnished abundant evidence of the existence
of high talents and higher pride among them, it also afforded proof
that time and change would neither be idle nor in haste, if they were
to be thoroughly prepared for gliding and glittering at court.
Themselves and their male relatives seemed indeed to have been aware of
this,--to have known that there was another and more appropriate arena
for the displaying of them to advantage; and, though it had not been
set forth in the gazette, I could have discovered, from the looks of
speculation that were quietly exchanged in the proximity, and even in
the presence of majesty, that there would be a chapter of the Highland
fling. Those tender telegraphings were as new to me as any part of the
proceedings; and they led me to observe the unique and characteristic
nature of a modern Athenian ogle.
The Athenian damsels, or dames, as it happens, cannot have so many of
the soft propensities of the flesh as their more plump neighbours
of the south, not having so much flesh wherein the same may be
contained; but, from all that I could discover, they have not, upon
the whole, less of the _mater amoris_ in them; and being a more firm
and substantial matter--more “bred in the bones” as it were, it is
perchance more deep and more durable. Thus, while the dimple of an
English cheek tells its soft tale of love, the jutting angle of
an Athenian cheek-bone hints at the same; and there is often more
amatory demonstration in a single Caledonian wrinkle, than in all the
blushes of the most blooming dame southward of the Tweed. The extreme
vigilance, too, with which the ladies of the Athens watch each other,
and especially the cat-like lurkings which the plain and decaying have
for those who have more of the species and are more in the season of
bloom, gives a wariness to the character of every woman within that
metropolis, and makes even the most accredited and creditable love an
affair of mystery and intrigue. If a gentleman is detected walking with
or speaking civilly to one lady, eyes, from loop-holes of which he
dreams not, are instantly upon him, and the affair is handed about from
coterie to coterie, as a marriage, or as something worse; while, if he
is seen with two or more, he is a Don Juan of the first magnitude, and
they, “poor dear lost things, are--very much to be pitied indeed.” So
far as I know, they have no tendency to pity themselves in such cases;
but this may be the very reason why they have so much of it to spare to
their neighbours.
This propensity could not be restrained even by the counter-excitation
of the royal presence; and while everybody upon whom the King was
pleased to smile at the shows (and he was graciously pleased to smile
upon a great number) was _pitied_, or, as it might have been, _envied_,
as the object of regal flirtation, those blowsy country sisters and
cousins, whom awkward accountants and spruce scribes kept lumbering
along the streets upon the resting days, were, in the bitterness of the
Athenian anguish, set down as spouses soon to be.
A handsome young gentleman from the south, whose form promised love,
and whose appearance bespoke the wherewithal to support it, had brought
down his mother and three sisters to amuse themselves, and see the
sights. The matron, though her family were come to what are in the
Athens termed the “years of discretion,” has still as much bloom as
half a score of the six-flight-of-stairs virginity of that city; and,
it so happened, that there was no family resemblance either in form or
features among the young people. The gentleman appeared at one place
with his mother, at another place with one or other of his sisters,
sometimes with two, and sometimes with the whole; and the quantity
of speculation, and wonder, and pity, and lamentation, which his so
appearing excited, would have drained the tears, and exhausted the
words of fifty Jeremiahs.
All those circumstances are enough, and more than enough, to impose
upon the amatory signals of the Athenians a closeness and caution,
of which those who live in a more free and liberal state of society
can form no conception; and while they thus force the people to put
on the semblance of intrigue where there is no necessity for it, they
at the same time forward the reality of intrigue in cases of which
perhaps scarcely another people would dream; and thus, in consequence
of the very rigour of the external laws of decorum, the Athenians are,
perchance, in fact and in secret, the most indecorous in the whole
island of Great Britain,--the which would lead one fond of scandal and
of similies to conclude, that the white trains and the spangled robes
were not chosen in vain; but I am a novice in both, and therefore I
shall say nothing about the matter.
The exhibition of faces and forms, and the actual contact with royalty,
not being sufficient either to show off or to satisfy the ladies of
Scotland, they resolved to make the general attack upon the King with
their heels; and, as the Athens contained no hall ample enough for
showing off the whole at once, and further, as the same parties might
be shown off twice under different appellations, once as the planets of
the peerage, and again as the comets of Caledonia, the assembly rooms
in George Street were destined to be twice trodden by the same feet, in
the two enactings of the Peers’ ball, and the Caledonian ball. These
were not consecutive; but it will be no great anachronism to bring them
together.
The Peers’ ball took place in the assembly rooms, on the evening of
Friday the 23d of August; and, as there the people were more at home,
and more employed than in the merely state ceremonies, its effect was
at once more pleasing and more characteristic.
The portico of the rooms was tastefully illuminated, the columns
being wreathed, and the pediments outlined, with golden-tinted
lamps,--the emblems of royalty shining in the centre. The pillars in
the ante-room were twined with flowers, surmounted by emblematical
tablets, over which the dome glowed with coloured lights. The principal
room, tea-room, and refectory, were very handsome: the first had a
platform and throne, covered with crimson; the second was ornamented
with paintings, in water-colour; and the third was well stored with
viands. The whole was simple, but there was an air of freshness,
neatness, and good taste about it. At rather an early hour, say eight
o’clock, the elegantes began to pour in, and the people to throng to
the adjoining street, in order to catch a glimpse of their fair forms
and nodding plumes. By nine o’clock, the rooms were completely filled,
and the downy feathers which now reeled to and fro in mid air, with
the mingling darker lines of the other sex, and the sheen of tartan
and gold lace, and ribbon, and star, and spangle, waved “like wave
with crest of sparkling foam.” If Scotland had honour from the general
appearance and conduct of the people upon this occasion, she had
glory in her daughters. If they had not the light heart and laughing
eye of the daughters of the south, they were fully equal to them in
dignity and intellectual beauty. Their dresses were elegant rather than
splendid, and their movements had perhaps as much of stateliness as of
grace. The sustained and chastened joy which they all displayed, and
the keen glance of intellect and national pride, which mingled with
their mirth, threw an interest over it, which is unknown in lands of
lighter skies, and warmer suns. The noblemen and gentlemen were in
every variety of dress (meaning, of course, every elegant variety).
The duke of Hamilton was splendidly attired in the Douglas tartan.
And _Mac Cailin Mhor_ was most conspicuous in the broad bands of the
_Sliabh nan Diarmid_. The chiefs, too, were in their various tartans;
but Sir William appeared in a plain court suit, abandoning the applying
of “the kelt aërial to his Anglian thighs,” with as much care as he
would watch not to let “lignarian chalice, filled with oats, his
orifice approach.” His majesty came at half after nine, just when the
rooms were in the height of their splendour. He was greeted with a
cheer by the people outside, and most respectfully received by those
within. He remained about an hour, and then retired. Immediately after
his departure, the company passed to the supper-room by sections, but
without any distinction of rank.
I detail not the dancing, of which, by the way, there was much less
than of promenading; but, in general, they were national enough, to
“eschew both waltz and quadrille, and addict themselves to the good old
orthodox fling.” In this their favourite and characteristic movement,
they showed equal firmness of foot and flexture of limb; and though the
room thinned a little upon his majesty’s departure, the evolutions were
continued till full three hours beyond the “keystane o’ night’s black
arch,” and thus, according to every canon of witchery, the charms of
the ladies were overpowering and triumphant. Notwithstanding the great
concourse of people, and the closeness with which they were wedged
together, there was no confusion; and though a guard of cavalry was in
readiness, it was not in the slightest degree required.
The Caledonian Hunt ball, which followed some evenings afterwards, had
little of novelty in it, further than that the hunters were habited
in a new uniform of royal invention; and that a sort of cage of brass
wire permitted the whole wondering and waltzing charms of Scotland to
view the King; and at the same time prevented them from pressing upon
him with that ardent closeness which had oppressed and overheated the
royal person upon the former occasion. This ball closed what may be
considered as the exhibition of the King to the people of Scotland
generally; and with it, I shall close this long Section.
THE PILGRIMAGE, THE FEAST, THE CHURCHING, AND THE THEATRE.
“March! march! pinks of election.”--OLD SONG.
“Now the King drinks to Hamlet.”--SHAKSPEARE.
“The sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with.”
--ISAIAH.
----“The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”--SHAKSPEARE.
In the preceding Sections of this Chapter, I have given a skeleton
of all those acts of the royal drama, in which the whole people of
Scotland were supposed to take a part, and in which the Athens had no
farther peculiar concern than as her locality furnished the scene, and
the pride of her leading men (and women) thrust them forward among the
actors. In this Section I shall have to notice those doings of which
I have just cited the titles, and which may be considered as more
particularly expressing the spirit, or, if you will, displaying the
form of the Athens herself. In treating of these, I shall be able to be
more brief, not because they ought to be considered as at all inferior
in interest, but because, under other forms and titles, they will have
again to come under review.
The pilgrimage from the Holyrood to the castle, and by Princes
Street back to the Holyrood, seemed, to judge from the state of the
weather, to be peculiarly alarming or offensive to the “prince of the
power of the air,” as well as to the monarch of the British isles.
In all the former doings there had been something beyond the mere
parading in the street. The procession from Leith was a matter of
necessity, and furthermore it was exceedingly novel and interesting
in itself; the levee, the court, and the drawing-room, were part of
the usual machinery of the state; the court before the throne, and
the closet behind, for the receipt of addresses, “according to their
generations,” were what the addressing parties could not have been
happy without, and though these had been disappointed of the honours
and rewards which they had fondly expected would result at the time,
yet they fondly hoped that they had “done a do” which would lead to
great things in the sequel; and even the dances had brought folks
together, and might also have their fruits thereafter; but that the
King should be drawn along the whole length of the Cannon-gate and
High Street, work his way through the ugly gates and awkward passages
to the half-moon battery of the castle, then pull off his hat, give
three cheers in concert with the bawlings of the crowd, and then go
back to Holyrood by a more circuitous route, was so profound a piece
of wisdom,--so much a masterstroke of the good taste of the Great
Unknown, and the sage politics of the Athenian tories, as to be by
much too deep even for royal comprehension. It seemed too, that none
of those counsellors which the King had taken with him from England
could fathom its profundity. Sir William Curtis indeed pleaded the
lord mayor of London’s pilgrimages to Kew and Rochester Bridge, as
being precedents exactly in point; but those who knew the etiquette
of courts better, scouted all precedents which could originate within
Temple Bar,--partly, because they originate with those who arrogate to
themselves the power of closing that gaping portal against the King,
and, partly, because nothing possessed in the city is at all acceptable
but its money. The King himself scouted the pilgrimage as a piece of
idle foolery: declared, that he had seen the assembled people in his
progress to the palace; that he had received the noblemen, gentlemen,
official men, and addressing men, at levees and courts; that he had
sustained a general attack of the ladies at the drawing-room, and
sundry particular attacks at the dances; and that, if his Scottish
subjects were not yet satisfied with gazing at him, he would hold other
levees and other drawing-rooms, till the humblest boors, burghers, and
baillies, with their wives, should pass muster before him, provided it
were done as a King ought to do such things, in his state apartments at
Holyrood; but, that to have him shown along the streets, as they would
show an elephant or a prize ox, would be a degradation both to himself
and his subjects. Having, as was said, expressed himself thus, he sped
away for Dalkeith with even more than wonted alacrity, wishing that he
could be permitted to spend his days in a way somewhat more agreeable
to good sense and his own inclinations.
The pilgrimage had, however, been resolved on, and those bodies which
it was judged expedient that the King should wonder at, in their
collective capacities, had clubbed their half-guineas, and erected
their booths along the whole line of the High Street; and as all this
had been done without consulting the King, it was resolved to _boo_ and
beseech him into compliance. The King, who had previously known the
persevering nature of the political “seekers” of the Athens, judged
that the easiest way would be to comply with their request, although,
during the whole pilgrimage, I thought he appeared to feel that what
his politeness had made him content to do, could add nothing to his
kingly dignity.
By this time I had become so little apprehensive of arrowless bows,
and dirks never intended to be unsheathed, and so much accustomed to
tartans and tails, that I pushed myself into the very centre of the
procession; and as there was nothing better I could do, I contrived, by
putting a bold face upon it, and huzzaing, as well to demonstrate my
loyalty as to keep myself warm in the rain, to proceed to the rampart
of the half-moon battery, close by the side of the King.
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.
All the Jameses who lived and died kings of Scotland were fond of being
their own spies; and for this purpose, as well as for other purposes,
they were in the habit of travelling the country disguised and alone;
upon which occasions their doings had more of love or of war in them,
according to the disposition of the royal incognito. The rambles, and
amours, and songs, of James V. are well known, and so are some of the
brawls and battles of James II., not the second of England, who fought
by mercenaries for the purpose of slavery, but the second of Scotland,
who occasionally fought in prize battles with his subjects, by way of
experiment as to whether the sinews of a man or a monarch were the
better knit.
Upon one occasion, a gang of gypsies assailed him at Cramond, a few
miles west of Edinburgh; and, though he fought long and desperately, he
was beaten down. A ploughman, of the name of Howison, who was threshing
in a barn not far off, heard the noise, ran toward the place, and
seeing one man assailed, down, and all but defeated, by so many, began
to belabour the gypsies with his flail; and, having great strength
and skill at his weapon, soon put the gypsies to flight, lifted up
the King, carried him to his cottage, presented him with a towel and
water to remove the consequences of the fray, and then, declaring
that himself was “master there,” set the stranger at the head of his
humble board. “If you will call at the castle of Edinburgh,” said the
stranger, “and ask for Jamie Stuart, I will be glad to return your
hospitality.” “My hospitality,” said the farmer, “is nae gryte things
in itself; and it was gien without ony thought o’ a return, just as nae
doot you wad hae done to me in the same tacking; but I am obliged to
you for your offer, and wad like to see the castle at ony rate. The
King is a queer man, they say, and has queer things about him.” The
stranger upon this took his departure; and the rustic was well pleased
with the idea that he would get a sight of the inside of that strong
and majestic pile, of which he had so long admired the exterior.
A few days afterwards he repaired to the castle, inquired for “ane
Jamie Stuart, a stout gude-lookin chield, that could lick a dozen o’
gypsies, but not a score,” was admitted, and ushered into an apartment,
the splendour of whose furniture, and the number of whose company,
bewildered him not a little. At last, however, he recognised his old
guest Jamie Stuart, went up to him, shook him heartily by the hand,
inquired how he did, and expressed a very earnest wish to see the King,
if such an honour was at all possible for a man of his condition.
“The King is present now,” said Jamie Stuart, “and if you look round,
you will easily know him, for all the rest are bareheaded.” “Then,
I’m thinkin’ it maun either be you or me,” said Howison, pulling off
his bonnet, which till then his astonishment had prevented him from
thinking of; “and, as our acquaintance has begun by my fighting for
you, I had better keep to that when you need it, and let you keep to
bein’ King.” “Then, as you are so true and so trusty,” replied the
monarch, “you shall ride home the laird of Braehead.” “I like that
better than twa kingdoms,” said Howison, “but I canno’ accept o’ sae
much even frae your majesty, without gien’ something for’t.” “Well,
then,” said the King, “as long as we are kings of Scotland and lairds
of Braehead, let you and your’s present to me and mine, a basin and
towel to wash our hands, whenever we ask for it.”
This was the only occurrence which took place to break the dull
activity of the dinner. But when the cup circulated, a ceremony was
performed which delighted the corporation-men of the Athens, and
made the other corporation-men all over Scotland sad through sore
disappointment. The chief magistrate of Edinburgh, who had taken his
dinner as plain Mr. William Arbuthnot, took his drink as Sir William
Arbuthnot, Knight Baronet of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland,--the knighthood, as was alleged, having been, for the want
of a sword, inflicted by that much more appropriate weapon, a large
carving-knife, and the baronetage having subsequently issued from the
patent office in the usual form, and for the usual fee. All this having
been done, the King retired, and the corporation-men kept up the feast,
though not so long or so heartily but that all the rest finally went to
their homes _more sober than a judge_.
After the King had witnessed the devotedness of the Athenian
authorities at the table, it was proper that he should see the devotion
of the people in the church; and here again was one of those scenes
which struck me, and must have struck him, very forcibly, as to the
difference of a free people, and fawning courtiers, corporation fools,
and party slaves.
Becoming preparations having been made, and the King having been
furnished with a perspective sketch of the church, and a written
programme of the service, it was agreed that the Very Reverend David
Lamont, D.D., Moderator and Spiritual Head upon Earth of the Kirk of
Scotland, should preach before him, in the name and stead of all his
willing and worshipping brethren, while the “men,” the “leaders,” and
the people, should demean themselves with that decorum, which the day,
the service, and the occasion required.
When the services of the Scottish kirk are performed in a becoming
manner, there is a feeling, a sublimity, and a heavenliness about them,
of which one who considers only their simple and unadorned structure
could form no adequate idea; and when I observed the still and unbroken
solemnity of the service, and the effect which it obviously had, not
only upon those who are accustomed to it, but upon those strangers
who, in whatever predilection they had for one religion more than
another, were wedded to the more artificial and gaudy ritual of another
church--a church which had been at enmity with the Scottish kirk from
the beginning, and which, in dislike to the system of sober equality
among the Scottish clergy, and the democratic nature of their church
establishment, have attempted to hold up their form of worship as cold,
meagre, incapable of stirring up devotion in the hearts of men, and,
by consequence, not so gratifying to the Almighty as the more costly
and complicated ceremonial of others,--I could not help believing that,
of all forms of religion, the simplest is decidedly the best, and that
if the object of the propagators of Christianity was nothing but the
cultivation of the minds and the improvement of the morals of society,
they would carefully avoid all artifice and all show. Those, indeed,
who have considered the correspondence that exists between the forms
of religious worship, and the intellectual culture of the great body
of the people, cannot have failed to observe, that pompous shows and
gaudy ceremonies have ever been the concomitants of general ignorance
and superstition, and that a plain and unadorned system of worship, has
uniformly been characteristic of an intelligent people.
Scotland is an eminent example of this; and whoever takes the
trouble to investigate the structure of Scottish society will, to a
certainty, find that for half their virtues, and more than half their
information, they are indebted to the presbyterian kirk. Nor is it by
any means difficult to find out the reason: A religion of shows and of
sounds,--of mummeries and of music,--must ever be a religion of the
senses. How gaudy soever the trappings, and how fine soever the music,
they can afford nothing more than a gratification of the senses at the
time. Forms cannot exist vividly but in matter, and when the string
of an instrument ceases to vibrate on the ear, the pleasure which it
affords, however sweet or however delightful, is at an end: they enter
not into reflection; they stimulate not the more rational and permanent
faculties of the mind; and, though they may be made to influence, and
influence powerfully, the passions, while they last, they leave no
lesson which can be useful as a general rule of life. Hence, though the
churches of Scotland be, compared with those of England, rude in the
extreme; though the sacred music of Scotland be often the untutored
attempt of nature, without the aid of flutes, hautboys, and violins, as
in the poorer churches of England, or the solemn notes of the organ,
as in the richer ones; and though the prayers of the Scottish preacher
are generally couched in terms less stately and sublime than those
of the service-book of the English church, yet we have the clearest
proof that can be given of the superior efficacy of the Scottish mode
of worship, in the superior veneration which the people of Scotland,
without any hope or even possibility of earthly reward from it, pay
to the rites and ordinances of religion, and especially to that most
beneficial of all religious institutions, the setting apart of the
sabbath as a day of calm tranquillity and holy meditation.
I know not whether the Author of these pages, or the Sovereign of these
realms, was the more delighted with the calm, sustained, and religious
air of the people of the Athens and of Scotland, as they both proceeded
from the palace of the Holyrood to the High Kirk, on the morning of
Sunday, the 25th of August. A countless multitude thronged the street,
and filled the windows and house-tops; they were habited in the neatest
and cleanest manner; and their profound silence formed a wonderful
contrast to the noise of their mirth upon the former occasions. There
was not a cheer, a shout, or even a whisper; but, as the King passed
along, the men lifted their hats, and the whole passed with the most
sustained but respectful reverence. They appeared to respect their
King, but to respect him less than they did the institutions of
their God, and the simple sublimity of that religion which their own
perseverance, faith, and courage, had gained them, in spite of the
efforts of courtiers and kings, by whom its integrity, and even its
existence, were menaced.
The extreme decorum of the people upon this day was the more
creditable, that it had been arranged by none of the authorities; and
those who formed the mass of the spectators were chiefly such as, on
account of their distances or their pursuits, could not obtain a sight
of their monarch upon any other day.
In the crowd I could distinguish a number, who, from their substantial
blue garments, their broad bonnets, their lank uncut hair, their great
staves, and their shoes dirty, as from a long journey, seemed to be
true whigs of the covenant, who looked upon the descendant of Brunswick
as a chosen one of Heaven’s appointment, whose ancestors had been
the means of preventing that civil and religious slavery which had
threatened them in 1715 and 1745.
As seemed to be the case with all parts of the ceremony which were left
to the awkward and inexperienced official men of the Athens, the King’s
accommodation, or at least his attendance in church, was by no means
what it ought to have been. He had brought a hundred pounds to give to
the poor, and he had some difficulty in getting it disposed of; and,
delighted with the unassisted vocal music, which was really very good,
he wished to join in the psalm, but he was unacquainted with the book,
and there was nobody to point out the place for him. Still, judging
from appearance as well as from all that I could hear afterwards, the
King was better pleased with the stillness and solemnity of the Sunday
than he had been with the shows of the other days. One reason of this
no doubt was, that, on the Sunday, the King was not so belumbered by
the aspiring loyalists thrusting themselves not only between him and
the people, but between him and his own ease, comfort, and pleasure,
as they had done in all those acts of the drama, of which themselves
formed a leading or conspicuous part; and, as he had formerly expressed
his high approbation of the appearance, and, which sounded more strange
in the ears of a southern visitor, of the cleanliness of the Scottish
people, he had an equal opportunity of complimenting them upon their
decorum.
After the King had paraded, and dined, and heard sermon, there remained
no further lion of Athens to afflict him but the theatre; which was
arranged for his reception, as well as an Athenian theatre could be
expected to be arranged for such a purpose, on the evening of Friday,
the 27th of August.
The people of the Athens never have been able, and probably never will
be able, to support a respectable theatrical establishment. The genius
of the Scottish people generally is not theatrical. There are still
many sects of religionists among them by whom the stage is denounced as
a “tabernacle of Satan.” This is by no means confined to the provinces,
or to the more austere or fanatical classes of dissenters; for, at the
time when “I, and the King,” visited the Athens, her celebrated, and
most deservedly-celebrated preacher, of the presbyterian establishment,
was denouncing the sinfulness of stage-plays, both from the pulpit
and the press; and though some of the courtly persons whom fashion
had induced to became churchwardens or elders of his congregation,
threatened to rebuke or leave him, because, in the true spirit of John
Knox, he had preached a homily on kingly duties, in which there was not
much of flattery, while the King was in the Athens, yet they let him
denounce the theatre as he pleased.
The more aspiring cast of the Athenians lay claim to very superlative
taste in theatrical matters, as indeed they do in every thing; and
hence, they pretend that they do not patronise the theatre, because
they cannot find a company of players, who come at all up to their
standard of histrionic perfection; and they appeal for proof to the
fact, that when any of the grand stars or comets of the London boards
come to them for a night or two, they throng the theatre with their
persons, and threaten to break it down with their plaudits. All this,
however, proves nothing, but that they are unable to support a theatre,
and that the crowding to see a strange actor for a night or two arises
not from taste but from curiosity. The fact is, that, though England
has produced the very best dramatic poet that ever lived, and some
of the best dramatic performers, yet that the drama, as a matter of
sentiment and feeling, and, as it were, of constitutional necessity,
does not tally with the spirit even of the English people; and, as the
Scotch have all the business habits of the English, together with a
much greater degree of starchedness of character, and incapability of
purse, the theatre cannot possibly flourish among them.
The London theatres, excepting in the case of occasional and accidental
runs upon a particular piece, or a particular actor, are uniformly
miserable speculations for the proprietors; and it will be found,
that even the poor support which the theatres in London get, is given
them, not by the people of London so much as by that vast concourse
of strangers who feel at a loss how to spend their evenings. Before
the people, either of the Athens, or of any other part of the British
dominions, can become theatrical, they must have a little more
relaxation from hard labour than they can at present command. The
national debt, and the immense public establishments, are the real
causes why there are not only no Shakspeares now, but why the heroes
of the old Shakspeare have given place to the wooden or real horses of
a more buffooning race. The people must not only work, but work hard,
during the live-long day; and when they have an hour which they can
snatch from the abridged civilities of social life, for the purpose of
looking at a theatrical exhibition, they very naturally prefer that
which costs them no labour of thought, and which makes them laugh,
to that which would impose upon them fatigue of the mind in addition
to fatigue of the body. To say, therefore, that the Athens does not
support the theatre, because she cannot find a _corps dramatique_ that
comes up to her taste, has no surer a foundation than any other of
those airy structures which she builds as the monuments of her glory.
None of the fine arts, as a matter of abstract study and speculation,
and apart from its contributing to the general comforts of life, can
ever prosper in such a state of society as that of England at the
present day; and if they languish in the British metropolis, where
there is the greatest abundance both of money and of idle people, what
must they do among a people who are comparatively so poor and so
plodding as those of the Athens? If a London merchant, who goes to his
place of business at one, and leaves it at three, does not encourage
the drama, and the other fine arts; what can be expected from an
Athenian special pleader, who drudges at Stair and Erskine, and thumbs
Morison’s Dictionary of Decisions, from grey dawn to dark midnight,
except during the hours that he is occupied in gossiping in the large
hall of the parliament-house, or wrangling in the little courts, and
less niches? It is true, that Mr. Clark, now Lord Eldin, could adorn
his brief with drawings, even in those places,--that the Unknown, who
is only a copying machine in his official capacity, can spin a chapter,
or correct a proof sheet,--and that Jeffery has sometimes been caught
writing an article for the Edinburgh Review, during the time that some
long-winded proser was darkening the case on the other side; but still
all this is done more as matter of business than of pleasure; and
would, in almost all cases, be let alone, were it not for the fee that
it produces.
Miserable, however, as is the support which the theatre of the Athens
receives, and must continue to receive, the King was constrained to
visit it; however, from the smallness of the house and the number of
those who had legal admission as immediately belonging to his retinue,
or his household, he could be for a long time gazed upon by the
chosen, without any great admixture of the mere vulgar. The play was
nothing; but there was something rather novel in the by-acting. The
great chief of Glengarry, who has made himself conspicuous in many ways
and upon many occasions, and who has proved his descent from Ronald,
the elder of the two Vikings, who came robbing and remained royal in
the Hebudæ, being thus, not only “every inch a king,” as well as George
the Fourth, but a king of a much older and a more legitimate dynasty,
stood up for the royal prerogative of wearing his bonnet, and keeping
his seat, while the band was playing, and the audience shouting, “God
save the King.” For this, he was complained of somewhat angrily, and,
in my opinion, very unjustly; for, if they played and sung “God save
the King,” in honour of George Augustus Frederick Guelph, King of Great
Britain and Hanover, then they stinted others of their due, and showed
a partiality not to be borne, when they did not strike up “God save the
Chief,” in honour of Alexander Ronaldson Macdonell, of Glengarry and
Clanronald, heir to the titles, the virtues, and the valour, of Donald
of the Isles. This was omitted, however, and so after this dramatic
scene, the Monarch of these realms staid not another hour in the
Athens; but merely rested a day in the neighbourhood, and then took
his departure, in manner as shall be set forth in another section.
THE NATIONAL MONUMENT.
“_Si monumentum queriris, Circumspice._”
Though the laying of the foundation-stone of the “National Monument of
Scotland,” is to be regarded as a mere interlude in the royal acting,
and of course as a mere parenthesis in my outline of the same, yet
it merits a few sentences, not only on account of the curiosity of
the thing itself, but because it throws some light upon the vanity
of Scottish official men in general, and upon those of the Athens in
particular.
To some people, the idea of building a national monument for Scotland,
or in other words, a monument for the Scottish nation, may seem a
work not of supererogation merely, but of folly; because the Scottish
nation, so far from running any risk of becoming extinct and being
forgotten, is in a very lively and flourishing state; and there are no
people that, wherever they may go, cherish so carefully and proclaim so
loudly, the praise of their country, as the Scotch. But this monument
was intended to answer two very nice purposes,--the one for the glory
of the loaf-and-fish politicians of Scotland, and the other for that
of the Athens. So long as the country was in a state of distress,
and it was doubtful whether the politics of the old or new system
would ultimately triumph upon the Continent of Europe, a very large
proportion of the leading men of Scotland, and of the Athens, joined
the people in being Whigs. As such, they had no immediate share in the
good things of the state; but they hoped that the wheel of hostilities
would revolve, bring the party into office, and so feed them in
proportion to the extent of their fasting and longing. Independently
of their intrinsic value, Whig politics are a much better theme for
declamation than Tory. In that faith, one can talk long and largely
about the majesty and rights of the people, and when not in office, one
can promise as largely as one pleases; while the most judicious plan
for the Tory is to pocket his reward, and thank God; or if he boasts
any thing it must be only to the choice few, and when the inspiration
of a dinner looses his tongue. Under all those circumstances, the
Tories of the Athens, though they had all the substantial things their
own way, were confined to the actual enjoyers of office and emolument;
and the tongues and pens of their opponents were so hard upon them that
they had begun to be afraid to hold even their wonted meetings. Thus
it became necessary that they should do something which should either
win the hearts or dazzle the eyes of their countrymen. The former
was without the compass of their speculations; so they set about the
latter; and after floundering a long time from one scheme to another,
they at last hit upon this wise one of the monument.
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,
----“Argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,”
what could be expected of the man who retailed pig-tail tobacco by the
yard, or played the leach to the breechless urchins of the mountains?
“Nothing,” will be the answer of any uninterested spectator or hearer;
but to put any corporation man, more especially if he be Scotch, in
possession of this part of his utter insignificance without his own
burgh, or indeed, to any rational purpose, within it, would be as hard
and hopeless a task as ever was undertaken by man.
Thus the chances are, that though these poor innocents (and to have
beheld their rueful looks on their neglect and disappointment, would
have created bowels in a Turk, or made Burdett pity, if not love,
borough-mongers,) felt all the bitterness of the infliction, they
would profit nothing by the wholesome hint of the lesson,--just as in a
school, the blockheads get all the whipping, and none of the Latin.
Even as early as the levee day, those persons had found that they were
not in their proper element, and the discovery had become more plain
and palpable every day. Their first and fondest hopes were that each
would be made a peer; then they came down to baronets; next to simple
knights; and again each would have been pleased if the King had given
him a snuff-box,--or even, latterly, a pinch of snuff. But all that
the King gave was an Irish giving--he gave himself no trouble about
them; and the whole court, or, as tails were the fashion, the whole
royal tail, from the Right Honourable Robert Peel, Secretary of State
for the Home Department, to Sir Patrick Walker, Knight, Usher (not, as
some say, of the white feather,) but of the White Rod, followed at the
hinder parts of its royal master. Even with regard to the counties,
there were few of the men in office who met with much regard. A Scotch
lord-lieutenant has commonly a very capacious swallow himself; thus
whatever the minor officers happen to pick up is only at second hand
through him; and upon the occasion alluded to, a few wary wights who
gave themselves airs haughty and tyranic enough, while in their own
localities, might be seen twittering after the great man who made them,
just as Irish beggars twitter after a mail-coach. But hope is like the
sun, it ever rises the soonest, and sets the latest, upon the most
elevated point; and so, ere the last and lingering ray had gone down
upon the pinnacle of royalty, the middle men of Scotland and of the
Athens were dark as Erebus. Long before that feast of which they were
forbidden to eat, and that solitary honour to Provost Arbuthnot which
they were forbidden to witness, the greater part of the “bodies” had
taken their knapsacks and their departure.
For a day or two previous, they who one little week before had looked
down not only upon great merchants and little squires, but absolutely
upon the nobles of the land, might be found at the corners and
crossings of streets, begging a bow from the poorest of their townsmen.
On the morning preceding the pilgrimage, I took an early walk round
the Calton-Hill; and I cannot say that I ever met with a spectacle
more ludicrously pathetic than the chief magistrate of a royal burgh,
who sat in brown and stony meditation there. A large stone formed his
seat; and, but for his resemblance to human nature, and the chain of
office that was about his neck, I might have supposed that the seat
and the sitter were of the same senseless material. The north-east
wind swept coldly upon him, but he appeared to heed it not; as little
did he notice me, as I went close up to scan his singular appearance.
In shape, in size, and in colour, his face more resembled a brick than
any other similitude that I could find. One hand hung upon his knee and
held a snuff-box, by the inscription upon which I could perceive that
he had been a colonel of volunteers; while the other hand, arrested
in middle course, as it bore its load from the silver to the brazen
repository, was relaxed in its hold, and dropping upon the cravat
that with which he meant to powder the intellect. His speculationless
eye was directed across the blue Firth, and to the brown mountains,
among which I should presume he had his residence; and, heedless of
any passer by, he was taking up his Ecclesiastes like another Solomon:
“Deil’s i’ that King! could not he hae staid at hame, and let us
continue to tell him a’ abaut the countrie? We hae put ourselves to
nae sma’ fash an’ expense, and it has a’ come to a bonnie upshot. Our
business negleckit, half the siller cuinzied out a’ our ain pooches,
naething but lookit doon upon here; an’ a’ for the sake o’ bein’
taunted and worried by the folk at hame, for sax months at the least.”
Thus saying, he bounced up, buttoned his coat, trotted away to the
coach-office, and, instead of returning at the tails of four greys
as he had come, was fain to ride outside the stage-coach, and smuggle
himself into his burgh under cloud of night.
The rout soon became general: Glasgow, in great wrath, took her coach,
and her lamentation, and drove so furiously, that the cries of “make
way for the duke,” and “stop thief!” resounded alternately at the
hamlets and turnpike-gates; while the echo of the western city, emptied
as it still was of a great part of its inhabitants, was the most
dismal that can be imagined. Aberdeen tarried not the wheels of her
chariot, until she had reached her own Castle Street; where the answer
that she made to the many inquiries as to what she had gotten was,
“It wad nae mak ony body vera fat.” Nor was disappointment the only
misery against which they had to bear up. Perth got her head broken
by thrusting herself in the way at the peer’s ball. Poor Dundee got
her pocket picked at some place she did not mention. Inverness was put
on quarantine when she went home. Inverbernie found that during her
absence, a radical barber and breeches-maker had established himself
next door, and monopolized the whole custom; and, in short, every
one had a tale of woe, which, while it pleaded for pity, found only
derision.
Towards the close of the exhibition, a number even of the people seemed
to get heartily tired of the business; and notwithstanding all the
scramble that was made by those whose interest it was to preserve
appearances as much as possible, every succeeding act fell off in
interest, and, had George the Fourth remained in the Athens for but
one brief month, it is probable that the people of Scotland would have
returned to their own homes, and the Athenians to the worship of their
own idols.
THE PARTING.
“Adieu, Adieu, Adieu! remember me.--SHAKSPEARE.”
The streets of the Athens, which had been thinning of people ever since
the King’s arrival, were, on the morning of Friday the 30th of August,
the day on which he was to take his departure, as still and silent as
though the chariot-wheel of majesty had never been heard in them. The
constables, lacqueys, and laced porters at the gates of the Holyrood
had dwindled to a small and feeble remnant; no merry archer, in broad
bonnet of blue, and doublet of green tartan, demanded the pass-word,
with bent bow and pheon ready for the string; the foot of the casual
house-maid wakened the old and melancholy echo in its deserted halls;
and those apartments which were so recently gladdened by the gorgeous
train of the King, and made lovely and gay by the presence of all that
Scotland could boast of the fair and the noble, were in sure progress
to being as usual “furr’d round with mouldy damp and ropy slime,” over
which the faint recollection (for even then it was waxing faint,) that
the King had been there, “let fall a supernumerary horror,” which, to
those who during the King’s stay had been raised to office, and put on
the guise of courtiers, only served to make the night of his absence
“more irksome.” The cannon, which, for the previous fourteen days, had
ever and anon been pealing royal salutes, began to be dragged from the
heights of Salisbury Crags and the Calton Hill; and the royal standard
was taken down, leaving the bare widowed staff bleaching in the air.
The guns of the venerable castle too, had subsided into the common
office of chronicling the several holidays and anniversaries, as though
they had been a mere kalendar; the last booths and benches were in the
act of being pulled down; and, excepting in shop-keepers’ books, in the
blackening of a few houses in the illumination, and in the baronet’s
patent of Sir William Arbuthnot, and the knighthood of Raeburn, a
painter, and Fergusson, deputy-king of the Athenian beefeaters, the
Athens retained no external trace of the royal visit, even when the
royal cavalcade was barely escaping from the suburbs.
The people were intoxicated with its coming, and seemed for a time
to have dreamed; but the dream had melted away, and the interest
seemed to be measured exactly by the time that the King had to remain.
Every day it waxed less and less, till, on the day of his departure,
it had vanished altogether. I say this, of course, of the people
generally,--of those who, in their minds and their circumstances, are
independent, and not of them who basked in the sunshine of the court,
or had realities or hopes from the royal munificence. These, of course,
followed after the King to the last, and conveyed him to his barge, but
the people stood by with the most provoking indifference, and, to the
broadest hints that they should shout, returned only a few scattered
murmurs of approbation. They turned to each other, and talked of the
passing splendour as if it had been a common spectacle. At the same
time, the King himself, and not the mere pomp, was certainly the object
of their attention and solicitude. “Hech,” said the old bonneted sire
to his neighbour, as the King passed them rapidly on the beautiful
lawn at Hopetoun House, “Hech! an’ so that’s the real descendant
o’ Brunswick, wha preserved us the Declaration of Rights, and the
Protestant Succession, whilk allow ilka man, gentle and simple, to hae
the keepin’ o’ his ain body, and, what’s muckle better, o’ his ain saul
and conscience. God bless him, an’ keep him frae evil counsellors, and
sinfu’ neebours, for they say that the gryte fouk about Lunnon are no’
just what they should be.” Thus did the rustics hold converse with one
another; and it could not be expected that persons who had their minds
in tone for such remarks, could bawl and shout like the unreflecting
rabble, whose tongues, were it King George or King Crispin, would be
equally loud.
That the loyalty of official men, of all conditions, in Scotland, is
as fawning and obsequious, as in any country under the sun, I could
not fail to observe: as little could I fail to observe, that that of
the people of Scotland is of a very different character, and not to
be judged of by their shouting or not shouting at a royal pageant.
With them, loyalty is, like every thing else, a matter of reason and
reflection, and not of mere impulse and passion; and they never lose
sight of the original and necessary connexion between the King and
the people. They do not look upon the King as one who is elevated
above man and mortal law, and who holds a character directly from
Heaven, in virtue of which, he can, at his pleasure, and without being
accountable, put his foot upon the neck of millions of the human race.
They consider him as originally set up by common consent, and for the
common good, and they admit of the law of lineage and succession just
because it saves the chance of civil war, and gives a centre and a
rallying point to the strength and energy of the country.
The melancholy, which the now deserted state of the Athens, contrasted
with its recent bustle and activity, was calculated to produce, was
increased by the day of the King’s departure being one of the most
gloomy and comfortless that it is possible to imagine. The wind
alternately swept in hurricanes which drove immense masses of clouds
over the city, and died away in dead calms which allowed those clouds
to retain their positions and pour out their contents in torrents.
Early as was the season, the leaves from the few trees in the vicinity
of the Athens had begun to fall; and, as the wind freshened, they
coursed each other along the dirty and deserted streets in ironical
mimickry of those processions by which they had so lately been filled.
It was no day either for examining the still life of the Athens, or
for studying the manners of the Athenians; and so, as my chief purpose
had been delayed by every display during the King’s visit, I thought
it just as well to see the end,--to mark the difference of feeling and
expression that the people would have at the time of a King’s coming
and at that of his going. Accordingly, I set out for Hopetoun House,
where royalty was to be refreshed, ere he again attempted the waters.
It had been expected, that the King would grace with his royal
presence, Dalmeny Castle, the beautiful seat of Lord Roseberry, but he
contented himself with a drive through the grounds. Nor was the day
such as to permit him to see the prospect in descending Roseberry Hill
to Queensferry. The view there is peculiarly fine, and to Scotchmen it
must be highly interesting. Immediately below is the Forth, spotted
with islands and covered with shipping. To the left are the rich
woods and extensive demesnes of Hopetown, with the ancient burgh of
Queensferry at their entrance. To the right, are the bolder shores of
Fife, over which rises the beautiful ridge of Ochills. The towers of
Stirling, long the seat of kings, rise in the centre; and at no great
distance is the field of Bannockburn; and to the right, amid the grey
pinnacles of Dunfermline, sleep the ashes of the Bruce. Further off
Benledi, Ben-an, and Ben-voirlich raise their lofty crests, and the
noble peak of Ben-lomond pierces the most distant cloud. Altogether it
is a scene worthy of royal attention, and within its ample circuit are
countless recollections not unworthy of kingly meditation. The place
where Græme’s Dyke set bounds to the ambition of the Romans, till the
Caledonians fell a prey to luxury and corruption, may tell that the
strength of a people is not in walls and ramparts, but in courage, in
virtue, and in freedom. The stone near the banks of Carron, where the
royal standard of Scotland first was displayed triumphant after years
of suffering and humiliation, and the spot at which the battle-axe of
Bruce cleft the helm and head of the invader’s champion, tell what may
be done by an independent people, under the conduct of a brave and
virtuous prince; the veneration with which Scotchmen yet look towards
the crumbling ruins of Dunfermline, proclaims that the patriotism of a
King far outlives mere pomp and tinsel; and the fields of Falkirk and
Sherriff-muir, might have whispered in the ear of George the Fourth,
how hard Scotchmen had struggled in order that his family might wear
the crown. It seemed, however, that Nature had refused his majesty a
glance of the talismans of these recollections; and that, as he had
confined his attentions (we mean his private attentions, which, of
course, are exclusively at his own disposal,--in his public displays he
was equally attentive to all,) to one family or party, so the glories
of Scotland were shrouded from his view. During the whole day, a thick
cloud lowered over the western horizon, through which only the nearest
summit of the Ochills was but dimly seen. When his majesty came to
Queensferry, it seemed as if “Birnam Wood had come to Dunsinane,” for
the whole fronts of the houses, with their appendages, were covered
with boughs; boughs too were hung across the street, and showed like
triumphal arches turned topsey-turvey, as in sorrow at the departure of
the King. A small platform was erected at Port Edgar, a place a little
to the west of Queensferry, about which there is some idle tradition
of an ideal kingly visit, and deliverance from shipwreck. Thence to
Hopetoun House, a distance of about two miles, a road was now made
along the margin of the Forth. In the halls of the gallant Earl, a
_dejeunér à la fourchette_ was prepared for the King, a select few of
the nobility, and many of the neighbouring gentry. The country people
had assembled on the lawn, to the amount of some thousands, and were
regaled with two or three butts of October.
The King arrived at the place of embarkation about three o’clock,
walked to the platform, leaning on Lord Hopetoun’s arm, and was
received on the platform by the venerable chief commissioner, Adam, as
convener of the Queensferry trustees. He took his old friend cordially
by both hands, and was by him conveyed to the royal barge, which he
entered, and reached the yacht in about six minutes. Although the
King’s “last speech” had been hawked through the streets of the Athens
in the morning, there is no evidence that he made one; and, indeed,
gradually to its close, the whole matter had melted away, like a
dream from the recollection of the half-awakened. Scarcely, too, had
his majesty got on board the yacht, when the dark clouds veiled his
whole squadron like a curtain, and the incessent pelting of the rain
scattered the remnant of the people.
It was with some difficulty, and at a late hour, that I was able to
return to the Athens; and when I arose on the following morning, and
sallied out to begin my survey, the contrast was too strong for my
feelings. The whole line of George Street was unbroken, except by the
hoary form of a beggar crawling along in front of those assembly-rooms
which had lately been so gay; and the trim and active figure of the
editor of the Edinburgh Review, who, with a great bundle of law-papers
under one arm, and a new book under the other, shot along with as much
rapidity, as though the most strong and skilful of the archer-band
had discharged him from his bow. Queen Street was desolate; and in
King Street, the only thing that I could notice was one or two of the
personages who had lately flaunted their tails as highland chiefs,
taking leave of their law-agents, with downcast and sorrowful looks.
The regalia of Scotland were again consigned to their dull and greasy
apartment in the castle; the High Street, which so recently had rung
with the acclamations of serried multitudes, now echoed to the grating
croak of the itinerant crockery-merchant, and the ear-piercing screams
of the Newhaven fish-wife. The gewgaws, which for the last two weeks
had glittered in the windows of the shop-keepers, had again given place
to sober bombazines and webs of duffle; and the shop-keepers themselves
were either leaning against the posts of their doors, and yawning to an
extent which would have thrown any but Athenian jaws off the hinges,
or sitting perked upon three-footed stools within, casting looks, in
which hope formed no substantial ingredient, upon the long pages which
their country friends had enabled them to write in their day-books;
and of which, to judge from appearances, it was pretty plain that the
term of payment would be to the full as long as the amount. Every
where, in short, that I came, there was an air of desolation; not by
any means that the Athens was mourning for the departure of the King,
for among the few persons who were visible, his name was not so much
as mentioned, but in her own appearance she was mournful indeed, and
though she retained the same form as during the display and rejoicing,
her spirit seemed to be clean gone; and it was quite evident that, in
order to catch the average and peculiar likeness of this boasted city,
I must tarry till the present appearance had passed off, or remove to
a distance, till the natural one should return.
I preferred the latter alternative, and resolved, after resting for
that day, to forget both the glory and the gloom in a month or two
among the Scottish mountains; and then return to the Athens, when the
return of business, of people, and of prate, should have been brought
back to their ordinary channels.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ATHENS AND THE ATHENIANS IN GENERAL.
“A city set on an hill, which cannot be hid.”
IN point of diversity of situation and beauty, and durability of
building materials, few cities have the same advantages as the Athens;
and I know of no city, of which the general and distant effect, upon
what side soever one approaches it, is more picturesque and striking.
But, as is the case with most things that look well as wholes, one
is miserably disappointed when one comes to examine the details. The
ground upon which the Athens is built bears some resemblance to a fort
with a ditch and glacis. The Castle and High Street, with the clustered
buildings on each side, compose the fort; the Cow-gate on the south,
the Grass Market on the west, and the North Loch on the north, form
the ditch, which bears some resemblance to a noose thrown round the
Castle, and having the ends stretching away eastward by the Holyrood;
and beyond this ditch the glacis slopes toward St. Leonard’s, the Loch
of Duddingstone, and the Meadows on the south, and toward the water
of Leith on the north. The central division, although its situation
be very airy, and also very favourable for cleanliness, has nothing
to boast of in either of these respects. The houses are so closely
huddled together, that, excepting the High Street itself, which is
rather spacious, the inhabitants may almost shake hands from the
windows of the opposite houses; and they are built to such a height,
that scarcely a glimpse of sunshine can find its way within two storeys
of the foundations. In all this part of the Athens, there seems to be
the greatest dislike to subways and common sewers; and thus, unless
when the High Street is washed by a torrent of rain, it is by no means
the most pleasant to perambulate. The southern ditch, or Cow-gate,
is, throughout its whole extent, as filthy and squalid as can well
be imagined; and, with the exception of a few public buildings, and
one or two little squares, there is not much to be commended on the
glacis beyond. Indeed the whole, southward of the North Loch, which
the Athenians style the sublime part of their city, is more remarkable
for the sublimation of mephitic effluvia than of any other thing. The
new town again, or the portion between the North Loch and the water of
Leith, is as dull as the other is dirty. The principal streets consist
of long lines of stone building, without any break or ornament except
wicket-doors and trap-hole windows, which render the whole very heavy,
and induce one to believe that they are constructed with the intention
of being as inaccessible and dark as possible. Princes Street, which is
a single row, looking across the tasteless and unadorned gulf of the
North Loch toward the beetling and shapeless masses of the old town,
had originally been intended for private dwelling-houses, at the rate
of a whole family per floor. Circumstances have changed, however. The
Athenian fashionables (contrary to the natural tendency of the Scotch)
have moved northwards; their places have been supplied by drapers from
the Lawn Market, barbers from the Parliament Stairs, and booksellers
from the Cross; and, as the immense weight of tall stone-houses renders
the alteration of the ground-floor dangerous, without taking down and
rebuilding the whole, the expense of which would be very great, Princes
Street is perhaps the most tasteless and clumsy line of shops in the
island of Great Britain; while, so anxious are the people to huddle
upon the top of each other, that it is not uncommon to find four or
five shops for very opposite kinds of wares, in a pile up and down
the same stair-case. George Street is the most gloomy and melancholy
that can well be imagined; and a walk along its deserted pavements is
sufficient to give any one the blue devils for a week. Queen Street
is longer, but not a whit more lively; and, though the view from it
be both extensive and varied, it seems no great favourite with the
Athenians. Farther to the north the buildings are newer, and there is
occasionally an attempt at the recurrence of architectural ornaments at
the end of certain lengths of the buildings; but these ornaments want
taste in their form, and force in their projections, and thus increase
the poverty of the effect. Throughout the whole private dwellings of
the Athens, you are impressed with the cold eternity of stone and
lime, and you look in vain for that airy elegance, that rich variety
of taste, and that repose of comfort, which you find in other places.
Villas, self-contained houses, and snug or even decent gardens, seem
to be held in the greatest abhorrence. You meet not with one of the
delightful little boxes which are scattered round London by thousands,
and of which there are always a few in the vicinity of even third-rate
towns in England. The ambition of the Athenians appears to be, to make
every four stone walls a joint stock company, as dull, as tasteless,
and as heavy, as a stack of warehouses in Thames Street.
Of all the objects of Athenian detestation, the greatest, however, seem
to be decently laid out pleasure-grounds, and trees. Strangers used
to say that the rustic Scotch cut down all sorts of bushes, because
ghosts and spirits whistled in them on windy nights; and really, when I
looked at the many fine situations in and about the Athens, which the
Athenians have taken particular care neither to improve nor to plant,
I could not help thinking that this superstition, now banished from
every province in Scotland, has taken up its abode in the Scottish
metropolis. True, they have a public walk round the Calton-Hill, but
that is merely a thing of yesterday; and though they have placed upon
the top of it a monument to Lord Nelson, modelled exactly after a Dutch
skipper’s spy-glass, or a butter churn; an astronomical observatory,
tasteful enough in its design, but not much bigger than a decent
rat-trap, or a twelfth-cake at the Mansion-House; and are to build “the
National Monument;” yet they have never thought of planting so much
as a thistle, but have left the summit of the hill in all its native
bleakness, and allowed it to be so much infested by lazy black-guards
and bare-footed washerwomen, as to be unsafe for respectable females
even at noon-day;--while after dusk this, the most fashionable
promenade of the Athens, is habitually the scene of so much and so
wanton vice, that instead of an ornament to the city, as it might
easily be made, it is a nuisance and a disgrace.
The royal precinct of the Holyrood, which occupies a piece of rich
level ground about the palace, and which stretches a considerable way
up the romantic heights to the south, is, one would think, a chosen
place for taste to display itself upon; and when there are taken
into the account the boast of the Athenians that their Holyrood is
the finest royal palace in Britain, and that other boast which is so
habitual with them that there is no need of repeating it, one would
imagine that among all their boasted improvements the royal precinct
would not have been overlooked; but all that they appear to have done
for it has been to make it as dirty and as desolate as ever they could.
The whole filth of the old town (and that is no small commodity) is
collected in cesspools within a few yards of the palace; and lest
that should not be grateful enough to the Athenian olfactories, a
considerable portion of the adjoining ground is set apart for the
collection of manure from all places. Upon the other parts of the
royal domain, about half a dozen of scraggy and withered trees, and
an old thorn-hedge, more than half of which was when I viewed it
reposing in the lap of its neighbour ditch, are the only attempts at
landscape-gardening; and the grand-children of those by whom they were
planted must, by this time, be in their graves or their dotage.
Salisbury Crags, again, are a natural object which the people of a
less classical city would not only adore, but adorn by every means in
their power. The Athenians act differently; their rulers hew down the
picturesque masses of basalt, sell them at so much a cart-load, for
paving the streets and Mac-Adamizing the highways, and put the proceeds
into that bottomless box called the “common gude.” About midway up
that bold front of these cliffs which looks towards the city, there
is what may be termed an accidental public walk. It has been formed
by the cutting away of the rock above for the purposes of gain, and
the tumbling down of the smaller fragments which were not saleable.
When the Athenian authorities were alarmed at the Radicals, and
bestirred themselves in getting a general subscription for the relief
of those whom the changes consequent upon the late war had thrown out
of employment, a few labourers were set to work on the middle of this
walk; but they had no plan and no superintendant, and the funds were
exhausted before it could be made accessible at either end; while the
whole face of the Crags, instead of being tufted with brushwood and
festooned with creeping plants, as might have been done at very little
expense, is as naked as--the shame of those who let it remain in its
present condition.
The meadows southward of the city, and the adjoining common called
“Bruntsfield-links,” are not in much better condition. At some period,
indeed, a walk or two had been formed in the meadows, and some hedges
and trees planted, but neither the one nor the other have been attended
to; while the grass is in so marshy a state that the cows, to which
it is almost exclusively assigned, can with difficulty make their way
across it. The whole extent of the North Loch, too, was till very
lately, and great part of it is still, a putrid and pestilent marsh,
at once offensive to the eye, and injurious to the health; and indeed,
throughout the whole compass of the Athens, there is scarcely a tree
or any thing green, except grass in the melancholy streets towards the
meadows, and moss upon the dank walls of several of the more low and
squalid dwelling-houses.
Notwithstanding all this, there are few places that boast more of their
improvements than the Athens; and not many in which the people have
been made to pay more upon that score. But either there has been a
total want of skill in the projectors, or a total want of economy in
those who had the execution,--if indeed there has not been both. I was
told repeatedly, that every scheme and measure to which the Athenian
authorities give the name of a public improvement, is uniformly a job
for the benefit, not of the public, but of some party or individual;
and really, comparing what is said to have been expended with what has
actually been done, I can find no other theory that will sufficiently
explain the facts. The bell-rope of the Tron-Kirk appears not to have
been the only case in which a hundred pounds’ expense has been incurred
for the purpose of saving a shilling.
Even in her public buildings, the Athens has little of which she can
boast. All the places of worship belonging to the established Kirk
are tasteless; and the most modern ones are the most so. St. Giles’
Cathedral is a black, shapeless, and ruinous mass, stuck round with
booths and police-officers; and when one has said, that the portion
of it set apart for public worship as the High Kirk, has a handsome
old roof spoiled by tasteless painting, and a square tower with an
imperial crown, which looks well at a distance, and not absolutely
ill when one is close to it,--one has about summed up the whole of
its merits. Respecting most of the other Presbyterian churches, the
less that is said the better; the Grey-Friars, situate south of the
Castle, has an interest with the more devout people of Scotland, from
the tombs of the martyrs that are in the adjoining burial-ground; and
St. George’s Church, which terminates the street of the same name,
westward, is perhaps the most expensive and unseemly abortion of modern
architecture. Public monuments in the Athens there are none, except
Nelson’s (formerly mentioned) on the Calton-Hill, and Lord Melville’s
column in St. Andrew’s Square; and it is not the fashion of the Athens
to consider her burying-grounds as sacred, or to set up memorials for
the illustrious dead. If her plan gives her as much trouble as this
would do, it is trouble of a different kind: she keeps down, as much as
she can, all those who are not either illustrious already, or have not
something to confer, as long as they are alive; and when they are dead,
she gives herself no more trouble about them.
Of her other public buildings, the College is the largest; but
as the plan was far beyond her means, it stood a ruin for a very
considerable period, and will ultimately be a piece of patchwork in
consequence of a deviation from the original design. Still, however,
if it could be seen, the entrance front is majestic; and the opposite
square (especially the whole façade in which the Museum is, and the
rooms for the Museum itself) is singularly chaste and beautiful. The
Register-House is a neat building, and seen to considerable advantage;
but there is something trifling in the whole air of it.
That frost-work style of architecture, which out-Goths all the Goths
that ever existed, has visited the Athens, in some of its most tawdry
and fantastic specimens,--the chief of which are an episcopal chapel
near the west end of Princes’ Street, and another near the east end of
Queen Street, of which it would puzzle a conjuror to point out the most
ridiculous.
Even the Castle has suffered the infliction of the modern Athenian
taste, by the erection of two or three piles within its ramparts which
have every appearance of being cotton manufactories. So much for the
still life of the modern Athens.
To give a general idea of the Athenian people, is by no means so easy
a matter. They take their character from a number of circumstances;
and the circumstances cannot be properly explained without an allusion
to the character, nor the character rightly appreciated without a
reference to the circumstances. If one dwell upon the general subject,
one is forced to assert without any means of proving; and if one take
up a single particular, although the proof be perfect in as far as that
is concerned, it is difficult to establish the connexion, and point out
the effect, with regard to the whole. To examine society with a view to
determine the general spirit and character of those who compose it,
is like examining an animal with a view to a knowledge of the nature
and operation of the living principle. If we examine it while alive
and in the performance of its functions, we see the results without
being able to understand the machinery; and if we dissect and separate
the different parts, we have the machinery without the results; nor
does it appear that there are any means by which we can obtain a
contemporaneous view of both.
Thus, I found the character of the Athenians different from that
of the inhabitants of any other city; and I also found many of the
circumstances under which they are placed to be peculiar; but still
I am not prepared to say, that the one set of peculiarities are
altogether to be set down as causes, and the other as effects. The
Athens has, doubtless, stamped upon her people much of their character,
and they have requited her by service of the same kind; so that any
pretension to be profoundly philosophic in the matter would be as
impossible as for my purpose it is unnecessary.
The leading characteristic of the Athenians, of all ranks, all degrees
of understanding, all measures of taste, all shades of party, and both
sexes, is to esteem their own idols in preference to the idols of every
other people on the face of the earth. Their own situation is the
finest that can possibly be found; and their own mode of improving
it is superior to any that could be suggested. Their men, taken on
the average, excel all others in wisdom, and nothing can any way
compare with the brilliance of their women. In their manners they are
never vulgar; and in their tastes and judgments they do not make half
the slips and blunders which are made by the rest of the world. The
songs of their poets (when they happen to have any) are transcendent
for sublimity and sweetness; and the theories of their philosophers
(of which they are never without a reasonable portion) are ever the
most agreeable to nature, and the most nicely put together. Upon the
latter point they are somewhat amusing; for in no place whatever have
philosophic theories been so often changed, as among the sages of the
succession of schools which, shining from the Athens, have dazzled and
illuminated mankind; and yet, while each of these theories has been the
object of Athenian adoration, it, and none but it, has been the true
one. In politics they have not, at least for a long time, been agreed
in their doctrines, or unanimous in their worship; for in politics,
interest has generally much more to do than principle; and, being by
much the stronger of the two, and pulling opposite ways with different
parties, it has produced among the Athenians, divisions which are as
remarkable as their union of self-adoration in most other things.
Whence, it may be asked, does this self-adoration arise? To which
I would answer, in the true Athenian manner, by asking where the
affections of a widowed and childless woman, who has no hope and no
chance of being courted by another, are centred. The Athens is a
widowed metropolis: she stands registered in the pages of history as
having been the seat of kings,--she has her walls of a palace, her name
of a royal household, and her gewgaws of a crown and sceptre; but the
satisfying, the fattening, the satiating,--or perhaps, as some would
call it, the stultifying presence and influence of the monarch is not
there; neither is there any vice-roy, or other kingly vice-gerent set
high enough in its stead, to attract the attention, and invite or
command the worship of the people. Thus, she is in herself not only the
capital of Scotland, but all that Scotland has localized as an apology
for a king; and therefore, besides assuming the consequence due to a
royal seat, she puts on the airs of royalty itself, and worships her
own shadow in the mirror of the passing time. She is the only city
in the British islands which is so situated; and this alone would be
sufficient to give her a peculiarity of character, and to make that
peculiarity an inordinate pride.
Thus the Athens, taking her nominal and her real situation into the
account, is both metropolitan and provincial: with regard to Scotland,
she has the name, and assumes the pride, of being metropolitan in
every thing; and in as far as concerns the administration of the laws
as peculiar to Scotland, and in some degree, also, as concerning the
internal discipline of the Scottish Kirk, she is really metropolitan;
but in respect of Britain generally, she is nothing more than a
provincial city, and the matters in which she is provincial have, to
the full, as powerful an influence upon her rival character, as those
in which she is, or flatters herself to be, metropolitan, have upon
the character which she is anxious to assume. It is not, for instance,
in the nature of things, that she can ever take the lead in matters of
taste and fashion. Wherever the executive and legislative powers of
the state are allocated, it is there that the gay and the rich will
throng; and notwithstanding all the boasted elegance and taste of the
Athens, no Scottish nobleman, or even squire, spends his winter there,
if he can afford to spend it in London. Hence, the Athens is not only
destitute of the source whence fashion flows, but she is also left
without the means by which it could be supported: she is second-rate in
her very nature, and also in those who form her leading society.
But it follows of necessary consequence, that a place which is
second-rate in fashion and in wealth, must be second-rate also in
every thing which fashion can encourage and wealth reward. A solitary
student who prosecutes a science, or a solitary artist who practises
an art, for its own sake, and with an inferior degree of regard to
present honour and emolument, might perchance succeed better in the
Athens than in the British metropolis. But, as British society is at
present constituted, there are few who have the means, and apparently
not many who have the desire, of proceeding in this way; and therefore,
the place which attracts the fashion and the wealth, will also attract
the superior talent, in consequence of the superior means of rewarding
which it possesses; and upon this principle, it would be just as vain
for the Athens to hope to rival London in any of the liberal arts, or
elegant amusements, as it would be for the Scotch lords of Session,
to rival the upper House of the British Parliament, the George Street
Assembly Rooms to rival Almack’s, or the speeches of the Scotch
advocates to be read with as much attention as those of the leading
orators in the House of Commons.
Of those classes of persons whose professions fix them in Scotland,
the Athens, if she manages her patronage honestly and judiciously, may
always command the best. The judges and pleaders in her supreme court
ought to be superior to the sheriffs and attornies in the Scottish
counties; her clergymen, if those who have the appointment of them were
to be guided solely by merit, ought to be the most learned and most
eloquent that Scotland can produce; the professors in her university
ought (under the same proviso) to be superior to those of Aberdeen
and St. Andrews, and perhaps also to those of Glasgow; and, even in
other cases, she may produce one or two lights more brilliant than
the average in the metropolis;--but, in all cases, where there is no
necessary tie, real or imaginary, to bind a man northward of the Tweed,
the Athens must be satisfied with making her selection after London
has been supplied. Or if she deny the conclusion, she must also deny a
principle upon which her people know as well how to act as the people
of any place,--that whoever can afford to pay the best, will get the
best and the readiest service.
For adopting this theory, the Athens must not accuse me, either of
ignorance of her erudition, or of a wish to detract from her real
merits. I know her more intimately than she may perhaps be aware; and
if I were to judge her by the strict letter of my own experience, I
should place her sundry degrees lower still; and tell the world of some
of the bitterness which she foolishly squeezes into her own dish,
and some of the ludicrous positions into which she works herself, by
attempting a grace and a dignity, which her nature and her education
alike deny to her; but I have no desire to state any more than is
sufficient to establish the truth; and if she can point out a theory
either of this leading feature of her general character, or of any of
the more detailed and particular ones, which will explain the phenomena
better than mine, I shall be very willing to adopt it. Meanwhile,
however, it is fitting that a city, which not only looks down in scorn
upon the country to which she owes her daily bread, but which affects
to sneer at those whom she must notwithstanding copy, and whom it is
utterly impossible that she can ever equal, should be rebuked for her
arrogance, and resisted when she would claim that to which she neither
has nor can have the smallest title.
CHAPTER V.
POLITICS OF THE ATHENS.
“As when the sea breaks o’er its bounds,
And overflows the level grounds,
Those banks and dams, that, like a screen,
Did keep it out, now keep it in;
So, when tyrannic usurpation
Invades the freedom of a nation,
The laws o’ th’ land, that were intended
To keep it out, are made defend it.”--BUTLER.
ALTHOUGH the Athens be the point at which the whole politics of
Scotland have their origin and their termination; and, although the
parties there be more uniform and incessant in their hostility than in
the remote parts of the country; yet, it is impossible to understand
the composition, spirit, and conduct of those parties, without
premising a few words on the general question.
Now, though England growls, and Ireland brawls and fights, neither
of them is perhaps so degraded in its political system as Scotland.
The great body of the Scottish people may indeed be said to have no
political rights at all; and the members that are sent to the House
of Commons as the representatives of Scotland, may just as properly
be considered the representatives of Bengal or Barbadoes, with which
they have often fully as much connexion, and in the welfare of which
they are fully as much interested. In the Scottish counties, the real
proprietors of the soil are not necessarily the voters for members of
parliament; and, in the royal burghs of Scotland, the great body of
the freemen and burgesses, instead of possessing the parliamentary
franchise, are almost necessarily in opposition to those who do possess
it. Freeholds, in the Scottish counties, are held either by charters
directly from the King, or by charter from subjects as their vassals.
No part of the lands in Scotland being now in the hands of the crown,
the extent of holdings by crown charter cannot be increased; and, as
the rents of the crown vassals were valued a considerable time ago,
an increase of rent, either from the improvement of the estate, or
from any other cause, does not increase its political value. None
but those who hold of the crown, and whose valued rents are of the
stipulated amount, can vote for members of parliament; though, if
the valued rental amount to any number of times the sum necessary
for a qualification, the holder of the crown charter for that rental
possesses as many votes as the amount will bear. In theory, therefore,
there is a difference between the value of Scotch property in land, and
the representation of that property in parliament. The value of the
land varies with the prosperity of the country, while the extent of the
representation remains the same. This is an injustice; but it is by no
means the only or the greatest one of which the Scottish landholder has
to complain. The property in the crown charter, or superiority, as it
is called, is different from the property in the land: the lands may
be sold, and the votes retained by the seller; the votes may be sold,
without selling the land; or the land may be sold to one purchaser, and
the votes to another.
This system is productive of so many evils, that, in many instances,
a Scotch county representation is substantially no representation at
all. The local interests and improvements of the counties are apt to
be neglected, the county interest is easily thrown into the scale of
any party or faction,--more especially if that party or faction be
subservient to the administration,--and, as the county member, when
ministerial, has great influence over all the government offices and
patronage connected with the county, the chances are, that these will
be bestowed upon persons who are either ignorant of their duties,
from a want of local knowledge, or disliked by the independent
proprietors upon party grounds. The old and decaying families, whose
fallen fortunes force them to sell their lands, and whose pride as
well as whose interest induces them to retain their superiorities, for
the purpose of turning them to political account, are thus ranged in
opposition to the more active and intelligent, who, by the exercise
of their own talents, have acquired the means of purchasing land; and
thus, independently of the old and theoretic distinctions of tories
and whigs, there is perhaps more to create and render conspicuous
the distinction between the liberal and the servile, in the Scotch
counties, than in those either of England or of Ireland.
In the royal burghs of Scotland, the separation between those who
really possess the property and are interested in the welfare of the
burgh, and those who are in possession of the elective franchise, is
still more glaring in its absurdity, and pernicious in its effects.
During the minority of James III. of Scotland, in 1469, when that
prince was only seventeen years old, and when the turbulent nobles
were setting the laws at defiance, and, by bands of armed ruffians
in the streets, compelling the freemen of the royal burghs to choose
their creatures as magistrates,--a statute was enacted, which was
deemed salutary at the time, but which has since reduced the political
influence of the whole burgesses of Scotland to a mere nonentity, and
made the Scotch burgh representation one of the most convenient and
efficient engines of corruption that ever was devised. That statute
gave to the official men, seldom exceeding twenty in any burgh, and
generally the mere creatures of some chief or leader, who frequently
has no connexion with the burgh at all--the power of electing their
successors in office,--that is, of placing the whole parliamentary
franchise, the whole revenues of the burgh, every species of patronage
that it can exercise, and every alteration and improvement that it
would require, solely and irretrievably at the control and disposal of
about twenty persons, and giving it to them and their assignees as a
perpetual inheritance.
Now, although these twenty men should be the most intelligent that
each burgh could afford, yet, as the people have no voice in the
election of them, and no control over the acts of their management,
however corrupt, pernicious, or ruinous, it is impossible that they
can be regarded as any thing else than an useless and pernicious
excrescence,--a local despotism, of the most hurtful and humiliating
description, and a marketable commodity, always willing to hire
themselves to whoever should bribe the highest. Circumstanced as they
are, however, it is impossible that they can be the most intelligent
men in their respective burghs. Being a minority, and a very small and
insignificant one, public opinion must always be against them; and this
circumstance alone has a degrading and debasing tendency. The object
of the leading men among them must naturally be to preserve their own
superiority and influence; and therefore they must naturally procure
the election of recruits whose wisdom shall not be dangerous to their
own influence, and whose feelings of honour shall have no tendency to
revolt at the iniquities of the system; and thus, while the system is
in itself as corrupting as can well be imagined, it has a tendency to
draw towards it those who are both disposed and qualified for being
corrupted. The specimens of those burghal office-bearers, which I had
seen in the Athens during the King’s visit, were to me a decided proof
of the badness of the system under which they are appointed; and the
derision in which they appeared to be held by the people, and the
pleasure which their disappointments and rebuffs seemed to afford,
told plainly enough the estimation in which they are held; and the
Scotch are by much too prudent and cautious a people not to pitch their
estimate, both of things and of persons, in a very nice proportion to
the value.
Now, independently of its mischievous political effects, there is
something in this system which is peculiarly injurious to the local
police and improvements of Scotland. If the way in which those
local rulers are chosen gives general offence, and if their own
qualifications be so confessedly inferior as to excite contempt, it
is not possible that the regulations which they frame, even assuming
that they could be good in themselves, could be carried into effect
with that decision, and supported with that cordiality, on the part of
the public, which a wholesome police requires; as little is it likely
that such men, so appointed, could either plan judicious and liberal
improvements, or carry them into execution. Opposed to the people in
their very formation, the people must be presumed to oppose them in
every part of their conduct where opposition is practicable, and so
annoy them in the rest of it as to make them confine themselves to
that--to which indeed the whole spirit of the system is exceedingly
prone--their own personal importance and aggrandizement.
But it is with reference to the general politics of Scotland as
centring in the Athens, that this system of burghal election exerts
its most pernicious and permanent influence; for whoever chooses to
go to the expense, (and where very weighty purses are not run against
each other that is by no means great,) can purchase the votes of Scotch
provosts, bailies, and counsellors, with as much ease and certainty as
he could do the necks of as many geese. No doubt there are temporary
and local exceptions, just as there have been wise legislators,
upright judges, and generous commanders, in the very worst systems of
despotism; but those exceptions, from all that I could ever learn, have
been so few in number, and so far between, both in space and in time,
as not to diminish the truth of the general likeness.
If indeed any other proof, than a knowledge of the system, and a sight
of the men, were wanted, to show how extremely convenient a tool those
Scotch burghal magistrates are, in the hands of whatever party has the
political influence in Scotland for the time, that proof would be found
in the great pertinacity with which the official men of the Athens
have fought for the preservation of the system, and the miserable
sophistications to which they have been obliged to have recourse in
order so to disguise it as that it might be at all palatable to the
better informed or more liberal official men in England. Within the
last thirty years, the burgesses of Scotland have made two strong and
almost unanimous efforts to shake it off. They have shown how ruinous
it is to themselves, how degrading to the magisterial office, and how
ill in accordance with that freedom which England boasts. But the lords
advocate and other keepers of--what shall I say?--Ay--their own places,
have worked about it and about it; and “darkened counsel by words
without knowledge,” till some unfortunate circumstance of the times has
enabled them to couple the attempt at its destruction with that with
which it has no connexion--sedition and rebellion against the British
government. The one attempt was spoiled by the breaking out of the
French Revolution, and the disturbances which at that time took place
in Scotland; and the subsequent attempt failed in consequence of those
grumblings of the people, which were occasioned by a time of scarcity
of provisions and want of employment.
The state of the country representation, and the system of the burgh
government, would be in themselves sufficient to lay the ministerial
party in the Athens open to suspicion, and to fill the rest of the
inhabitants with discontent. But these are heightened by other
circumstances. The judges, and more especially the crown lawyers, have
a power over the people of Scotland, at which Englishmen would stand
aghast. The judges (no matter whether they exercise it or not) have,
directly or indirectly, the power of nominating every one of the jury
by which a Scotchman is tried,--or, if they have not this power in its
full extent now, they had it till very lately. In the case of ordinary
crimes, this power, though a theoretical imperfection, might not be
very dangerous in practice,--because, in ordinary crimes, there is
nothing to entice a judge away from the natural dictates and natural
course of justice; but, in offences of a political description, the
case must be different,--because all or at least a majority of the
judges, being persons who, at some period of their lives, are helped
forward by ministerial influence, cannot be supposed to be entirely
divested of those feelings of gratitude which are natural to all
classes and conditions of men.
The lord advocate of Scotland is, from the very nature of his office,
much more a political character than any judge. In all questions
between the King and his subjects, or between the people and the
criminal law, he is not only the King’s principal officer, but the
express representative of the King himself; and, except in the truly
kingly and glorious attribute of granting pardon, he has more ample
powers than the King has by the law of England. It is true, that,
through the instrumentality of his attorney-general, the King can
file warrants against such of his English subjects as are guilty of
offences, tending to injure his person, or subvert his government,
and bring them to trial without the intervention of a grand jury; and
it is also true, that this power has been exercised in cases where
neither the person nor the government of the King could have been
in the smallest danger; but still, great as this power is in itself,
and dangerous as the frequent exercise of it is to liberty, it is
nothing in comparison of what the Scotch lord advocate possesses. The
attorney-general is always understood to institute his proceedings in
consequence of a representation from the sovereign himself, or from
the great officers of the state; and, by law, it is strictly confined
to what are called state offences. The lord advocate, on the other
hand, is, of his own pleasure, and without necessary consultation
with any one, not only the public prosecutor in all cases of trial,
but the arbiter who decides who shall or shall not be tried; and, in
the latter capacity, he, of the plenitude of his own power, performs
all the functions of an English grand jury. When a crime, either
against society or against the state, has been committed, or when a
person is suspected of the one or the other description of crime, the
procurator fiscal of the district or burgh, (who, in many instances,
is an ignorant and bungling attorney, whose friends, or whose secret
services, have procured that office for him, as much on account of his
incapacity for making a decent living by the ordinary practice of his
profession, as for any other reason,) takes “a precognition,” that
is, a secret and inquisitorial examination of _ex-parte_ evidence,
which he transmits to the lord advocate as the ground upon which
that officer may or may not proceed, just as he pleases. If it please
the lord advocate that the party thus accused shall be indicted, he
prepares the necessary instruments; and the trial must be begun, if
the party accused shall petition the court for it, within forty days
of his being imprisoned, and held to bail, and finished within other
forty days; but in all cases which come before the lords of justiciary,
either in their sessional court in the Athens, or at their periodical
circuits in the different counties, the lord advocate is substantially
both the public prosecutor and the grand jury that sends the case to
trial. Where a special commission of _oyer_ and _terminer_ is issued
for the trial of persons accused of high treason, a grand jury, of not
fewer than seventeen, and not more than twenty-one, have a power of
returning as true, or ignoring the bills of indictment, if twelve of
their number shall be of that opinion. But, even with this limitation,
the power of the lord advocate, more especially as relates to political
offences, is such as to heighten the animosity, which the state of the
elective franchise is calculated to produce, between the comparatively
small portion of the Scottish people who are influenced by the hope or
possession of office, and the much larger portion who are under no such
influence.
The distance of the Athens from the seat of the executive and
legislative powers of the empire; and the colouring which it is
possible that a representation may receive from those who carry it to
headquarters, also tend to lessen the confidence which the people of
Scotland might otherwise be disposed to place in the men who form as it
were the official links of connexion between them and their King; and
when it is considered how much connexion and influence can do even at
headquarters, it is easy to imagine how much greater their extent must
be at such an outpost as the Athens.
There would be no end of a statement of the complaints which I found
the independent Caledonians had to make against their delegated
authorities. From what I saw in the Athens, and from what I heard in my
excursion over the country, I could plainly discover that the people
of Scotland are perhaps more uniformly and more sincerely devoted to
all the better parts of the constitution, and to the person and family
of the King, than the people of England; but I could at the same time
perceive that they felt towards the immediate holders of Scottish power
and office, a much stronger dislike than is to be found in England. At
the same time, they all seemed anxious to make it appear that those
official men wished to identify themselves, and even their failings,
so much with the general government of the country, that they were
ever ready to denounce accusations against themselves as attacks on the
government; and many instances were mentioned to me in which a very
excusable, and, as I would have thought, a very deserved ridicule of a
small man of office, had been considered and represented as the very
next step to levying war upon the King.
The tendency which the Athenians have to make themselves, their
sayings, and their doings, the grand objects of thought and
conversation, helps to give currency and additional bitterness to
this political rancour. If a scrap of paper which a procurator fiscal
cannot read, or a sharp instrument of which a loyal magistrate cannot
exactly understand the use, happen to be found in any district, more
especially in any of the populous and manufacturing districts of
Scotland, the chance is, that if there be any symptom in the public
mind which sophistry can twist into an attitude of irritation, the one
shall find its way to the Athens as a seditious circular, and the other
as a rebellious pike. The official men of the Athens have no great
knowledge of articles of these descriptions, and as of late years the
lords advocates in particular have not only been a very sensitive and
vigilant race, but have been of those mental dimensions which are the
better for a discovery or two to give them importance, there have,
during those years, been things suspected of rebellious propensities,
which would have been regarded as quite harmless in any other part of
the island. A merchant who has extensive dealings with Russia, and
who is also concerned in the north sea whale fishing, informed me
that in the memorable year 1819, a few letters written in the Russian
character, and two dozen of harpoons, were taken from his warehouse
with great ceremony, forwarded to Edinburgh at considerable expense,
and, as he supposed, cost the authorities there, not only much profound
cogitation among themselves, but an application to the secretary of
state, ere they were sent back to him. Indeed, were I to recount all
the transactions of this description that were mentioned to me during
my residence in Scotland, I should fill several volumes with instances
of the lamentable and ludicrous effects of uninformed zeal in official
men: to record such matters would, however, be an attempt to preserve
the memory of persons and things which no effort could keep from
oblivion.
In the peculiar politics of the Athens, it struck me, that though there
are only two parties,--the men in office, with their connexions and
dependants, and the men who are not in office,--yet that there are
several distinct grounds of opposition, some of which neither party are
very willing to avow, and therefore they lump them all together in the
convenient cant terms of Tory and Whig. Both parties are radically and
substantially loyal; and both parties, though in different degrees, and
sought for by different measures, may have a regard for the prosperity
of their country generally, and for the glory and aggrandizement of the
Athens, in a particular and pre-eminent degree; but still, their wars
of the tongue, and the unpleasant inroads which these wars make upon
domestic prosperity and happiness, are just as unpleasant as though the
one party were about to draw the sword for absolute despotism, and the
other for blind and indiscriminate democracy.
The Athenian Tories are perhaps the most place-devoted race in the
British dominions. Office is their god; and, as is sometimes the
case with other devotees, their devotion is fervent in proportion
to the feeling they have of their own unworthiness. In defence of
that which they worship, they have no more variety of voice than the
winged warders of the Roman capitol. Hence, as I said of the burghal
magistracies, they cling to each other, and by that very means separate
themselves more from the people than the necessity of the case
requires. Their strength consists, mainly, in those imperfections of
the elective franchise, and powers of the law officers of the Crown,
to which I have alluded; and as those cannot well be defended in
argument, eloquence is of little use to them, and they seem to have no
great partiality for those who possess it. When they make an attack as
a body, in any other way than through the instrumentality of the law,
(which they can employ only when the waters of society are a little
troubled,) they do it snugly and covertly,--by letting people feel that
they have the dispensing of rewards; by standing between a candidate
and an office for which he is qualified, or by something of a similar
kind. I was told that, at one period, and that not a very remote one,
they would hit a man whose politics they did not like, through the
medium of his banker; but latterly, the will or the power, or at any
rate the practice of this, has been lessened, if not abolished.
At some periods, indeed, they have shown direct hostilities: they
have spoken and written with considerable loudness, and considerable
license; but the system, at least the local system, of which they
have undertaken the championship, has not furnished them with sound
principles or satisfactory arguments; and their mode of conducting
themselves has shown that they were deficient both in skill and in
tact. They have been exposed, certainly, and ashamed of themselves,
very possibly.
The Athenian Whigs are a mixed multitude, and though they all agree
in their opposition to the other party, they are by no means agreed
among themselves,--that is, as far as I could discover, they are not
all influenced by the same principles, or seeking the same object.
The party who are in office, have always among their opponents,
and frequently foremost amongst them, a party whose principles and
disposition differ not much from their own--namely, the party who wish
to get in. As, however, those longers for office cannot, like the
enjoyers of office, support themselves by their politics, they have
no principle of union, and therefore do not, like the others, unfurl
the ensigns, and raise the war-cry, as a party. Were they to do this,
it would not only defeat their own object, but cause them to be more
disliked by the independent part of the people, than the persons who
are in possession. Feeding, whether with pudding or with place, has a
tendency to smooth the turbulent passions; while hungering, whether
for food or for office, has an effect exactly the opposite. Hence,
even the Athenian placeman, whose appetite is most ravenous, and who
is prone to snarl at those whom he suspects of a desire to take his
portion from him, is the more civil from being in office, unless when
he thinks that his honours or emoluments are in danger. Upon this
principle, he is kind to those whom he thinks indifferent, and polite,
and occasionally generous, to all whom he imagines can strengthen his
influence, without turning round in the end, and attempting to share it
with him. Hence, also, the place-hunter, I mean him who hunts for it in
opposition to the present holder, is always irritable and jealous, and
keeps his wishes and his plans as much to himself as ever he can. Thus,
such of the Athenian Whigs as would be placemen to the very core, if
they had “good opportunities for the ’ork,” are careful to blend, and
lose if possible, their peculiar propensities, in the general mass of
those who, without any specific or immediate view to their own personal
interest, seek for a reform of what they conceive to be the political
abuses of their country.
In this way, all that is selfish among the Athenian Whigs can be kept
in the back-ground; and as the principles which they abet are much more
rational in themselves, much more agreeable to the general feelings
of mankind, and much better adapted for declamation, than those which
their opponents profess--when they venture to profess any thing, the
Whigs always have had, and always will continue to have, the best of
the argument, and the finest of the eloquence upon their side. But
though they be by far the most numerous, and the most specious, their
chances of success bear no proportion either to their numbers or
the apparent superiority of their cause. The opposite party have the
command of the public purse, and when the two parties strive, they are
thus enabled to throw the expense of both sides upon their antagonists.
Such are a few of the principles and practices of Athenian politics,--a
war of words, of which it would be no easy matter to define the object,
or calculate the end.
CHAPTER VI.
LAW OF THE ATHENS.
----“Lawyers have more sober sense
Than t’ argue at their own expense,
But make their best advantages
Of others’ quarrels, like the Swiss;
And out of foreign controversies,
By aiding both sides, fill their purses.”--BUTLER.
WHATEVER airs the Athens may give herself in other matters, however she
may boast of her taste and her elegance, talk of her science and her
literature, or cherish the mouldering skeleton of her medical school,
no one can be a day within her precincts without discovering that the
law is her Alpha and her Omega,--the food which she eats, the raiment
she puts on, the dwelling-house which she inhabits, the conversation in
which she engages, the soul which animates her whole frame, the mind
which is discovered in every feature of her countenance, and every
attitude of her body. Once destroy that, or remove it to another place,
and the pride of the Athens would be at an end: you might lodge owls
in all her palaces, and graze cattle in all her streets.
From the way in which the Scottish courts of law are regulated,
there is hardly a suit from the Solway Firth to the Pentland, or
from Peterhead to the remotest of the Hebudæ, which does not look
toward the Athens, the moment that the litigiousness of a client, or
the machinations of an attorney, call it into existence. I hinted
already, that there is no one thing in which the Athens can now retain
a superiority except the practice of Scotch law; and, as Scotland
increases in wealth, that law is so constructed, that the portion which
the scribes and spouters of the Athens shall be enabled to levy upon
their countrymen must always increase in a greater ratio. Scotchmen are
apt to be proud of the Athens,--to regard her with a portion at least
of that admiration which subjects pay to the pomp of their kings. There
is propriety in this; for there is scarcely a stone in the walls of the
Athenian palaces, or a decent coat in her streets, which has not been
squeezed out of some litigious or unfortunate man of the provinces,
in the shape of a lawyer’s fee. I noticed the power which the crown
lawyers of Scotland have over the liberties and lives of the people;
and the power which lawyers of another class have over the fortunes of
the Scotch lairds, is every jot as ruinous and humiliating. There are
complaints in England, that when once property gets into chancery, the
“infant” becomes grey before he can enjoy it; but the Scottish chancery
is incalculably worse; for the moment that a Scotch proprietor allows
his lands to pass into the keeping of an Edinburgh agent, from that
moment he must lay his account either with losing them altogether, or
purchasing them anew; and to enumerate the heirs of Scottish families,
who are at any time pining away in heart-broken obscurity, or toiling
under the burning suns of the East or the West, in the hope of winning
back a poor fragment of the ample heritage to which they were born,
would require no trifling succession of pages.
It cannot indeed be otherwise. According to the definition of the
political economists, law is not only unproductive labour in itself,
but wherever it clutches its talons, it tears away the funds by which
more valuable labour should be supported, and distracts and lacerates
the spirit by which those funds should be applied. When a Scotchman
from the country visits the Athens, and sees a long line of costly
buildings mounting up in the air, he may rest assured, that for
every shilling that those buildings cost, and every shilling that
shall be spent in them, he and his compatriots must pay. The Athens
herself,--the overtopping and overwhelming part of the Athens,--that
part which rises by the power, and extends itself by the weight, of the
law, produces nothing whatever. It is as sterile as the Castle rock;
and, were it not for the folly of other people, its ascendency would
not be so great as it makes the Athens feel. This, however, is a matter
for the Scotch themselves; and it sometimes happens, with nations as
well as with individuals, that a deformity or a vice is praised and
cherished, while beauties and virtues are treated with neglect.
It is matter of trite remark, that very few of the seed of Jacob have
ever taken up their abode in the Athens, and that the few who have
done so, have in a short time been starved to death or to removal;
and it has sometimes been wondered why a people, who have been so
successful in pillaging the other nations of Europe, should have failed
so completely in this instance. A very slight acquaintance with the
Athenian “men of business,” as they are called, will explain the fact,
and resolve the difficulty. The man of business has all the natural
rapacity and cunning of the Jew, and he is at the same time so well
conversant with every quirk and turn of the law, that there is no
possibility of calling him to account for his depredations.
Those hounds usually pursue their game in couples. There is one who
is called “the dining partner,” whose business it is to watch for
every inexperienced or expensive man of property, who happens to be
spending a few days in the Athens, get invited to the same party with
him, ply him with flattery, and when his weak side is once discovered,
inflame his vanity upon that. Toward the close of the party, when the
wine has circulated with that abundance and rapidity which are common
in such cases, the dining partner becomes large in his professions of
friendship. The victim swallows the bait with avidity; a meeting takes
place in the kennel of the hounds next morning; and a loan of a few
thousand pounds, being upon a first security, is negotiated in a manner
which is quite fair and equitable; but the men of the law, when they go
down to “take their infeftment” over the lands, contrive to suggest so
many improvements that the supply is speedily exhausted; and, as it has
created much more appetite than it has satisfied, another and a larger
supply becomes necessary. The terms of this are a little different:
money, which was in profusion upon the first occasion, is now difficult
to be had. More than the legal interest would invalidate the security;
but matters may be so managed, as to give a bond for payment of the
interest, and repayment of the principal of fifteen thousand pounds,
while ten thousand only is advanced. The gates of ruin are now fairly
opened; loan follows after loan, till the whole value of the lands be
mortgaged, and the whole rents consumed in interest; and when matters
have come to this situation, the men of business press a sale at a time
which they know to be disadvantageous, and thus get into their own
possession property, upon the improvement of which almost the whole
of the sums advanced by them have been expended,--are, in short, much
in the same situation as if they had got a present of the lands, and
only laid out a few thousand pounds for their improvement. It is not
the object of the men of business to retain a great deal of property
in land; so they divide the lands into lots, sell them at a handsome
profit, and retain the freehold qualifications, either to promote their
own political interest, or to part with them for large sums in the
event of a disputed election,--a matter which they are often known to
bring about for this very purpose. Such are some of the blessings which
the legal men of the Athens bestow upon their country, in return for
the fees with which it has previously fattened them.
But, notwithstanding many examples of this kind, there remains among
that part of the Athenian lawyers, who go by the name of “men of
business,” no small degree, both of talent and of integrity, while,
among the “men of profession,”--the advocates, or members of the Scotch
bar, there are a few, for the reasons that were formerly stated, the
very choicest spirits, not of the Athens merely, but of all Scotland.
Though the occasions upon which these persons display their eloquence
be merely of a private nature,--though a very large proportion of them
have no eloquence to display, or no opportunity for displaying it; yet
the profession of advocate is the only one in Scotland which makes
the professor of it a gentleman; and among the people of the Athens,
of all classes, the special pleaders before the Courts of Session and
Justiciary,--the supreme civil and criminal courts of Scotland, take
a deeper hold of the public mind in the Athens, and engross a greater
share of the public attention, than the orators of St. Stephen’s do in
the British Metropolis.
One reason of this may be the way in which the different courts are
blended together, and in which business is conducted. The Court of
Session is a court of equity, as well as a court of law; and this is
extremely favourable for the pleader, as the two characters blended
together in the same oration give it a rich and popular character,
which it can never have in the stiff formality of the English courts.
Great part of the pleadings, too, are written; and this not only keeps
the inferior speakers from lowering the general tone of the bar, but
enables the more celebrated to confine themselves to such general
arguments as are best calculated for oratorical display. Another thing:
criminal trials, which are ever the most interesting to the public,
are not managed by the fag-end of the law, as at the Old Bailey; and
the counsel for the prisoner is not limited to legal exceptions in the
course of the trial, cross-questionings of witnesses, and motions in
arrest of judgment and mitigation of punishment, after the jury have
returned their verdict, and are beyond the reach of his eloquence,
however touching or powerful. In the Scotch criminal court, whether in
the Athens or at the provincial assizes, the law itself takes care that
the prisoner, whatever be his crime, shall have the aid of counsel; and
if the crime be remarkable, either from its enormity or on account of
the character or rank of the party accused, then the very first counsel
at the bar are ranged on his side. These are allowed full scope,
both to attack the form of the case _in limine_, and to throw every
suspicion upon the evidence, and make every appeal to the judgments and
passions of the jury, that ingenuity can suggest, or eloquence apply.
The official men who have the conducting of the prosecution, are not
only, generally speaking, men of much smaller abilities than those who
have the conducting of the defence, but upon political grounds, as
well as from that general aversion which men have to the sanguinary
operations of the law, the feeling of the public is opposed to them,
and in favour of their antagonists.
There was nothing, indeed, with which I ever was better pleased, or in
which I felt Old England so much inferior to her northern neighbour,
as in the conducting of criminal trials. One who is in the habit of
looking in at that great suttling-house for the gallows, the Old
Bailey,--who sees the hurried manner in which the life of a man is,
perhaps justly enough, sworn away,--who listens to the few seconds of
advice, and the few trifling questions put by the counsel to whom the
poor culprit has given the last shilling that he could beg from his
weeping relations,--who marks the anxiety of the counsel till the case
shall come to that point at which he may coldly abandon his miserable
client--the very point at which an appeal to the jury might turn the
scale,--cannot but feel, when he witnesses the slow and pathetic
solemnity of the Scotch courts, that he is among pleaders of other
powers. A case which brings even Theisseger to the bar, is one of no
common importance, and one never by any chance finds the powers of
Brougham, or the acuteness of Scarlett, come in to save a poor man from
death. But when I was in the Athens, there was only one trial for a
capital crime, and yet the legal sagacity of Moncrieff, and the burning
eloquence of Jeffrey, were exerted for full two hours, on behalf of the
prisoner; and exerted, too, in such a manner as convinced me that the
fee must have been the very least part of their inducement. I never
heard objections put with so perfect a knowledge both of the general
principles of law, or the specialities of the particular case, or
evidence so scientifically dissected, as were done by the former; and
the appeal of Jeffrey to the feelings of the jury, and even to those
of the judges, was one of the finest things I ever heard. There are
many men far more learned in the law than this celebrated Scotchman;
and many who can take a far more sweeping and comprehensive view of
a subject; but all the little sallies of which his speech consisted,
were as sharp as needles and as shining as diamonds. Their brilliancy
made you open your bosom to receive them, and their keenness was such
that they would have pierced their way in spite of you. Their effect
upon the crowded spectators, and upon the jury, was tremendous; nor
was the lord justice clerk himself, who seemed not only a very proud
and consequential person in himself, but by no means a hearty admirer
of the barrister, able to resist the influence. Whenever Jeffrey tore
away a pillar of the evidence against his client, and clenched the
advantage by an appeal to those passions which he seemed to know so
well how to touch, there was a general hum of satisfaction in the
crowd; the jurors looked up with eyes of new hope, as much as to say,
“we shall be able to acquit him yet;” and the judge relaxed a little of
the lofty severity of his countenance.
Another cause why the people of the Athens, and of Scotland generally,
set so high a value upon the Athenian advocates, may be that they are
the only class of persons among whom public speaking is so much as
known. I do not mean to say that the Scotch have no talents for this
kind of display. Quite the reverse; for instead of taciturnity, which
their supposed cautious character would lead one to set down as their
leading propensity, they are the most loquacious people,--I mean the
longest-winded people that ever I met with; having, in their common
conversation, ten times as much _badinage_ and ornament as the English,
and ten times more concatenation of ideas than the Irish.
But they have no subject to excite public speaking, and no occasion
upon which to exercise it. Elections they have none, not even so much
as a parish-meeting, or a wardmote. The only persons among them that
have the privilege of electing even their own local managers, are “the
Trades,” or little corporations of artificers, in the royal burghs,
who annually choose “deacons;” but they usually do this more by the
eloquence of liquor than of words, and as the deacons are commonly a
sort of pack-horses to the burghal corporation, they fall into most of
the sensual and senseless vulgarity which are the characteristics of
it. Churches and hospitals supported by voluntary contribution, at the
annual festivals of which the contributors may make speeches, there
are none. Indeed, unless a Scotchman were to stand on a hill-side and
address the wind, or on the sea-shore and address the waves, he has no
scope for oratory; and thus, come from what part of the country he may,
the pleadings before the courts at the Athens, are quite a novelty to
him, and he runs after and admires them as such. Thus the total absence
of all eloquence throughout the country, makes a very small portion of
it obtain distinction in the Athens.
Curious as it is to find a city where every soul is so much absorbed
by the law, that men and women, girls and boys, of all ages and all
conditions of life, season their common speech with the slang of legal
phrases, and destructive of not only all literary and liberal taste,
but of all the joyous intercourse of life, as it is to hear every
night a rehearsal of Jeffrey’s sarcasm, or Cockburn’s joke of the
morning; yet the Parliament-house of the Athens is a spirit-stirring
scene, and very delightful, compared with the gloomy desolation of
Westminster-hall.
While the courts are sitting it is usually as crowded as the Royal
Exchange at four o’clock, and the hum, and bustle, and eagerness, are
vastly more interesting than the solemn faces and demure looks of
the dealers in tallow and tapioca, who stand under the shadow of the
Grasshopper, with their jaws distended like a trap for foxes, and their
hands up to their elbows in their pockets, as if they could not abstain
from fumbling money, even when the precise minute of bargain has not
arrived.
It is true that you meet with no Rothschild, or any other pawnbroker
for kings, in this ancient apartment of the Scottish Parliament; but,
if you be more a lover of mind than of money, you are sure to meet with
what will please you a great deal better. Before the Judges have taken
their places in the Inner Courts, you cannot miss the tall figure, the
gleesome grey eye, the snub nose, and all the other characteristics
of the spirit of the wizard and the soul of the man, that mark Sir
Walter Scott. A dozen of chosen friends, some Whig and some Tory, hang
about him; and, as he limps along with wonderful vigour, considering
the irregularity of his legs, peals of laughter ring at every word
which he utters, and a score of fledgling Tory barristers, who have
not yet got either a place or a brief, stretch out their goose necks,
huddle round, and cackle at the echo of that which they cannot possibly
hear. In another place, or rather in all places, the Editor of the
Edinburgh Review starts about like wildfire; and unless it be when an
attorney ever and anon brings him up with the sheet-anchor of a fee
and a brief, there is no possibility of arresting his motion. He darts
aside like lightning, runs over the brief with such rapidity that you
would think he were merely counting the pages of an article for the
Edinburgh Review, and having handed it to his clerk, who seems as heavy
as himself is agile, he again darts into the throng, like an otter into
the waters, and is seen no more till he bring up another gudgeon.
Wherever you meet with this highly-gifted personage, you are never
at a loss to distinguish him from every body else. His writings, his
speeches, and his face, have the most remarkable family likeness that
I ever met with. All the three seem cut into little faucettes and
angles, which glitter and sparkle in every possibility of light, both
direct and oblique. In the speech and the writing, rich as is the
play of genius on the surface, it bears no proportion to the mass of
intellect which it covers and dazzles; and keen, acute, and purged of
all grossness and obesity, as is the lower part of the face, it bears
no proportion to the expansion of forehead that towers above. Jeffrey
has the most wonderful pair of eyes that ever illuminated a human
visage. Even when he is shooting along like a small but swift meteor
through the crowd in the Parliament-House, they are beaming so as to
force you to turn away your eyes, and if he looks at you, you find
yourself utterly unable to withstand it. When that look is darting for
any important purpose, such as to ascertain whether a witness be or
be not speaking the truth, it is more searching than that of Garrow
even in his best days, so that the most hardened tremble before it,
and are instantly divested of all power of concealing the truth. If,
however, you attempt to repay Jeffrey in his own coin, by working into
his mind with that sharp and anatomical glance which he employs in
dissecting the minds of other people, you find that you are woefully
mistaken. Those eyes, which can penetrate to the bottom of any other
man’s heart, and expose even that part of it which he studies with the
greatest assiduity to conceal, are a perfect sealed book to you; you
cannot see beyond their external surface, and they give you not so much
as a hint of what the owner is thinking, or what he may be disposed to
say or do next. Wonderful as the eyes are, they are perhaps exceeded
by the eyebrows, and certainly two such intellectual batteries were
never alternately masked and displayed in a manner so singular. They
range over a greater extent of surface, and twist themselves into a
more endless variety of curves than is almost possible to conceive, and
while they do so, they express all manner of thoughts, and utter all
descriptions of sentences. Few men have more eloquence in their speech
than Jeffrey, and I have met with none who had half as much in his face.
Another character in this reeling crowd, which never fails to attract
the attention of a stranger, is that of Robert Forsyth. As far as one
man can be unlike another, he is the very antipodes of Jeffery. He is
large, square, and muscular, more intended by nature, you would think,
for breaking stones on the high road, than for breaking syllogisms
before their Lordships. His face is coarse, broad and flat, and as
immovable in all its muscles as though it had been chiselled out of a
block of granite. As he moves along, he turns his head neither to the
one side nor to the other; and indeed he does not require it, for his
eyes have that divergent squint which enables him at once to scan both
sides of the horizon. The lines of labour are so ploughed across and
across every part of his ample countenance, and they give it so knotted
and so corrugated an appearance, that you can easily perceive he has
followed more occupations, and been attached to more sides of politics
than one. Still there is by no means the quiescence of a mind at ease
upon the strong picture of his visage; the lower part of it is fixed in
something between a half laugh and a half grin, and the upper part has
a firmness about it which tells you he is a through-going lawyer, whom
it will not be easy to turn from his purpose.
The throng is so great, however, and the variety of faces, gowned and
ungowned, wigged and unwigged, beaming forth every shade of mind, and
betokening every degree of mental vacuity, is so perplexing, that your
eye and your imagination are completely bewildered, and you cannot
attend either to individuals or single groups, while the buz of voices
of so many different tones and pitches give your ears the impression of
a very Babel.
Business commences; the Lords Ordinary take their seats--in places
which make them look more like as if they were standing in the pillory
than any thing else. But even there, advocates are drudging in their
vocations; agents running backwards and forwards with briefs; clients
watching the result with palpitating hearts; and the Athenian loungers
hanging about, anticipating their Lordships in the decision of the
several cases. The well-employed advocates now put you very much
in mind of shuttle-cocks. They run from bar to bar, making motions
here and speeches there, in the most chaos-looking style that can be
imagined. Of the whole gown and wig mass, it is but a small portion,
however, who are thus occupied; four-fifths of the whole keep trudging
on from end to end of the hall, and seem never to expect or even to
get a fee; while the bar clerks collected round the fire-places keep
up a continual titter at the repetition of all the good jokes of the
day; and the same scene continues day after day, and month after month.
You are astonished that a place, the real business of which is so dull
and so dry, should have charms for so many idle people; but except
this Parliament-house there is not another in-door lounge in the whole
Athens; and as the business of the courts forms the chief topic of
the evening’s conversation, many attend for the purpose of qualifying
themselves for displays upon a very different arena. It is long before
a stranger can bring himself to relish this first and most favourite
of all Athenian pleasures. I, for one, got tired of it in two or three
days, and began to be of opinion that, however much this fondness for
legal proceedings may sharpen the wits of the Athenian idlers, it is
but a sorry treat for those who have no wish either to get rich by the
acting, or wise by the suffering of the law.
When the business of the day is over, you can perceive the veteran
barristers taking council together as to where they may be joyous for
the night; and the younger legal men of all descriptions hurrying off
toward Princes Street, in order that they may show themselves to the
Athenian fair, before they retreat to drown the daily badgerings in the
nightly bowl.
CHAPTER VII.
LEARNING OF THE ATHENS.
----“As a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet,
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
His own weight brings him down again,
And still he’s in the self-same place,
Where, at his setting out, he was;
So, in the circle of the arts,
Do they advance their nat’ral parts,
Till falling back still, for retreat,
They fall to juggle, cant, and cheat.”
IF, in her metropolitan status as the seat of Caledonian law, the
Athens be fixed as the dog-star, as the seat of Caledonian learning,
she has been and must be, changeful as the moon. If the wealth of her
lawyers “swells like the Solway,” the renown of her philosophers “ebbs
like its tide.” The very same cause which raises the one,--which makes
all hearts envy, all eyes admire, all knees worship, and all tongues
speak the Babylonish dialect of special pleaders, comes cold and
curdling as December’s ice over every thing else; and though there
may be an occasional spring of the living water of the mind, which
has its source too deep, or its current too thoroughly imbued with
the immortal fire, for submitting to the cold congelation; yet such
glorious instances must be few and far between. Even in the law itself,
there may be green branches, just as there are green branches on the
Upas; but, like the Upas, the law, or indeed any thing else which is
so overpowering in its influence as the law is in the Athens, must in
itself monopolize all the greenness, and etiolate and wither every
thing that attempts to grow under its broad and gloomy shade. Whatever
promises the chief reward will, under any circumstances, always attract
the chief talent; and the state of the whole British dominions, and of
the Athens not less than any other portion of them, is at present such
as not to be exceedingly favourable to the pursuits of abstract and
recondite philosophy. Luxury has found out for all those who have money
to spend without working for it,--whether they have it as a legitimate
heritage from their natural parents, or as the adopted children of that
great nursery-mother of idlers, the state, abundant employment,--full
occupation from every hour that they can snatch from the pangs of
intemperance and the pillow of sleep, not only without profound
philosophy, but without thought of any description that reaches
beyond the enjoyment of the moment; and the number of these persons,
especially the latter division of them, is so very considerable, that,
of the remaining independent portion of the British people, none can
afford to be philosophic or learned upon any other terms than those
of being paid for it,--taking it up, and following it as a trade,
as much as other men do the boring of cannon, or the building of
bridges. That this is unquestionably true of the whole country, may
be established from the philosophical publications, whether regular
or periodical, which make their appearance at the present day. Of the
regular class, there has not, so far as I know, been published, within
the last thirty years, in any part of the British dominions, a single
original work, that will transmit the name of its author to posterity.
There have indeed been books, and books in which there have been the
details of new experiments, and occasionally scraps of theories; but,
like successive days in the kalendar, the one has usurped the place
and extinguished the remembrance of the other; and, at the present
moment, the most unmarketable article which an author could carry to a
bookseller would be a profound treatise on any of the sciences. With
regard to periodical learning again, (I use the word “learning” as
distinguished from and even opposed to literature,) the case is very
nearly the same. The philosophical journals, of all the periodicals,
have the most limited circulation, are the least read, and the least
worth the reading,--just because the proprietors of them cannot afford
to pay for the labour which it would require to make them better.
Now, if this be the case with the British dominions generally, and with
the British metropolis, where every species of talent has the means of
being stimulated to the greatest exertion, and where every exertion
meets with the most ample reward, much more must it be the case in
the Athens, where there is not only no adequate remuneration for the
labours of learning, but where there is a more honoured and rewarded
pursuit, constantly soliciting the choice, not only of the Athenian,
but of the Scottish talent generally, away from it. It cannot be
hoped, that when a man of very ordinary talents can get a comfortable
living and honourable distinction in society, by managing the estates
of Scotch lairds, or the causes of Scotch litigants, men of superior
ability will consent to starve in obscurity for the love of learning
or of science. Mankind have become to the full as mercenary in their
intellectual as in their civil marriages; and the Athenian muses, like
the Athenian maidens, pine in unwooed neglect, because they have no
dowry.
The Athenian University was long the boast of the Athens, not only as a
school of philosophy, and a school of medicine, but as a general school
of learning; and, with the exception, perhaps, of the latter, the
titles were, in the case of a few illustrious men, well earned. Those
times have, however, gone by, and the Athenian university, pressed
down by the general circumstances of the Athens, and yet more by the
peculiar circumstances of its own patronage, has sunk to rise no more.
Universities, indeed, have much of the general character of
stars,--they shine brightest when all else is dark, and fade, if
they do not disappear, when illumination becomes general. While the
people, generally speaking, are ignorant, they are lights in the path
of learning; but when the people become generally well informed, they
are not much better than lumber. This would be their fate in general
illumination, under any circumstances; but it is peculiarly so, in the
circumstances under which--or rather, in spite of which, knowledge is
at present spreading over the British dominions. The same cause which
renders abstract studies unprofitable, must render the systems of
universities unpopular, except in so far as the name of being there is
necessary for professional purposes; and where the name is all that men
actually need, they will not burden themselves with much of the thing
named. If it were not that there are such things as fellowships, fat
dinners, facilities for juvenile dissipation, church and other livings,
a key to certain offices, and a general nominal eclât, which in so far
serves as a substitute for real information, it is very possible that
several halls in Oxford and Cambridge would be abandoned to bats and
spiders,--that “the two eyes of England” would be left “for daws to
peck at;” and it was pretty plain to me, from the general tenour of the
Athenian feeling, as expressed in the Athenian speech, that, if the
attendance of certain classes of her university were not required for
those who plaster the consciences of Caledonian sinners, and who bring
down the tone of the Caledonian pulse, or the Caledonian purse, her
learned Thebans would be allowed to deliver their prelections to the
stones in the wall, and the beam of the timber. In as far, therefore,
as I could see and reason from circumstances, there is much, both in
the feeling of the people in the Athens, and in the causes by which
that feeling is produced, to render the decline of learning certain
on the one hand, while there is little or nothing of a counteracting
tendency on the other.
In addition to this, in as far as the university is concerned, there
is the infliction of perhaps the very worst patronage that could be
devised or even imagined. I have noticed already, what a precious
piece of work the corporations, or, as they are termed, “the councils”
of the royal burghs are in Scotland. In itself, there is nothing to
render that of the Athens better than any of the others; and, in close
juxtaposition with it, there is something which tends to make it worse.
The whole town-councils in Scotland are, their attention to their own
personal interests excepted, ignorant, unreasoning, and passive tools
in the hands of the ruling faction. If the actual leaders of that
faction have not their actual residence in the Athens, it is there that
they find the hands which do their work. Those hands belong to men, who
not only have a better education than the Athenian magistrates, but who
perform more important functions, and perform them in the face, and for
the weal or the woe of the whole of Scotland. To them, therefore, the
magistrates of the Athens are inferior; and this circumstance, taken in
conjunction with the inferiority which the whole system of the Scotch
burghs tends to stamp upon the magistrates, renders the said civic
rulers of the Athens the most unfit patrons of a school of philosophy,
or indeed of any thing learned or liberal, that human imagination
could devise. Not only this; but the superior talents, at least the
superior pretensions, of the other functionaries alluded to, will throw
the civic worthies into their train as followers; and thus, whatever
patronage they exercise, will have to sustain, in addition to their
own sheer dulness, the dead deadening weight of the party politics of
the country,--a combination of stupidity and slavery, under which that
system were either greater or less than human, which could flourish in
a rational and liberal manner.
When it is known that the provost, bailies, counsellors, and deacons
of the Athens,--seldom men of any education, and never men of any
genius,--_cum avisamento eorum ministrorum_, (which, being interpreted,
signifies “without benefit of clergy,”) have the sole power of electing
the greater number of professors in the Athenian university,--when it
is considered that the remaining ones are nominated by the crown, in
other words, by the leading faction in Scotland for the time,--and
when it is borne in mind that the said provosts, bailies, counsellors,
and deacons, are little else than a pair of bagpipes, upon which the
said faction discourses whatsoever music it chooses,--it will become
but too apparent, that the chances of having the professors’ chairs
filled by the very fittest men possible are about as small as can well
be estimated. That ignorant men should have the power of appointing
professors of learning is in itself a very great absurdity; and that
the ignorant men to whom such a power is delegated, should themselves
be tacked to the tail of a political faction for the purpose of
retaining places, contrary both to reason and their own abilities,
makes the matter, theoretically considered, a great deal worse. I have
no wish to accuse the civic archons of the Athens of wilful abuse in
the exercise of this patronage; but I have seen them, I have heard
them speak, and I have noticed the estimation in which they are held;
and, by a very charitable induction from all these circumstances, I
cannot help coming to the conclusion, that they are totally incapable,
of their own knowledge, of determining who is, or who is not, a fit
person for being porter to the Athenian college, far less professor of
the humblest art or science held forth upon within its walls, not even
excepting the professor of agriculture, or, as he is aptly termed, “the
doctor of dunghills.”
Accordingly, though in times past, and not very long past, there have
been found, in sundry chairs of the Athenian university, men who
would have done honour to any college in any country, I looked for a
continuation of men of the same talents and eminence; but though I
looked for them, I found them not. The time has not long gone by, when
the principal of that university was numbered, if not with the most
learned and profound, at least with the most elegant of historians;
but I should be glad to be informed of what person, or thing, or
circumstance, the being that I found holding the supreme sway in
the Athenian university, and in its metropolitan name, presenting
himself before the King, as a specimen and representative of all the
universities of Scotland, could write the history. It is true, that
the office of this person is not much else than a sinecure, as he
seldom comes before the public, except when his name stands rubric to
a diploma; but, if an image is found with a wooden head, people are
apt to turn away, without any very much examination of the limbs. It
is said, more wittily than wisely perhaps, among the fledglings at the
seats of science in the south, that “whatever may be the walls, the
heads of houses are most commonly of lead;” and the saying might be
carried to the Athens, if it were worth the trouble. I was told that,
if at some former point of Athenian history, this personage had not
been a bachelor, and the daughter of a quondam provost of the Athens
a damsel to be wooed, the college of the Athens might have gone all
unprincipaled for him; but the Athenians are so prone to drill holes in
the glory of each other, that one never knows how much of their story
to believe.
Still, if the nomination of the masters of Eton and Winchester, and the
doctors of Isis and Cam, were deputed to the corporation of London,
England would tremble for her learned fame; and yet no one can deny
that the court of aldermen, notwithstanding the mental and corporeal
obesity of which they are accused, are far more promising patrons for
such purposes, than the town-council of the Athens. Their own election
depends upon a greater number of persons, and before they can carry it,
they must have some superiority over the freemen of their ward,--the
means of flattering and bribing them, if nothing else; but, in the
Athens, there is not the smallest test of talent previous to a man’s
being chosen an elector of professors; and, therefore, no pledge that
he either will or can exercise that function in a proper manner.
The “_avisamentum eorum ministrorum_” has no tendency to amend the
matter; for the advice which these worthies are most likely to give,
is, that themselves are the fittest of all possible professors,--a
proposition, of which the theoretical doubts are great, and they are
not lessened by experience.
The ministers of the Edinburgh kirks, appointed by the same persons
as the professors, may be presumed to be appointed upon the same
principles; and thus, though they were conjoined with the others,
in the university nominations, it would be but an increase of the
evil,--the addition of the political son to that of the political
father; or, as Professor Leslie would express it, “a combination of
direct and retroflected dulness.”
In consequence of these circumstances, the _eorum ministrorum_ have
usurped every professor’s chair in the Athenian college which can be
by any sophistry twisted into a compatibility with the functions of
a minister of the Kirk. After the very Reverend personage who, as
aforesaid, groans under the load of the principality (not of Wales),
the chairs, not only of divinity, church history, and Hebrew, but of
logic and rhetoric, and the belles lettres, are in the hands of the
Athenian priests. Now, though a parson _in esse_ be the most likely
person to teach divinity and church history, because those who are
parsons _in posse_ are the only persons that are likely to dip deeply
into such studies; though, in a country where Jews do not thrive, it
be a matter of no great moment who shall teach Hebrew, and though
logic and rhetoric, as they are usually taught, be no weighty matters,
yet there are substantial reasons why no officiating clergyman in the
Athens should hold any chair whatever in the college.
In the first place, the Kirk of Scotland, at least according to her
book of discipline, recognises no clergyman who does not perform the
whole of his duties in his own person. She will have no “dumb dogs who
cannot bark,” and if they bark to the extent that she points out, they
will have no strength left even to hunt syllogisms in _Bar-ba-ra_,
or to nozzle up Hebrew roots. The minister of the Kirk is, by its
constitution, presumed not only to reside in his parish, and perform
divine service every Sunday, but to devote the whole of the week, that
is, as much of _every_ day of it, as other men of a similar rank in
life are supposed to devote to business, to visiting his people at
their houses, and receiving their visits at his own, instructing and
catechising the young, recommending the destitute to the charity of
the Kirk Session, praying by the bed-side of the dying, and performing
a number of other little offices of religion and charity, which
are supposed to be imperiously binding upon him in virtue of his
solemn vow of ordination. Ministers of the Kirk are furthermore not
understood to purchase their annual stock of “_Conciones Selectæ_” in
the booksellers’ shop, as is the case in some other places; and thus
every spare hour from the parochial duties of the week is presumed to
be taken up in preparing for the pulpit duties of the Sunday. Hence
a minister of the Scottish Kirk, who is in the possession of a cure,
cannot, in conscientious accordance with the oath that he takes when he
is inducted, or with the practical duties which he ought to perform,
accept of a professorship even of divinity or Hebrew. Either the
church-living should be such as to occupy by its duties and reward by
its emoluments, the whole of the incumbent’s time, or it should be so
altered as to bring it to this state.
With regard to the professorships, again, it is extremely doubtful
whether even such of them as divinity and church history can be
profitably placed in the hands of the parsons; at any rate, one would
very naturally think that the duties of a professor’s chair should
be sufficiently arduous for occupying the whole of a mind as large
as that which falls to the ordinary run of clerical persons; while,
in the case of those of logic and rhetoric, the arts required in the
Parliament-House, the grand theatre of logical wrangling and rhetorical
display, not only in the Athens, but for all Scotland, the clumsy
concatenation and leaden style which I heard, even in the Athenian
pulpits, are strong presumptive evidence against the propriety of
having them intrusted to clerical hands.
But it is not to those professorships alone that _eorum ministrorum_
aspire. Not many years have gone by since the whole Athens was
thrown into confusion, because one of the brethren was not permitted
to squelch his carcass into the chair of mathematics, and become
the successor of MacLaurin, and Stewart, and Playfair; and had he
succeeded, the Athenians would perhaps ere now have had a clerical
expounder of “Dirlton’s Doubts” in the chair of law, and a holder
forth in the Tron Kirk wielding the anatomical scalpel during the
week. The objections taken to the better-qualified candidate upon that
occasion, were such as to throw considerable light upon the feeling of
_eorum ministrorum_ toward the university, and to enable one to form a
pretty accurate guess at what will be its state if their unquenchable
longing for it shall ever be fully satisfied. The exception which they
took was a grave charge of infidelity, founded upon an allusion to
David Hume, contained in a note to a purely philosophic book, and a
book, too, which, both from its subject and its style, was never likely
to get into general circulation, and would be read by nobody, merely on
account of the note--the only part which was impugned as being contrary
to the canons of orthodoxy.
It must be allowed that, if its patronage were at all in decent hands,
the constitution of the Athenian university is not bad. The salaries
of the professors are all so small that if the livings are worth the
acceptance of men of talent, they must be chiefly made up of the small
annual fees payable by the students. This is a very wholesome plan, and
tends more to reward every one according to his real merits than that
which obtains at most other places. The patronage, however, with the
three elements of civil ignorance, political influence, and clerical
intrigue, arranged against the single and undefined good of the
institution, is more than enough to paralyze all the good which that
principle, properly supported, or even let alone, would be capable of
effecting.
Those evils have begun to pervade the whole system. As the Athens
is the grand seat of lawyers, there will always be students for the
law classes, increasing with the increase that there is for lawyers;
but in every thing else the poison of decay has been infused, and
the decay itself has become visible. With the exception of Leslie,
who has written some very flaming articles in the Edinburgh Review,
and some books in which the path to geometry is made a little more
thorny than ever; of Jamieson, who has been most learned on slate and
granite; and Wilson, who has indited some pretty lake poetry, and
some pitiful political prose, of which he is said to be now highly
ashamed,--I did not hear that any of the Athenian professors have put
in a single claim for immortality. Even in her anatomical school, that
upon which she rested her fame the longest and the most securely, the
recent falling off has been great; and of all those who now shine in
the lists of her _senatus_ there is none able to hold the book for
Gregory, or the scalpel for old Monro, or light the furnace for Black.
I understand that for the fragments of her medical school that remain,
the Athens is almost wholly dependant upon private lecturers; that
the students pay their fees and enter their names at the college, not
with any view of attending the classes there, but because the fees
and entries are necessary for the ceremony of graduation. But for the
celebrity of her professors, the Athens possesses no advantages as
the locality of a medical school. From the nature and pursuits of the
Athenian society, there is neither that variety of patients, nor that
variety of cases, which is found in cities even of equal population,
where a large portion of the people are engaged in manufactures. That
it is as good in this respect as Glasgow begins to be doubted, as a
considerable number of medical students now attend the Glasgow college
in preference; and that it is any way comparable to London, as a school
of surgery, no one can suppose. If the medical glory of the Athenian
college continue to decrease as it has done for some time, that college
will soon become, like the Athens herself, a pensionary upon the law
and the politics of Scotland.
But if there be those causes of mortality in the college, there is
not much hope of life in any of the other philosophic institutions of
the Athens. Royal societies are no where much better than coteries
of old wives; and, judging from their recent pursuits, that of the
Athens can form no exception to the general character. That a poet
and novelist should be the president of such an institution, is proof
that the number of Athenian philosophers cannot be great; and however
successful and deserving of success such a person may be in his other
and lighter capacity, he is not the most likely man to give soundness
and solidity to the speculations of philosophers. The fact is, that
with the exception of the teacher of a class, and the editor of an
Encyclopedia, (who are of course but very heavy and humdrum persons,)
and a wisdom-struck squire or two, who take to the amusement of the
small philosophy of mosses and muscle-shells rather than the small
carpentry of snuff-boxes and fiddles, and who would be quite eclipsed
in any other place, there is nothing in the Athens which can be called
an amateur philosopher, and of the professional ones I have already
spoken.
In their philosophical opinions, the Athenians are an absolute
pendulum; and when the history of their swingings this way and that
way is looked at, they seem to be a pendulum which has no continued
stimulus of motion, but of which the oscillations, though not fewer in
number, gradually become more and more insignificant in range. While
David Hume was lord of the ascendant, the Athenians doubted every thing
but their own wisdom and importance; under Adam Smith, they considered
“moral sentiments” as being valuable only in “theory,” and learned
“economy” in their “politics,” by bringing all their disposable votes
and vices to the best market. Under Robertson, they knew all history;
and with Blair, every sentence was taken from the storehouse of the
Belles Lettres, and measured by the gauge of Rhetoric. When Reid and
Dugald Stewart turned the tables upon the sceptics, the Athenians were
entirely composed of intellectual or of active powers, and they were
drawn and held by the sweetest cords of association. With Playfair,
they attempted to go quietly to the very depth of philosophic systems;
and anon, they started to the moon with Dr. Brewster. While Leslie was
new, they burned and sweated with him in all the ardour of radiant
caloric; and now they lie upon mossy banks, prepared for them by
Brewster, Jamieson, and Sir George, and listen to the tales of Sir
Walter, or to the ghost stories of Dr. Hibbert. Thus have opinions
changed, and importances have faded away; but the Athenians have in
their nature remained the same. So change the phases of the moon, now
beamy, anon blank; now pushing her horns eastward, now westward,--but
still the same dark globe, without light save that which it has at
second-hand from another.
CHAPTER VIII.
LITERATURE OF THE ATHENS.
_Pol._ What do you read, my lord?
_Ham._ Words, words, words!
_Pol._ What is the matter, my lord?
_Ham._ Between who?
_Pol._ I mean the matter that you read, my lord.
_Ham._ Slanders, Sir.
SHAKSPEARE.
IF there be nothing by which the Athens really profits so much as her
law, there is nothing of which she is so ready, or so willing to boast,
as her literature. That is, as it were, her Benjamin--her youngest-born
child--the darling of her dotage, so to speak; and it is loved and
lauded in proportion to the lateness of its appearance.
In the whole literature of Scotland there is, indeed, a wonderful
hiatus,--an interruption, for which it would be impossible to account,
if one were not to look at her political and religious history.
Previous to the Reformation, the bards of Scotland sung as sweetly,
and her monks were as full and fabulous in their chronicles as those
of any other part of the world; and that dawn of intellect--that
day-spring of the mind, shone as warmly and as well upon the bleak
hills of Caledonia, as upon the green pastures of more fertile lands.
The classical elegance, and the keen and searching satire of Buchannan,
the stern and stubborn eloquence of Knox, and the polished but manly
sentences of Melville, will bear a comparison with any thing that
appeared contemporaneously in other countries: but after them, there
comes a dreary and desolate blank; and while other nations are rapidly
running the career of knowledge, adding book to book, and illustrious
name to illustrious name, Scotland appears not in the catalogue, except
in a manner which is even more melancholy than if she appeared not at
all. How is this to be accounted for? In theory it would be impossible:
with the facts before one, it becomes the easiest thing in the world.
No sooner had the morning of the Reformation shone upon Scotland, than
her horizon was obscured by the clouds of civil war; and scarcely
were her men prepared for taking up the pen for the information and
amusement of their fellows, when they were obliged to draw the sword
for their defence; and that energy which in happier times would have
trimmed the lamp of science, and tuned the harp of song, was obliged
to struggle night and day, if so be that it could preserve but a spark
of liberty, or even keep the life. That despotism and debauchery, which
Mary the Regent and Mary the Queen attempted, through their French
connexions, and by means of their French mercenaries, to introduce
into Scotland, was of itself sufficient to render the intellectual
improvement of the country stationary for an age; and though the
resistance with which it met tended not only to preserve but to
strengthen the free spirit of the people, it forbade the cultivation of
the arts of peace. The conduct of James, all shuffling and pedantic as
it was, did not, while he remained in Scotland, tend to make matters
improve; and upon his removal to England, Scotland may be said to
have been given up to that delegated despotism of influence, which,
under various forms and names, has continued to afflict her to the
present day, and must so continue till an uniformity of civil and
political law be established over the whole island. From the beginning
of the troubles under Charles, to the Revolution in 1688, the state
of Scotland was such as to leave literature entirely out of the
question. The great body of the people--at least of that part of them
who otherwise might have studied, or rewarded the study of literature,
were not only driven from all places congenial for literary purposes,
but even from the fastnesses of the mountains, and the caves of the
rocks; and though a Scotchman was occasionally returning from foreign
parts to let his countrymen know what the rest of the world were doing,
terror and oppression were too general for promoting any imitation.
At that time, too, one half the extent of Scotland was in a state of
the most abject ignorance: the feudal law, in the Highlands, was in
full exercise; and when all the chiefs could not read, it was not to
be expected that there would be much taste for literature among their
vassals. Thus, it was not till the termination of the second rebellion
in favour of the Stuarts, in 1745, that the people of Scotland
generally began to have a literary taste. A sure foundation for such a
taste had, indeed, been previously laid, in the provision that within
every parish in Scotland there should not only be a school, but a
school so regulated as that the poorest, as well as the most opulent,
might reap the benefit of it; but up to this period, and indeed for
some time after, the literature of those schools was confined to the
catechisms of the church and the reading of the Bible; and if any
literary work found its way into a Scotch farm-house or cottage, if
large, it was a treatise on mystic or polemical divinity, and if small,
it was a legendary ballad, or a sermon by some pious divine, whose
style was not the most classical, or his language the most easily
understood.
It is not, indeed, fifty years since there was any thing like a regular
bookseller, or a printing-press employed for literary purposes, in
the Athens. Before that time, there were persons who sold Bibles, and
catechisms, and ballads, and penny almanacks, in divers nooks about
Libberton Wynd and the Lucken Booths; and there were printers who,
when a process before the Court of Session became too voluminous, or
when the parties could not afford to pay for as many written copies as
were necessary, put the eloquence of the advocates, and the wisdom of
the judges, into types. An occasional parson, too, would become so far
enamoured of his own powers of holding forth, as to have a sermon, or
homily, upon some question of the catechism, or point of the confession
of faith, printed and published; but previous to the year 1780, it was
very rare indeed to find an Athenian bibliopole speculating in any
literary work, the price of which was to be more than sixpence; and as
for paying a man for literary labour, the Athenians would as soon have
thought of paying a Lapland witch for procuring foul weather.
With regard to the literature of the Athens, it is worthy of remark
that the time of George the Third corresponded with that of Anne in
England; and that when the style of writing south of the Tweed was
changing to another, if not to a better model, the wits of the Athens
were imitating the Tatlers and Spectators.
The era of the French revolution was a remarkable one in the
literature, if not particularly of the Athens, at least of the rest of
Scotland; and the reading of the pamphlets of that time, which probably
the people would have been as well without, led to the establishment of
subscription libraries throughout the country, and made those readers,
and in some measure critics, in general literature, whose whole course
of study had previously been theological. But until very recently, the
periodical literature of the Athens was hardly deserving the name. The
Athenian newspapers were always dull and spiritless, and while the
politics of the Athens remain what they are, there is no chance that
they shall become better. In the provincial parts of Scotland, I met
with several journals written with great taste, spirit, and liberality;
but in the Athens, there is only one worth naming,--the “Scotsman;” and
that, whether through fear of the party or from what other cause, I
know not, I found not to be such as I would have expected. I found it a
sensible production, certainly, and as much superior to the others as
can well be imagined; but it is by no means what would be expected from
people pretending to so much intellect, and freedom, as the party by
whom it was supported.
If the “Scotsman” had appeared in London, it would not have produced
almost any sensation. It would have been allowed to take its place
far down in the list of weekly journals; but in the Athens, I was
told that it excited no small degree of alarm among the official men.
Just about that time, a blow had been given to that bank influence by
which they had been in the habit of crushing every opponent to their
measures, whom they could not get indicted and brought to trial; and
this, together with the strong and general feeling against them that
was at that time spread over the country, and the appearance of a free
journal, even at the very seat of their power, which dared not merely
to dispute their principles, but even to expose their practice, was
enough to alarm those who were not accustomed to any opposition, and
whose hands were understood to be not over and above clean. When the
early numbers of the “Scotsman” were distributed over the city, spies
were appointed to dog the messengers, and take a note of those at whose
houses copies were delivered; and it was generally believed that the
lists were transcribed for the edification both of the crown lawyers
and of the Athenian magistrates.
But the greatest and most extraordinary step that ever was taken in
the periodical literature of the Athens, or indeed of any country, was
the appearance of the Edinburgh Review,--a work, the boldness, spirit,
and originality of which were at the time altogether unprecedented,
and which never yet have been, and probably never will be, equalled.
The Edinburgh Review was happy both in the time and the manner of its
appearance. Periodical literature had been quite stagnant in the Athens
from the time of the Loungers and Mirrors; and they had become too
trifling for the awakened and agitated spirit of the age. In London
there were some reviews, but the best of them were in the hands of
religious sectaries, who puzzled themselves and plagued their readers
with questions which nobody could solve, and nobody would have taken
the trouble to solve, even if they could. The whole of them were either
tame or timid; and folks continued to buy them rather with a view of
keeping their sets unbroken till chance should introduce amendment,
than from any desire to read them. The war which had just terminated
had been expensive, and excepting those for whom offices had been
obtained, there was nobody with whom it had ever been popular; and
the war that was beginning, or begun, had not much to recommend it.
There was, indeed, much to say against the conduct of the Continental
courts, and even against that of the English administration; people
were well prepared and anxious to hear it; and there was no publication
of the day of sufficient interest in any way to divide or divert the
attention. The Review came like thunder; and to give it the more
effect, it came like thunder when the air is still, and when men are
listening.
Great, however, as was the talent displayed in the Review, and wide and
wonderful as was the sensation which it produced upon its very first
appearance, the Athens had little merit in it, except the mere name.
The publisher, though he subsequently rose as high in that trade as
any English publisher of the time, was then but a young man, not much
known, and not much recognised or esteemed by the Athenians; the editor
was also a young man, recently returned from England; and the most
spirited contributors to the very early numbers, had by no means had
their minds formed upon the Athenian model. The effect which the Review
produced was also not perhaps so great in the Athens as in London;
and it was only when it had taken its place in the literary world,
and the acknowledgment of it was an honour, that the Athenians began
to identify it with themselves, and at no time was the identification
general,--nor could the whole talent of the Athens, even when in its
best days, have supported the Review for a single year.
Besides, though the real ability of the Edinburgh Review was great,
the vast popularity which it so speedily obtained, and the brilliant
course which it ran, were unquestionably more owing to the novelty of
its plan, and the fact of its advocating those political principles
which were agreeable to the majority of people at the time, than to its
merits.
One cause of the rise of the Edinburgh Review, and perhaps also one
cause of its comparative fall, is the uniformity with which it has
all along followed the Whig party. Before that party got into office,
and when, in consequence of their boldness and lofty pretensions as
oppositionists, the opinions of the Edinburgh Review,--at least, its
political opinions,--which were all along the ones upon which the
greater part of its celebrity rested,--were by many received as the
infallible oracles of truth; and when the trial which the country had
had of that party shook them a little in public estimation, though
the Review received a shock along with them, it still retained a
considerable portion of its influence. But, as the opinions of men
became a little more liberal, and the frequency of disappointment
made them more and more suspicious of all parties, some Jesuitical
articles in the Review, on the subjects of representation and reform,
shook the confidence of the people in it; while, much about the same
time, or, at least, not long afterwards, the failure of its prophecies
with regard to the ultimate success of Buonaparte, laid it open to
the attacks of the Tories. For the first of these suspicions, there
appeared to be but too much foundation; and though the latter was more
Jesuitical than just, still it was the interest of the parties to press
it to extremity. When the Edinburgh Review predicted the ultimate
triumph of Napoleon, it did not, of course, anticipate, that he would,
with the example of Charles XII. before him, undertake so hazardous
an enterprise as a winter campaign into the interior of Russia; but
the Review did not enter a caveat against such an excursion; and,
therefore, it was held as prophesying in the face of this as well as of
all the other chances.
I have noticed those circumstances with a view of showing, not only
that the absolute literary merits of the Edinburgh Review were not the
sole cause of its popularity, but that even though they had, the merit
does not in whole, or even in the greater part, belong to the Athens.
The Athens never could, of her own will, ability, and patronage,
support a single literary man; and it could not well be expected that
she could, for any length of time, support a literary work.
The first of these positions may be established by a reference to the
history of the whole literary men of the Athens, as well as to the
state which they are in at the present time; and the second, besides
being a necessary and legitimate deduction from the first, may be
confirmed by an appeal to the facts.
Allan Ramsay was the first Athenian writer, after the hiatus of which
I have spoken; and Allan addressed himself as much to the taste
and foibles of the Athens as it was possible for one of so limited
education and limited powers to do. Allan made a comfortable living;
but he did not make that as a poet; he did it, first, as a hairdresser,
and then as a bookseller, and as the keeper of a circulating library,
which, being the first of the kind in the Athens, proved a most
fortunate speculation. The works of Colin Maclaurin, and some of the
other illustrious men, of which the Athens never was worthy, were put
into circulation as much in the way of charity to their families,
as from any love for those sciences and arts of which they were the
ornaments.
Robert Ferguson was pre-eminently the poet of the Athens. Born within
her walls, he devoted his muse to the chanting of her praises; and how
did she reward her tuneful son? Why, she blamed him because he wrote
verses rather than law papers; she liked his songs, and she sung them;
but she would give him no reward for his labour; and poor Ferguson,
neglected, heart-broken, and starved, ended his days in a mad-house;
and his ungrateful step-dame, the Athens,--that city, which, if one
would be silly enough to believe her, is the model, the encourager,
and the rewarder, of all taste, would not do for him, what England,
even in her worst and most worthless times, did for the poets whom
she starved,--she would not give him a monument,--no, not so much as
an unhewn stone, to let it be known that one grave in the Canon-gate
church-yard contained holier dust than that of a baron bailie.
Even when the immortal Burns came, to shame a selfish,
undiscriminating, and ungrateful land, the Athens made not the
slightest attempt to wash out the foul stain which she had given
herself in the case of Ferguson. Burns put her in mind of that stain,
not only by the erection of the little tomb-stone over his unfortunate
brother; but in a monument more durable,--a poem, which, had there
been any soul within the cold ribs of the Athens, would have harrowed
it with remorse, that might have been a stimulus to repentance. But
the Athens took it all with that sang-froid which is the concomitant
and the characteristic of reckless and self-sufficient dulness; and
no where in the whole history of literature, is there an instance of
neglect more mean, and ingratitude more disgraceful, than that of the
Athens, for Robert Burns. She lured him, by fair promises, within her
siren and seductive walls. Day after day, and week after week, she
dipt him deeper in that dissipation, of which she knows better how to
set the example than any city between Kent and Caithness. She showed
him about, from tavern to tavern, from one evening party to another,
and through every one of her hundred scenes and sinks of vice; and
this precious work she continued, till the prospects which he had left
behind were blasted, and his own powers and habits spoiled; and the
moment she had done this, she had the baseness, not only to drive him
helpless back upon the world, but to slander his name for practices
which none but herself had taught him.
In a word, when I look at the literary men, whom evil stars have
confined to the Athens, or, in any way made to look to her for
patronage, I find a few who have succeeded, because it has not been in
her power to injure them; and all upon whom she has had power, lost and
ruined. Even Jeffrey, if he had not had his fees to bear him out, and
if his journal had not been patronised in London, might have written
his Review in vain; ay, and Scott, who perhaps persevered longer in
writing in obscurity than any other author of the present times,
would long ere now have been mute or a maniac, had he not possessed
some property, held a public office, and been a fierce and forward
party-man. Among them all, there has never been an author in the Athens
who has lived even decently by literature alone,--as little is there,
at this moment, within the whole of her compass, a single person above
starvation, who has not some other occupation or emolument, than that
of a literary man.
The Edinburgh Review, the only periodical work of any consequence in
the Athens which professes to be liberal, and which rests its character
upon its merits, and affords a revenue to any body, does not support
one literary man in the city, nor is there one Athenian contributor to
it, of whom literature is the only or even the chief means of support.
Even the editor, well as it is alleged he is paid for his labour, finds
the wrangling of the bar a more lucrative employment, addicts himself
more and more to it, and more and more withdraws himself from the
Review; while the place of those Athenian writers of the higher class
who have died away, without being followed by successors worthy of
them in their avowed professions, are not replaced in the journal by
Athenian writers at all, but by mere hacks of London, who have been so
long upon the town that nobody sets much store by their lucubrations.
The oldest literary journal in the Athens,--the one which was once
named after the whole of Scotland, and which is now named peculiarly
after the Athens, is perhaps the one which should be taken as the
proper test of her literary powers.
Professing to be of no party in politics, but to set forth the
literature of the day in an independent and gentleman-like style,
and having the stamp of hoary eld, and the connexion of the foremost
bookseller of the Athens to recommend and push it into notice, one
would suppose that the Edinburgh Magazine would be elegant in its
structure, and extensive in its circulation. But it is neither the one
nor the other. When I was in the Athens, the reputed editor was one of
those miserable and pretending quacks who can write nothing, and whose
taste and opinion are not worth a single straw,--a fellow, who would
indeed pretend to an intimacy with the illustrious men both of England
and of Scotland, but who never, by any chance, could have been in
company with one of them; and who had been appointed to this miserable
editorship, because nobody who could write a single page, or give a
sensible opinion upon a single book or subject, could be found, that
would have any thing to do with it.
The great success of the Edinburgh Review tempted the cupidity of
other booksellers; and, as there was no possibility of contending with
it in the same class of writing, or on the same side of politics, a
journal of a novel description, not only in the Athens, but in the
world generally, was begun. The celebrity of the Review, and the
superiority of the Whig advocates, had given a Whig bias, at least as
far as speech was concerned, to all the young lawyers of any spirit
and pretensions. To so great a degree had this been carried, that even
the sons of the most super-ultra devotees to the existing system spoke
against sinecures, and hinted that there were such things as the rights
of the people. Great alarm was the consequence; because the holders of
office found that they would be spoiled of their honours and emoluments
through the liberality of their own children. The fear was, no doubt,
groundless; for had they taken themselves as a test of patriotism,
they would have found that office and emolument are not things of such
feeble power. But they were alarmed, and cast about to devise means
for reclaiming the wandering boys back to the good old and profitable
path. There was a sort of simultaneous movement on the part of the boys
themselves. They had taken up the Whig song, just because it was the
popular one at the time; and they had looked for a share of that public
approbation and renown, which had for a considerable time been bestowed
upon the more illustrious of the Whigs. But they were disappointed:
either they had made an undue estimate of their own powers, or the
demands already established upon this approbation and renown were as
great as it could bear. Considering the quarter whence these unnatural
infants of place came, they were probably suspected,--at any rate,
they were left for a few years, dancing attendance at the heels of the
Whigs, in a neglect more contemptuous and complete than was wise in the
one party, or fair toward the other.
This happened just about the time when there was a sort of movement
against the Whigs on the part of the Tories, and a sort of movement
from them on the part of the people. An appetite was, in short,
created, which called for food different from the sapless husk of the
Edinburgh Magazine, and the hard and political fare of the Review.
Various causes conspired to give body to this appetite; and Blackwood’s
Magazine was the thing produced. Still the party would not have had
courage actually to start that Magazine; for there was a sort of
belief afloat, that anybody, who would venture to publish in the Athens
that which was not Whig, would fail, and anybody who would attack the
Whigs would be mauled for his pains. The Magazine was started by very
plain and unpretending--at any rate, unwarlike Athenian men of letters.
They had a misunderstanding with Blackwood; he got rid of them, and the
Athens began to taste the racy productions of the Tory press. Even this
cannot be reckoned an Athenian production; for England and Ireland had
to be ransacked ere contributors could found, and even yet, Blackwood,
with the aid of his brother the bailie, is editor.
When a sufficient number of those who, as was supposed, would not be
kept back either by moral or by literary scruples, had been collected
together, the campaign was commenced. At first, they seemed to have
only two objects in view,--the vilification of all persons who were
supposed to be either directly or indirectly connected with the Whigs,
more especially with the Edinburgh Review; and a disposition to boast
of their own debauchery, immorality, and want of principle, in order to
disarm any one who might attack them upon that ground.
Slander, especially if it be levelled against persons whom the vulgar
account it boldness to attack, and couched in careless and indifferent
terms, is always sure to please somebody; and, from what I saw and
heard, there are no people to whom it is more agreeable than to certain
parties in the Athens. Accordingly, those opinions which, for half an
age, the people of the Athens had been taught to receive, without so
much as questioning their soundness, were turned into burlesque and
ribaldry; and those persons to whom they had been accustomed to look
up with respect and veneration, were ridiculed and abused. As those
opinions and those persons were alike obnoxious to the ruling faction
in the Athens--though that faction had never ventured to express its
dislike--they received the new style of writing with no common degree
of delight and gratitude. Themselves and their cause had been so
long and so severely cudgelled and exposed, that they had given up
all hopes of having any thing said in their favour. Therefore, they
regarded the productions of those, who took up that line of conduct
merely because it was the only one in which they had even a chance of
success, as hearty and devoted champions; and the writers, finding that
they met with more patronage, and patronage which promised to lead
to more advantageous results than they had calculated, became more
and more decidedly partisans, and waxed more bold and barefaced in
their attacks. A coarse and clumsy imitation of the biblical style,
which would have passed unnoticed, but for its local applications,
and its gross personality, gave very general offence, and for that
reason procured them a notoriety which otherwise they would probably
never have obtained; and some cruel insinuations against a venerable
personage whom the whole country had looked up to as a model, both of
a man and of a philosopher, were believed to give him so much pain,
when the decay of nature had all but put an end to a long career of
usefulness and celebrity, that they fancied no one was too low or too
high for feeling their attacks.
It must be allowed that both novelty and talent were displayed in those
productions,--at least in some of them. The style and manner were
altogether new: a sort of virgin-soil, as it were, had been turned up
for culture; and though by far the greater portion of its produce was
weeds, and weeds too of the rankest description, yet they had all the
vigour and greenness of a first crop. Periodical writing had for a
long time consisted of abstract disquisitions, or tales which had no
decided locality, or connexion with individual and existing character;
and whatever may have been the practices of the writers, they kept up
a regular show of sobriety and morality in their writings. But the
writers of Blackwood’s Journal not only seasoned their productions
with unsparing personality, but affected to be adepts in debauchery,
and pretended to keep no secrets from their readers, even in the most
unseemly of their carousals. Having manufactured ideal names and
characters for themselves, they treated these in the most unceremonious
manner; and this, in some measure, took off the edge of that
indignation which otherwise would have been felt at their treatment
of real characters. More than any thing, they succeeded; and success
is generally received as the test not only of ability, but of a good
cause, in literature as well as in war. If Blackwood’s Magazine had
never got into considerable circulation, the writers in it would have
been regarded as miserable and malicious rebels from the honest cause
of literature; but as they were in so far successful, they obtained in
some degree the renown of heroes.
Among those writers there were, unquestionably, some of talents far
superior to what may be supposed the average of those who contribute
to ordinary magazines; and though these for a time took part in the
ribald practices of the publication, and were pleased for a season with
that eclât which such practices are supposed to afford; yet still, new
in what might be considered as the most blamable perversions of their
talents, there were gleams of a better spirit, and promises that they
could not always follow the same course. That some of the best of them
have already done so, is apparent from the altered spirit of the later
numbers, in which there is an attempt at the same external appearance,
but a visible paucity in spirit; and the probability is that, ere long,
Blackwood’s Magazine, which has always had a considerable portion of
its articles from London, will gradually derive its supplies more and
more from that quarter, or dwindle to the same inanity as its monthly
brother of the Athens.
Indeed, the whole tenor of Blackwood is of a description which cannot
be permanent. It offers no principle upon which the mind of an
unprejudiced and independent man can dwell at the time, and as little
to which any body can refer afterwards for the purpose of obtaining
information. Personality, if bold, daring,--or, to use one of its
own terms, _blackguard_ enough, is sure to make a noise at the time;
but its interest is short in proportion to its intensity. For the
philosophic discussion of any one subject, for the establishing of any
one principle in science, in morals, or in politics, or for any one
addition to the stock of human information, it is in vain to look back
at the book; and though people talk about it (and they talk less and
less about every successive number,) at the period of its appearance,
it may be supposed to pass of necessity into the same speedy oblivion
as the animosities or whims by which it was produced; and that future
men will have no more desire to know how written slander was managed in
the days of Blackwood, than they have at present to know in what terms
the ladies of Billingsgate rated each other when the Tower of London
was a seat of royalty.
Some may indeed suppose, that as this species of writing is not
kept back by any inflexibility of principle from bending round all
the sinuosities, and accommodating itself to all the crooked paths
of corruption, it will continue to find enough of support from the
official men of the Athens, and their coadjutors and underlings
throughout Scotland; this, however, is by no means the case. Those
persons have no love for literature of any description: their deeds
are such as will not bear any kind of light, and the whole of their
hopes are centred in the one circumstance of the public’s being kept
in ignorance of what they are doing. Like criminals under trial, their
only chance is in an attempt to shake the credibility of the witnesses
against them; and if they attempt a direct defence of themselves, it
is sure to render their offences more palpable, and their condemnation
more certain. So long as public opinion remains, and the whole
appearances of the times give promise that it will continue to gather
strength rather than to decay--it is a tribunal to which none but those
who have a wish to stand well with the public will be disposed to
appeal; and therefore, how much soever the official men of the Athens
may have been gratified by the attempts which the writers in Blackwood
have made to traduce their political opponents, and turn them into
ridicule, there is nothing at which they would be so much alarmed, or
indeed have so much cause to be alarmed, as an attempt at their own
justification, even in the same pages. As long as such writers as those
in Blackwood confine themselves to personal attacks in the offensive
way, so long will they not be dreaded or disliked by that party of
which they endeavour to hold themselves out as the champions; but the
moment that they depart from this offensive mode of personal warfare,
and take a single position upon the real ground in dispute, from that
moment the whole of their batteries, whether they will or not, must
be turned against those whom they affect to defend. Thus, though they
may have been useful in effecting a momentary distraction of public
attention, they neither have, nor can they overturn a single principle
of those against whom their ribaldry is directed, nor establish one for
those whom they call their friends.
There is another thing against their permanence. Men, whether official
or not, are never fond of having that brought prominently forward in
which themselves do not excel. Now if one were to pitch upon the very
weakest point--the blank as it were in the official men of Scotland,
and of the Athens, that upon which one would pitch would be literature.
The civic part of them, from their education, their associates, and
the whole tenour of their lives, can neither love a book, nor, indeed,
know any thing about it; and if the opposition and liberal men of
the Athens, who after all are by very much the majority, are utterly
unable or unwilling to support even one literary man, it is not to be
supposed that the other party who are fewer in number, and ever fearful
of exposure, can have more ability or more disposition. No doubt, such
of the writers for Blackwood as know the extreme barrenness of the
ruling men in the Athens, in all matters of taste and information, and
the more fond and forcible predilection which they have for dining in
taverns and carousing in ale-houses, and who have marked that those
ears which are deaf as their kindred clay to every voice of elegance or
of criticism, are open as their mouths for a dinner, or their hands for
a bribe, when grossness usurps the place of taste, and ribaldry comes
in the stead of science,--no doubt those writers have risked a hope in
supplying husks for the Athenian swine; but though the deeds have been
immoral, the remembrance of them will not be immortal; and though there
may always be a few that, seeking their chief pleasure, and finding
their only renown in their own debauchery, are pleased to see deeds
worthless as their own,
“Register’d to fame eternal,
In deathless pages of diurnal;”
Yet even this would not have succeeded with the public generally, at
any period, and it perhaps could have had less chance at no period than
it has at present, when the rapid spread of intercourse and information
is, in spite of all official and other efforts to the contrary,
diffusing a more rational taste even down to the very humblest classes
of society. Men in office, however inferior and second-rate that office
may be, and however mean may be their own tastes, and grovelling their
own habits, will not--dare not, continue long to pride themselves in,
or even privately to encourage, that from which the peasantry turn
away in disgust; and, ere many additional years have been added to
the Kalendar, it will be found that those superior spirits who lent
themselves to this work for a time, in the hope that it would serve
them as a stepping-stone for getting into office, will become ashamed
of it in consequence of having obtained their objects, or disgusted,
because that which they must have felt as a degradation, has to them,
also, proved a deception.
But, whatever of good or of evil, of liveliness or of licentiousness,
of the misapplication of talent, or the miserable labour of that which
is no talent at all, may be found in the school of writing, of which
Blackwood’s Magazine hitherto forms the chief specimen, the Athens
assuredly has neither the merit nor the demerit of originating that
school; and if all support, except what the Athens could give it, were
to be withdrawn, the remainder of its existence would not exceed one
month.
Having heard a great deal about the intellectuality of the Athens, and
its superiority in genius, in taste, and in literature, above every
other city in the world, I made a point of examining, with all the
care and candour that I could exercise. I began too, with a strong,
yes, a very strong prejudice in its favour; for it had been rung
again and again in my ears, that, compared with what was to be found
here, the whole world beside was an empire of dulness. But my fond,
and as it proved to be my foolish prejudice, became less and less,
at every step; and, whether I would or not, I was compelled to see,
that the greater part of the name which somehow or other the Athens
has gotten, has been gotten through the unceasing brazen-frontedness
of her own self-idolatry. In various parts of the Athens, I found men
_pirouetting_ in small evolutions of what they call philosophy. One,
for instance, worshipping the wings of a butterfly; and another drawing
lines and circles upon a human skull, and measuring the talents and
propensities of the unknown owner very gravely with a pair of compasses
and scale; a third, taking up the visions of Robert Owen of New Lanark,
was bewildering himself in an attempt so to arrange the human race,
as that the square of the oblique diagonal of conduct should be equal
to the two squares of the base of nature, and the perpendicular of
education; a fourth was proving by coal and limestone, that the globe
had been boiled; and a fifth, by porphyry and basalt, that it had been
roasted. One learned professor, the very apex of the triangle of the
Athenian science,--who, in his time, has tested hell, as it were--has,
in the ardour of his inquiries after and into things hot and cold,
alternately deputed his
----------------“delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of the thick-ribb’d ice,”--
was reported to me, (for I did not _then_ see him,) not exactly
“To be imprisoned in the viewless wind,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world,”
but to have made one of the most singular experiments upon the said
winds themselves, that ever entered into a philosophic head. This
learned personage, whom the Athenian magistrates had at one time
refused to expel from the city “_cum avisamento eorum ministrorum_,”
upon the alleged ground of his being a conjuror, had made long and
laborious experiments in all sorts of heating and cooling, physical and
metaphysical. When other matters and fires were nearly exhausted with
him, it struck him that it would excite mortal wonder, and win immortal
renown, if he could bring atmospheric air to a red heat. He foresaw,
that if he should succeed in this experiment, it would be farewell to
both gas and steam; and there would be no need of dangerous boilers,
castiron pipes, smoking chimneys, and all the other casualties of the
new power and the new light. If this degree of temperature could be
communicated to the atmosphere, the fondest dreams of mankind would be
realized,--the midnight air might be rendered more glorious than the
sun; winter might be driven within the polar circle; the precinct of
the Holyrood might be made fragrant with spices, and fat with olives;
and the vine might clothe the now naked crags, green with never-fading
leaves, and purple with perennial grapes. That which promised so many
and so delightful advantages was worth trying, and so the philosophic
personage is reported to have gone about his experiment in this wise:--
He procured a bagpipe; and having dissected away the chanter, the
drones, and the bellows,--making the stumps secure with ligatures, he
carried the inflated bag to a neighbouring barn, and set two brawny
peasants a-threshing it with their flails, while he stood by, wishing
and wondering as to the result. What that result was, I was unable to
learn, and indeed I made not much inquiry respecting it,--and I mention
it only as one of the many instances in which I heard the Athenians
boast of their philosophy.
But if they have no literary men, as such, of whom they can boast, they
have about as little title to put on airs about their literary taste.
In that, as well as in all other matters, they are idolaters; and it
may be truly said of them, as was said of the people of the elder
Athens, that the most conspicuous of their altars is “to the Unknown
God.” So long as Jeffrey was deemed infallible, they ventured no
opinion upon any point, until they knew how he had delivered himself.
When, for instance, he had, as he thought, blasted the laurels of Byron
in the bud, the cry that ran through the Athens was, “What a silly
fool to attempt to write poetry? But the Review has done his business.
_He_ will write no more at any rate.” When the retribution of the
“Scotch Reviewers” was hurled back, the worshippers of the Athens were
astonished, but they said nothing. The fact is, that they neither have
opinions of their own in such matters, nor have they leisure to form
them.
The observations which I had occasion to make respecting the dramatic
taste of the Athenians are equally applicable to their taste, not only
in literature, but in every thing else. In youth their education is
too superficial, and when they grow up, the drudgery of the law, to
which so many of them are doomed, and which influences the habits of
the whole, together with that dissipation in which they indulge as
habitually and more deeply than any people with whom I am acquainted,
give a turn to their minds which is the very opposite of literary.
These causes will be more fully developed in the following chapter;
but there is one fact which is very remarkable, which the Athenians
themselves may as well be left to explain. Of the men who, from time
to time, have become illustrious in the Athens for their scientific or
literary attainments, hardly one has been born, and very few have been
educated, within her walls. They have almost uniformly been provincial
Scotchmen, and not a few of them have been students at the provincial
universities. So that while the Athens has not much to boast of in the
literary way, the little of which she can boast is not wholly her own.
Perhaps this is another of the desolations of the widowed metropolis.
CHAPTER IX.
EDUCATION OF THE ATHENS.
Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.--POPE.
IF there be one cause to which, more than others, we are to look for
an explanation of those peculiarities that distinguish the inhabitants
of one place from the inhabitants of others, that cause is education.
I do not mean that education which is given, or attempted to be given,
at schools and colleges, but that which is produced by the contact and
collision of those with whom young men associate at that important
period when they are beginning to think and to act for themselves.
There is no doubt that more of the character of society in the Athens
depends upon this circumstance than upon any thing else, as, so far as
my observation extended, there is more peculiarity in the treatment of
the Athenian youth at this period than in any other city of the British
empire.
It is to this education, for life and not for literature, which I mean
chiefly to advert in this chapter. Still, it may not be amiss to
give a preliminary glance at the school education, not of the Athens
merely, but of Scotland generally, because on that, it strikes me,
Englishmen might find something both to learn and to imitate. The idea
of having one or more schools in each parish, so established that
no teacher can be appointed to them who is not well educated, and
so endowed that they can never be corrupted as the free-schools so
frequently are in England, or confined to the most opulent classes of
society, as the better class of schools are in that country, is one of
the best that ever entered into the imagination of any legislature.
Even in the remotest and most thinly-inhabited parish of Scotland,
the schoolmaster is a man of real information: not unfrequently the
son of humble parents, who, finding that he evinced talents and a
taste for learning, sent him to school, and to some one or other of
those cheap universities in Scotland, where, judging from the number
of illustrious names that they can boast of, learning is nothing the
worse for its cheapness, till he was qualified for orders; but who,
finding his influence insufficient for procuring him the ease and
indolence of a parsonage, took, as his only alternative, the humbler
and more laborious, but unquestionably more useful, office of parish
schoolmaster. Young men of this description are one of the greatest
blessings that a country can possess, and rather than that Scotland
should lose them, it were more for her welfare that all the boasted
philosophy, and all the brawling law of the Athens were at the bottom
of the sea. They may be said not only to pursue learning for its own
sake, and without any view either to honour or emolument, but also to
follow the profession of teachers from the same disinterested motives.
Since professions more lofty and lucrative than that of minister of the
Scotch Kirk monopolized the sons of the wealthier Scotch--since the
free sons of the mountains went to practise slavery in the west, and
those of the plains to get wealth and liver complaints in the east,
the ecclesiastical offices in Scotland have been almost exclusively
filled by the sons of the poor. These almost invariably pass a part
of their early life either as parochial schoolmasters or as tutors in
private families. The tutors are those who have the best connexion, the
most ambition, and the most fawning and obsequious habits. They are
menial servants, and with the education of gentlemen they are sent to
companion with butlers and valets, to humour the caprices of wayward
children, and to hear the fooleries of booby “lairds,” and the scorn
of assuming dames, who can see no merit but in being connected with
this, that, or the other family, which has borne the same name, and
inhabited the same lands since the first introduction of crows and
cow-stealing. Connected with this office, at least in the majority
of instances, there are humiliations to which no lad of spirit would
submit for the sake of the present emolument. The hope, and generally
the stipulation, of the tutor is, that his patron shall, when he has
drudged and degraded himself for the requisite number of years, “bless
him with a kirk;” and this abasement,--this bowing down before the
patron, in order that they may, in due time, rise to the living, is
one of the chief reasons why the Scotch parsons have swerved from that
independence of feeling and of action, of which the example was set
them by John Knox, and become as willing and obsequious worshippers at
the feet even of delegated power, or of unmerited place, as imagination
can picture to itself. If it were not that they are strained through
this filter, we should never have had them declaring, ex cathedrâ, that
the National Monument, a piece of gratuitous foolery, or vanity, or
political patchwork, was “a most suitable and appropriate expression
of gratitude to the Lord of Hosts.” If they had not been studying
somewhere else than in their bibles, their answer would have been--
“The Being, whom we profess to worship, and under whose protection
we certainly are, cannot be propitiated by votive offerings of stone
and lime; and the gallant deeds of our brave countrymen, however
gracefully they might be chiselled on the frieze of the ‘restored
Parthenon,’ could not, in the slightest degree, redound to his glory,
although they might, to a certain extent, flatter the vanity of men.
The offerings which He requires are not swelling columns and fretted
architraves: they are _deeds_--deeds of justice, beneficence, and
mercy, done to our fellow men. After He has enumerated the most costly
and splendid sacrifices-just for the purpose of declaring that in
his sight they avail nothing--He delivers this simple but heavenly
commandment, ‘Offer to God _thanksgiving_.’ To propose the erection
of _any edifice_, therefore, as ‘a most suitable and appropriate
expression of gratitude to the Lord of Hosts,’ savours little of the
knowledge and still less of the spirit of Christianity; and if no
edifice whatever could be such an expression, far less could a temple
which had been erected for the worship of dead and useless idols.”
The filtration, or winnowing, or whatever process it may be called,
which has separated and set apart the more flexible portion of the
educated peasantry of Scotland for the peculiar service of the kirk,
has been in an eminent degree favourable for the schools, which have
thus reserved to them the most independent and generally also the most
enthusiastically devoted to learning.
I should have mentioned ere now, that the men who fill learned
situations, or are engaged in literary pursuits in Scotland, ought,
in genius, though perhaps not always in education, to be superior to
men of the same description in England; for the expense of obtaining
any thing like a literary education in the latter country is so
great, and the disposition to obtain it is so contrary to the habits
of the humbler, and even the middle ranks of the people, that the
range of classes from whom the learned men of England can be taken,
is far narrower than that from which Scotland can make her election.
In England, a peasant or a small farmer never so much as dreams of
giving his son a classical or a university education; and even among
the wealthier yeomen and tradesmen this is seldom done, except with
an immediate view to a church living, to which if the person so
educated should not succeed, he returns back to the counter or the
counting-house.
In Scotland, again, though the gates, at least of some species of
knowledge, do not stand open so widely or so long as in England, yet
they stand open to every class of the people; and thus, though the
population of Scotland be not one-sixth part of that of England, the
number of persons from whom the learned men of Scotland are chosen is
perhaps greater; indeed, it is positively greater, for the whole two
millions of the Scotch people are in this situation; and if all the
classes in England who have the power and the will to educate their
children be counted, they will be found far fewer than this. Now,
as the means of obtaining liberal education descend in society, the
quantity of talent must necessarily increase. In natural ability, a
hundred peasants, at least a hundred peasant boys, are not necessarily
inferior to the same number of scions of nobility; and as the total
number of peasants exceeds the total numbers of the others, the whole
quantity of natural capacity must be greater. Whatever, indeed, may be
their differences after they grow up, and when all the varieties of
advantage, opportunity, and habit have come into play, it cannot be
denied that there is a point in the age of all classes of society at
which their talents and capacities are in the precise ratio of their
numbers; and it is equally true that, if they were all taken at this
point, and subjected to the same discipline, the number of illustrious
men that would be obtained from each class would also be in the precise
ratio of the total number. But all classes in Scotland have, from
infancy up to a certain period, the same facilities of being educated,
and therefore, in obtaining a supply of learned and literary men,
Scotland has the choice of the whole population.
But this is not the only advantage that results from throwing the gates
of knowledge open to all the people, for those of the poorer classes
who are sent to college have a chance of possessing greater natural
abilities, and being more assiduous and successful in the cultivation
of them, than those who are sent from the rich.
This may, at first sight, appear to be paradoxical, but its truth
will become apparent upon very little reflection. The more seductive
pleasures of youth to which the rich have access, are, independently of
any other cause, sufficient to turn the scale in favour of the poor.
To the rich, the hours spent in the prosecution of knowledge are hours
taken from the enjoyment of pleasure, and as such they must ever be
looked upon as a task and a drudgery. To the poor, on the other hand,
the hours spent in the prosecution of knowledge are an abridgment
of labour more irksome and severe, and therefore they must ever be
regarded as relaxation and pleasure. Besides, the children of the
rich are sent to college, not so much with a view to the perfection
of education in the meantime, and the profitable application of it
afterwards, as because it is the custom, or that their parents and
guardians can afford the expense. The pupil who is born to wealth or
to honours, considers his literary attainments not only as a merely
subordinate accomplishment, but as one which stands in the way of
others that he deems more consistent with his rank, and feels to be
more consonant with his desires; while he to whom the same pursuit
is present pleasure, and the hoped foundation of future honour and
emolument, is certain not only to like it better, but to pursue it
with more zeal and success. Of the illustrious names that have been
famed in the pages of Scotch biography, a far greater proportion have
sprung from humble life than are to be found in the annals of any
other country. The fact is, that although the Scotch peasants have a
strong desire to educate all their children, it is only the ones who
are believed or found to possess a superior degree of genius that are
educated for literature; and of the discoveries of original genius
that are continually making in the provincial parts of Scotland a very
curious book might be made. I shall mention one instance of the many:
The gentleman, who at this moment takes the highest station among the
philosophers of the Athens, and who would have been entitled to no mean
place even when her philosophy was in the zenith of its splendour, is
of humble though highly respectable extraction. His father rented a
small farm in the kingdom of Fife, and had it not been that accident
revealed the genius of the infant philosopher, first to the village
parson, next through his advice to learned professors of St. Andrew’s,
and, lastly, through the wisdom of that advice, to the world at
large, his experiments might have been confined to composts for the
fields, instead of compositions for the furtherance of science; and
his speculations, instead of grasping the globes of the earth and the
heavens, might never have soared above a globe-turnip. That the loss
that science would thus have sustained would have been great, even
the enemies of the philosopher (and there is no philosopher without
enemies, especially in the Athens) must allow; for the lines of his
discovery have not only been boldly drawn, but have been drawn in
situations which no other philosopher has attempted. If, therefore,
the discovery which I am about to relate, singular as those who are
not conversant with the modes in which genius, when left to itself,
developes itself, may consider it to be, had not been made, a blank
page would have remained in the book of knowledge, which is now full
and fair in its characters of wisdom. The future philosopher, as was
once the case with nearly all the nascent philosophers of Scotland, and
may still be the case with a few, not the worst of them, divided the
year between the study of learning, and the observation of nature. When
winter had spoiled the fields of their beauty, and driven the shepherds
and cow-herds into the villages, he went to school, where the Proverbs
of Solomon, Ruddiman’s Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, and Dilworth’s
Arithmetic, by turns expanded his wisdom, or perplexed his ingenuity;
and when the fields were again in flower and the birds in song, he was
sent forth to observe the progress of vegetable and animal life, notice
the revolutions of suns, and feel the practical philosophy of wind and
rain. In order that there might be economy as well as information in
his employment during the latter season, he was enjoined to attend to
the movements of his father’s cows, as well as to those of nature; and
until he had reached nearly the end of his twelfth year, it remained
doubtful whether cattle or causation was to be the future business and
glory of his life. In the summer of that year, however, the die was
cast, and never was turning-up more philosophically fortunate, or more
fortunate for philosophy. In one of those village libraries, which
often contained more rich variety of lore than is to be found among
the countless volumes of even an Athenian repository of books, he had
found a thumbed and boardless copy of Simpson’s Euclid, which might
in its time have perplexed the wits of ten successive classes at St.
Andrew’s. By that strong intuition which ever characterizes superior
genius, even at its earliest dawn, he found out that this was a volume
worthy of being read, and throwing aside the Shorter Catechism of the
Kirk, which had been furnished him by his parents for his recreation,
as well as the exploits of George Buchannan, the History of Buckhaven,
the exquisite biography of Paddy from Cork, and the sweet songs of
Sir James the Rose, and the Laird of Coull’s Ghost, with which he had
contrived to furnish himself, he set fondly and furiously to work
upon Simpson’s Euclid, preparing his floor, and drawing his diagrams
in the same manner, though not exactly in the same materials, as the
philosophers of antiquity. The smooth grassy sod answered all the
purposes of the abacus, and the cows generously supplied him in a
substitute for the sand. Spreading and smoothing that substitute with
his bare foot, he engraved upon it with his finger the mystic lines and
letters; and, with book in hand, proceeded to establish the elementary
principles of geometry, heedless though the cows should, in the mean
time, scale the fence, and carry the neighbouring corn by a _coupe de
la bouche_.
One day as he was occupied in this learned work, the parson of the
village happened to be on the other side of the hedge, pacing backwards
and forwards, and cudgelling his reluctant and retentive brains for
as much of the raw material of sermonizing as would serve to put him
and his parishioners over the ensuing Sunday. While he paced and
pleaded with the sluggish spirit, his ear was assailed by a continued
_mumbling_ of voice through the hedge, which caught so much stronger
a hold of him than he could do of his sermon, that his steps and
his study were both brought to a dead stand, and his outward ears
perked up in the fondest attitude of listening. Ministers as well as
men often remember the words of that of which they were never able
to grapple with the meaning; and thus, though the old parson did not
exactly comprehend the extent of that proposition, the diagram of
which the young philosopher had traced upon his soft abacus, and the
demonstration of which he was rehearsing in very solemn tones, yet
he remembered that such words had been used by one of the professors
in that part of his academic course which he had never understood.
That which is known is always simple, and that which is not known,
however simple it may be in itself, is always accounted the very depth
of wisdom. The parson was astonished, and, for a moment, he doubted
the evidence of those ears upon which he had had to depend through a
long life. He tried the one, it caught, “The angles at the base of an
isosceles triangle;” he tried the other, it continued the enunciation,
“are equal to one another.” He poked his head half way through the
hedge, and the auxiliary testimony of his eyes and spectacles confirmed
that of his ears. He saw the abacus, the book, and the student, and
forthwith descended to the village, big and puffing with the tale. A
visit from the parson at any other hour than that of dinner, is always
an ominous matter to some of the family of a Scotch peasant. If the
young folks be children they dread the catechism. If more advanced,
there are occasional terrors of that Scotch tread-mill, which is
trodden alone and in presence of the assembled congregation. The mother
of the philosopher had nothing to dread upon either of those grounds,
but still she felt all the glow of a woman’s curiosity, when the parson
approached her husband with so hasty steps and so important looks.
“Well, Mr. Lascelles,” said the parson, “you must take care of Jock,
and that forthwith, for I am thinking that he is a _genus_.”
“I am very sorry to hear it, Sir,” replied Mr. Lascelles, lifting his
bonnet, “but he is very young, and will get steadier as he grows up.
Has he been letting the cows eat your corn?”
“The Lord forbid either the one thing or the other,” said the parson.
“He is a genus, a mathematical genus, and will be an honour to the
parish when we are both dead and gone.”
The father now understood that the words which he had at first
considered as lamentation were laudatory; the fatted calf was killed,
the parson was feasted, the boy taken from the cows, and sent to
college; and the result is--a perfect Anak in philosophy.----
That the literary men of Scotland are drawn from the whole range of
the population is not only in favour of themselves; it is also highly
advantageous to the humbler classes of the people. In as far, indeed,
as merely literary men are concerned, the advantage to Scotland is by
no means great, because in Scotland they meet with but little reward
to stimulate their exertions. And hence they are obliged to scatter
themselves over the world. But still, the number that remain, and fill
the duties of parochial and other teachers throughout the country, are
superior, not in degree merely, but absolutely in kind, to the teachers
of youth, more especially youth of the poorer classes, in any other
part of the country. In England, for instance, when a man of general
information undertakes the office of teacher, he does it either with
the hope of making a fortune by teaching the children of the rich, or
as a matter of necessity, and as a dernier resort after having been
unfortunate in teaching the children of the poor. But one who is to
have any chance of succeeding in the communication of any thing else
than the mere mechanism of reading, writing, and casting accounts,
which after all does not deserve the name of education, must love his
profession for its own sake, and look upon the exercise of it as an
honour,--which, in one that instructs the children of the lower orders,
can never be the case, unless he himself has been educated as one of
those orders. It is quite natural, and it is also quite true, that the
education which is most beneficial for any one class of society, can
neither be imparted nor purchased by any other class. Charity schools
will never be held in much estimation by any one who has seen the
progress of those poor children for whose education their own parents
pay. There is something in the receiving of any kind of charity which
is humiliating and debasing; and to bestow a charitable education upon
the whole or the greater part of the labouring classes in the country,
would be the surest means not only of leaving them nearly uneducated,
but of destroying their virtue and diminishing their usefulness.
It is to the absence of this humiliating mode of being instructed,
and the presence of one infinitely better and more rational, that the
grand peculiarity of the Athens, and remarkably of the provincial
parts of Scotland, is chiefly to be attributed. The smallness of
Scotch and even of Athenian society, the limited number even of the
labouring classes, who, except in Glasgow, and perhaps a place or
two more, are all intimately known, as well in their connexions as
in their individual characters, and perhaps also the low rate of
wages, and the fewer facilities to solitary dissipation, may no doubt
account for some portion of the intelligence and virtue of the humbler
Scotch. But still, in as far as those circumstances operate, they must
operate upon the higher classes as well as the lower; and, as the
higher classes in Scotland have no such superiority over the higher
classes in other countries, as the lower have over the lower, there
must be some special cause which operates in favour of the Scotch
peasantry. I have looked round for causes; I have found none except
those remarkable advantages in respect of teachers of education,
(unless, perhaps, it be that the sober and simple Kirk of Scotland
has a more wholesome influence upon the poor than a more showy and
aristocratical establishment can exert,) and I think I discovered that
those advantages are quite sufficient to account for the fact.
If there were not something in education that made strongly and
peculiarly in favour of the Scotch peasantry, why should they be
decidedly before the peasantry of England, both in talent and
civilization, while not merely the upper ranks of the provincial
Scotch, but even the learned and official scribes (and pharisees)
of the Athens, are so markedly and so monstrously behind? This
circumstance, unaccustomed as kings may well be supposed to be to
rigorous philosophic observation, did not escape the notice of George
the Fourth. He expressed no unusual admiration at the polish of the
Scotch peers, the elegance of the Scotch ladies, the learning of the
Scotch professors and parsons, or the worshipful appearance of the
Scotch magistrates; but the Scotch people, the crowds who shouted his
welcome on his arrival, and who cheered him every time he appeared in
public, were a source of wonder and a theme for admiration,--and a
proof, against which there is no arguing, that if people receive the
education of gentlemen, their habits will correspond, however scanty
their earnings or scanty their abodes.
In the Athens, this relative superiority of the humbler classes over
those whom chance, ancestry, or office has set up into the high places,
is not only more remarkable than in any other locality that I ever
visited, but the most remarkable, at least the most admirable feature
in the character of the Athens herself.
I have said, and I dare themselves to deny it, that her men in office
are a trifling and a truckling race; I have said, and I dare themselves
to deny it, that a great mass of her scribes unite some of the worst
propensities of the Jew, with none of the best of the attorney; I have
said, and I dare them to deny it, that her schools of philosophy have
“fallen into the sear and yellow leaf,” and that her philosophical
societies pursue trifles from which even school-boys would turn with
disdain; and I have said, that her _gentry_ have neither the capacity
nor the means of encouraging the sciences, literature, and the fine
arts; but though I have said thus, and said it from personal--perhaps
painful, observation, I am bound to add, that in point of intellect,
and all matters considered in point of conduct, the populace of the
Athens are far superior to any with which I am acquainted. When I
visited the public libraries, the men whom I found borrowing the
classical and philosophical books wore aprons, while the occasional
lady or gentleman that I saw there, was satisfied with the romance of
the week, or the pamphlet of the day.
This accumulation of intellect among the lower and labouring classes
is a delightful thing,--when contemplated as studying history or
philosophy, or sporting itself with the finest productions of genius.
In this calmness and tranquillity it puts one in mind of the blue
expanse of the interminable and unfathomable ocean; its immensity
makes you feel it sublime; its depth tints it with that transparent
green which the eye never wearies in contemplating,--but, when the
wind is up, when the billows heave their masses, dash their spray to
the heavens, and deafen the ends of the earth with their roar, the
ocean becomes a fearful and a formidable thing; and, when the winds
of oppression chafe it, so is a population so learned, and so linked
together, as the labouring classes of the Athens.
In the great manufacturing or commercial towns of England, and even,
and perhaps to fully as great a degree, in the British metropolis, one
finds the labourers and operative mechanics, though strong enough at
their labour, and skilful enough at their craft, far down indeed in
the intellectual scale,--reduced from their want of emulation to seek
their relaxation and their pleasure in the indulgence of their merely
animal appetites, and forced, through the want of proper education at
the outset, and fit means of obtaining or extending it afterwards, to
spend their evenings in ale-houses, and rest their distinctions of
honour and superiority on brawls and fights. In Scotland generally, and
in the Athens in particular, it is very different. Almost the whole of
the working classes there have got such an education in their youth
as not only would qualify them for ultimately being masters in their
respective trades, but which gives them an insatiable thirst, not for
technical knowledge in their own professions merely, but for knowledge
in general. If one were to follow them home, after the hours of their
labour are over, one would not find them besotting themselves with
beer, and discussing the circumstances of a prize-fight, in clouds of
smoke over a dirty newspaper, which the reader has to spell as he gets
on. No doubt they have their carousals, and when they do drink, they
drink deeply; but it is not so much for the love of the dissipation,
as for some public or brotherly measure which brings them together. You
find one man laying aside his apron to consult Adam Smith, dispute with
Malthus, or re-judge the judges of the Edinburgh Review; another will
be found solving mathematical problems, or constructing architectural
plans; and all the less proficient will be found attending evening
classes, at which they are instructed by able teachers, and for
reasonable fees.
Society is indeed, as it were, reversed in the Athens; the men of the
law give their evenings to Bacchus; those who are called philosophers,
give theirs to butterflies; the ladies associate for the purposes of
gossipping; and the gentlemen, with praise-worthy gallantry, assist the
ladies; while the artizans pursue literature, and study philosophy.
Thus, although there be more both of the one and the other in the
Athens, than one would at first sight suppose, the supposition is
excusable because they are not to be found where one would first and
most naturally seek for them.
But if these habits make the labouring classes in the Athens more
intelligent and delightful as a people than the same classes are in
England, they render them as much more dangerous as a mob. It is true,
that any demagogue cannot lead them to any mischief for any cause that
he pleases, as is but too often the case with a less informed and
reflective population. But if they are not to be collected or set
on by every casual breath, it is not every casual breath that will
make them disperse, or make them desist from their purpose. They have
repeatedly--indeed upon every occasion where they have been aroused and
brought together, evinced an union and organization which, with arms
and perseverance, would have made them formidable to a large military
force; and they have kept their plans so secret, and executed their
purposes with so much promptitude and skill, that the whole of the
legal and local authorities, in the joint exercise of their wisdom and
their fears, have not been enabled to penetrate the one or prevent the
other. “The Porteus” mob is universally known; and a gentleman who was
an eye-witness gave me such an account of a minor one, both in its
object and in its mischief, that occurred upon the result of the late
Queen Caroline’s trial, as convinced me that their skill and their
spirit have not yet abated.
The populace of the Athens, as well as of most other places, resolved
upon having a general illumination, when the result of that trial was
made known. I do not say this was right, neither do I say that it
was wrong; but it was the will and the wish of the people, and they
did it. The official part of the Athenians were of course against
the measure, on political grounds; and a very large proportion of
the superior classes disliked it, either because they had doubts of
its propriety, or because they disliked the expense and trouble.
Disturbances were apprehended, and the authorities took what they
were pleased to call “vigorous measures:” they gave plenary power to
Archy Campbell,--armed deacon Knox with a great bludgeon,--supported
the constabulary with staves,--hung bayonets and cartouch-boxes
across the shoulders of the writers clerks,--stuck swords behind the
sheriff and advocates-depute,--sent for the Lothian farmers and their
cart-horses,--collected the military detachments,--shotted the guns of
the Castle, and lighted the linstocks,--dined, and put in the internal
armour of divers bottles of wine a-stomach,--and then bolting as many
doors upon themselves as ever they could, sat down to wonder and wait
for the issue. After preparations so extensive in their nature, and
so profound in their organization, one would naturally have supposed
that not so much as a rebellious candle would have been lighted, or an
Athenian lamp broken. But this was by no means the case.
My informant, who had just arrived from Glasgow, where a similar scene
had been performed on the preceding evening, with much credit to the
military, some little to the magistrates, and no positive disgrace to
the people, was induced, by the unusual radiance that he observed in
the street, to walk out and see what was the matter, or rather how the
matter was. He passed along Princes Street, which exhibited nearly the
same number of candles, and the same taste in transparent paintings
that are usual upon other grease-burning and gauze-daubing occasions;
but the street itself was unusually quiet, and free of people. As he
stood gazing at a window opposite the earthen mound, in the decoration
of which some painter had been peculiarly happy in absurdity, a
stranger took him by the arm, and requested him to go to the other
side of the street, as where he stood he was by no means safe. He
hesitated, alleging that he heard nothing. “But it is coming,” said the
stranger, “and the more silent it is the less safe.” They crossed the
street together; and my informant looking towards the other end of the
mound, observed that the lamps were extinguished one by one, and though
not a tongue was heard, there was a heavy and hurried tread as of a
dense crowd rapidly approaching. It came, filling the whole breadth,
and about half the length of the mound. In the front were borne two
transparencies, rendered barely visible by dull blue lights behind.
On each flank were treble lines of men, armed with stakes, which they
had torn from a paling; and the whole square, of which they formed two
sides, was as thick in its composition and as regular and rapid in
its march as the Macedonian phalanx. This thick phalanx moved along
some of the principal streets: when a voice in one key called out one
set of numbers, a shower of missiles instantly demolished every pane
in the windows; and when a voice in another key called out another
set of numbers, not a stone was thrown. This mass of people passed
along the streets, and performed its quantity of mischief with the
silence and rapidity of a destroying angel; and when it had wreaked a
double portion of violence upon the dwelling of the Lord Provost, it
melted away nobody knew how, where, or by what agency. Meanwhile, the
alarm had been given to the powers and protectors; but when they came
to read the riot act, and scatter the spoilers, there remained none
to hear, but shattered houses and frightened inmates, and nothing to
scatter, except fragments of glass. Fortunately, the mischief was not
very great; but the manner in which it was done was enough to show the
superior tactics, and consequently superior danger of an Athenian mob.
It is not, however, the education of politicians, of professional
men, or of the populace, which constitutes that peculiar course of
discipline which deserves to be designated, as “the education of the
Athens.” That education is a training of the manners more than of
the mind,--an initiation into the practices of life, rather than the
principles of any art, or of any science. Most species of education
imply some sort of restraint; but the Athenian education is chiefly
taken up with removing the restraints that have been imposed in other
places, and by other systems; and the rapidity with which students make
proficiency in it is without parallel in any of the ordinary schools
or colleges. A mere boy shall come from the remotest glen or island
of Scotland, as timid as a hare, as modest as a maiden, and as honest
as a man of five feet in a mill-stone quarry; and yet, astonishing to
tell! three little months, sometimes three little weeks, of Athenian
tuition, shall make him a perfect adept in all the theory, and an
expert proficient in all the practice of the Athenian mysteries. No
where else, indeed, can young men be thus educated at so early an
age; and it is the boast of the Athens, that she frees the youth of
Scotland of more of their antiquated notions and narrow prejudices
than they could get rid of even in London itself. The number of young
men who resort annually to the Athens as students in the college, and
under the private lecturers in the different departments of medical
science--who, as I have said, are now in a great measure eclipsing and
supplanting the college professors, together with the still greater
number who throng to the offices of the men of law, form a separate and
unguardianed and unguarded society of youths, greater in proportion to
the whole population than is to be found in any other British city.
They meet with those of but a year’s longer standing, and these meet
those of but another year, and so on, till the total take in every
lesson-abhorring student, and every quill-driving clerk, to the amount
of some thousands,--all of them furnished with at least moderate means
of supporting themselves, and without the slightest check or control
as to how those means shall be expended. The studies of the law-clerks
are of an exceedingly dry description, and those of the other students
are not very different. The infant scribes are set loose at an early
hour in the evening, and as the professors in the Athens are said to
be far more strict in looking after their own fees than after the
attendance of the students, the whole of this mass of young persons
are left to govern themselves and each other for nearly the half of
every day in the week, and almost the whole of Saturday and Sunday.
Athenian apprentices to the law are seldom lodged in the families of
their masters; and it is a rare thing indeed for an Athenian student
to be boarded with his professor. Hence, both classes are allowed to
help each other in the formation of their habits, without any control
from the more experienced part of society. It is the interest of the
lodging-house-keepers, with whom the greater part of them reside, that
their juvenile frolics should not come to the ears of their relations;
and therefore each is allowed to indulge himself as he pleases, and the
only measure of indulgence is the purse.
While this mode of life holds out facilities for indiscretions which
the greater activity and occupation of even a mercantile city prevent,
the great numbers take off the shame of individual transactions, and
give a fashion and eclât to what would no where else be tolerated.
Youths of no great advance in life have their nightly drinking-bouts,
and boys, in the first year of their studies or apprenticeships, have
their occasional carousals in ale-houses suited to the state of their
funds. As the greater number of young men in the Athens, setting
aside the working classes, whose conduct is very different, are of
this description, perhaps they stamp upon the whole place much of its
character; and, especially in the several professions connected with
the law, they in all probability stamp the greater part of it.
The results are just what might be expected. There is no place that
I visited where both the manners and the morals of young persons
are so free; and, with a greater partiality for the bottle, and a
greater proneness to all its consequences, there is perhaps less moral
feeling, and a less clear perception either of intellectual or of moral
truth, among young men who have passed through the several stages of
an Athenian education, than among those who have had their novitiate
any where else. Too young for reflection, and too much exposed to
temptation for study, their minds become as desultory as their manners
are dissipated; and while yet they hardly know any thing, they are
prompt in their decision of every thing; and having once found that it
is easier, and gives more notoriety to decide without thinking, than to
think without deciding, they become as dogmatical in speech as they are
shallow in knowledge, and raw in experience.
The force of ardent and inexperienced passions, just set loose from
paternal restraint, the force of every day’s example, the force of
ridicule, and frequently also the force of direct compulsion, all
conspire to drive every young man who goes to reside in the Athens
into these courses, and to keep him in them as long as he continues
to reside in the Athens; and be it for study or for business, the
novitiate is in ordinary cases sufficiently long to stamp the character
for life. Accordingly it has been remarked, that though young men who
profited by a regular course of Athenian study, be often very showy
and frequently very jovial as companions, they are not very pre-eminent
for sagacity as counsellors, or trust-worthiness as friends. Coming
from the provinces in all their greenness, without any principle, save
that prudence which their parents tried to inculcate, and getting rid
of that very speedily, they are left like blank-paper, upon which the
Athens may inscribe her peculiar characters. There they grow up, and
acquire the passions, and learn the vices of men, while they have the
intellect only of boys.
Every part of the system tends to debauch their morals, and deaden
their intellectual perceptions, and there are some parts of it that
tend strongly to make them as impertinent as they are ill-informed.
With many of them, and more especially with those connected with the
law, public speaking, or rather public wrangling, such as they daily
hear before their Lordships, is regarded as the foremost and best of
all qualifications. Accordingly, they not only have little disputing
societies, at which the most profound and grave questions are discussed
and decided in the least grave and profound manner, but they also,
not sometimes, but very frequently, carry the same practices into
their carousing parties, whether in their own lodgings or at their
respective ale-houses. Thus they learn to make speeches, which, like
inflated bladders, are of a considerable size, and smooth withal on
the surface, but have neither solidity nor weight. Of those who are
thus educated, a considerable portion are scattered over the country,
and perhaps in this way the Athens draws both upon the virtue and the
intelligence of the age, in full for all that she gives in the way of
other education. Perhaps, indeed, setting aside the political taints
which have been noted as emanating from the Athens, it were just as
well for Scotland, and not a bit worse for England, that Athenian
education of all kinds were confined between the Loch of Duddingstone
and the Water of Leith. Of those again who are thus educated, and who
remain in the Athens, it may perhaps be said that they turn round and
inflict upon those who come after, full retribution for what those who
went before inflicted upon themselves; and that with all her boasted
elegance and taste, there is perhaps no city in which vice is more
generally or more obtrusively practised, than in this self-boasted
model of taste and purity.
The effects of this system of education may be traced in the manners,
and especially in the conversation, of the Athenians, even when they
have, as one would suppose, risen above the standard and outlived the
vices of those juvenile associations. The jokes which are quoted as
being the indigenous crop of the Parliament-House habitually, and even
of the bench occasionally, have almost uniformly a latitude in them,
which would not be tolerated in similar places elsewhere; and perhaps
one of the most offensive collections that could be raked together,
would be a list of all the good things with which the Athenians
embellish their conversations, as having been said and done by the men
of whom they boast; but as such a collection would be relished no where
except in the Athens, and with Athenian disciples, it may, with great
propriety, be left as a chosen preserve, in which her own literati
may poach, when otherwise their stores become exhausted, as must
occasionally be the case even with them.
A system of male education, such as I have attempted to describe,
must of course require a peculiar system for females; but as female
education is every where much more matter of fact than of philosophy,
it would be improper to go into any investigation or argument about
it. In speaking of such a subject, I might err: by remaining silent, I
cannot.
CHAPTER X.
MANNERS AND RELIGION OF THE ATHENS.
“This present world six days they seek,
They seek the next for one day:
They run their scores up all the week,
And sponge them out on Sunday.”
BEFORE you can at all characterize the manners of the Athenians, you
must have known them long and intimately, and even then it is difficult
to be correct. In most things they are so extremely changeful, if
not contradictory, that in half the time you would take to describe
them in one aspect, they pass into another; and they do so without
any cause which you can discover. At one time you would think them
all openness and heart, but in a moment they start away, and look
exceedingly cold, stiff, and repulsive. They are a hospitable people,
certainly, or rather perhaps it is more correct to say that they are
entertainment-giving people; but even in the most ostentatious and
prolonged of their hospitalities, you always have the impression that
they are acting a part--that there is more show than substance in
their courtesies. You feel that you are received with more parade
than welcome; and if the sederunt be continued, you find that there
is more hilarity than heart. They give you your dinner, and they
shun neither the quantity nor the praise of their liquor, but they
are not so much disposed to give you your share of the conversation,
of which themselves and their city form, not the unvarying, but the
inexhaustible subject; and, taking for granted that, in consequence
of its primary importance and celebrity, you, if you know any thing,
cannot fail to be acquainted with it even to the minutest particular,
they rattle away without ever giving you the least preparation, and if
you shew, or even hint ignorance of the shufflings of their politics,
the cases before their courts, or the tattle of their coteries, the
utmost contempt is expressed at you, and the most summary vengeance
taken for your daring to be ignorant of that which alone is worth
knowing.
From the peculiar kind and manner of education which I have noticed,
the young men of the Athens are more impertinent and self-sufficient
than those of any other place that I have seen. They know not much, and
the little that they do know is far from being accurate; but they state
their opinions with a forwardness, and support even their ignorance and
their errors with a pertinacity at which you are quite astonished.
Perhaps it is this precocity in assertion which renders the Athenians
so querulous and dogmatical after they grow up.
As the sums of money which can be afforded to be spent or squandered
away in the Athens are not great, there is not much deep playing or
costly dissipation in the city. But though the immorality of the Athens
costs less than that of a wealthier place, there is not proportionally
the less of it upon this account; and though the number of what may
be termed gentleman-like indiscretions be very limited, yet there is
perhaps no place of equal proportion which rivals the Athens in low
vice. Indeed, the vices of her people are almost all equally low, or
if there be any who strive to outdo their fellows, it is by a deeper
plunge in downright beastliness.
Among the dashing bloods of the Athens, the squalor of a house is no
objection whatever. Scotch economy prompts them to get everything
cheap, and hence there are in the Athens sinks of vice, supported and
frequented by those who call themselves gentlemen, that would hardly be
tolerated, or even supposed, in the very lowest neighbourhood of any
other place. I have been told that nothing can be more shocking either
to morality or taste, than the midnight orgies of certain clubs of the
Athenian _esprits forts_; and among all ranks of the Athenians--I mean
among all the ranks of those who wear the dress and assume the name of
gentlemen,--the practice of drinking is both habitual and deep.
The real state of taste and civilization in any place is perhaps better
known from the vices of the inhabitants, than from their virtues;
and if the Athens is to be judged by this standard, she has not much
of which she can boast, as the broad and vulgar debaucheries of her
people, not only occupy much more of their time, but engross much more
of their conversation, than is the case in the British metropolis.
There is a cause for every thing, and perhaps a reasonable part of
the cause of this may be found in that peculiarity of the Athenian
education which I noticed in a former chapter. The purity, the
ignorance, and the simplicity of the number of young men and boys who
are annually added to the mass of the Athens, the novelty of their
having all restraint taken off, and the example and encouragement
with which they naturally meet, dispose them to proceed to greater
lengths in dissipation than if their introduction were more gradual.
The limited nature of their finances, too, and the operation of
those lessons of thrift and parsimony, which no parents are fonder
of inculcating than the Scotch, lead them to cheapness rather than
elegance in their pleasures; and the debased and vulgar taste which
they thus acquire in their boyhood, clings to them after they are men,
and not only gives the tone to their vices, but in some measure also
to their whole character. Accordingly, in no place that I have visited
is there more license of conversation, more general freedom from all
manner of restraint, and a more total absence of scruples of any kind,
than among the scribes of the Athens. Still, to a certain extent, they
are pleasant companions; but they are so only to a certain extent. In
times not very remote, each of the pleaders before the Supreme Courts
in the Athens had his “whiskey-shop,” in which he met with clients
and solicitors, received fees, and fortified himself in the spirit,
for appearing before the “fifteen.” Nor were these grave personages
themselves prone to forget the lessons which they had learned during
their noviciate as students or clerks, and their probation as members
of the Faculty of Advocates. Whatever was or is the talents or the
connexions of those persons, they were, and among the specimens
that remain still are, democrats in their drink. It seems to be an
Athenian maxim, that the bottle raises or lowers all people to the same
level; and the Athenians still tell with a sort of pride, that when a
celebrated Judge, who flourished in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, had been missing for three days, and was wanted to aid in the
decision of a very important cause, he was at length found upon the
top of the steeple of St. Giles’, where he had been carousing and
playing at cards with two or three members of that illustrious and
accommodating fraternity, the _Caddies_.
Nothing strikes a stranger more than the difference between the
business streets and business men of the Athens, and the corresponding
streets and men of London, or even of Glasgow. In Bond Street, Oxford
Street, or Ludgate Hill, all is bustle and activity,--you cannot
stand still, though you would; and within the shop, every one is
completely occupied. The Athenian streets, more especially the High
Street, present quite another spectacle. At every few yards you find
upon the pavement a knot of idlers, concealing their hands in the
pockets of their inexpressibles, and alternately settling the affairs
of the world, (that is, of the Athens,) and criticising any stranger
that passes. Every shop-door too is a sort of rostrum from which the
occasional vender of brimstone or blue bonnets, is often found vending
Athenian politics to customers of another description; while, almost
during the whole morning, bevies of slip-shod damsels stand giggling
together at the entrances of the closes, in which innumerable mops and
slop-pails are exposed, but not for sale.
Ever since the days of Allan Ramsay, an Athenian bookseller has been
a sort of oracle; and, as the tribe have increased, their oracular
powers have become rich and varied. Constable, to whom, by the way, the
literary world is as much indebted as to any man living, and who is a
remarkable instance of success against the whole current of Athenian
prejudice and opposition, has indeed too much sense, as well as too
much business, for lounging and lecturing in a public shop; but even
Constable is obliged occasionally to submit to the contact of that
chaos of philosophic fragments, which, like the atoms of Epicurus,
reel and wrangle on the benches by his counter. Blackwood too has a
sort of den; but still, when there is nobody in it to gossip, you
find his hard face poking out at his shop-door, just as the tongue
of a church-bell pokes out at the mouth of that instrument of noise
and brass. Manners and Miller--one who is said to be the only genuine
species of the nightingale north of the Tweed, keeps a saloon for the
accommodation of the Edinburgh blue stockings, in which sins, and
sentiments, and silks, are, by turns, expatiated upon, in a style and
manner which are truly Athenian. Not far from the Tron Kirk, there is
perhaps the most wonderful of them all,--the Œdipus of all mysteries
and riddles, as touching law, and learning, and politics--to the
junior clerks who attend the parliament-house; the fag end of the
Athenian company of comedians, and of the satellites of opposition in
Athenian politics. Œdipus believes that the whole world rests upon his
shoulders; and, whether he be haranguing from behind his counter, or
trotting along the street, he is constantly hitching up his shoulders
as if he were alarmed lest that world should go off its poise. But to
see this little man in the zenith of his glory, you must see him in the
parliament-house, where he is regularly found, as soon as the clerks
have gone to the desk, and the players to the rehearsal, running about
with so much eagerness and appearance of wisdom, that, until he speaks,
you would mistake him for Jeffery, or rather for Henry Cockburn, to
whom he has one similitude--that of a naked poll. As he has previously
argued or decided every cause that can come before any of the courts,
he comes, not to profit by the wisdom of the more express organs of the
law, but to tell how far they deflect from the right, by swerving from
his institutes.
Each bookseller has, not only his levee as well-attended as ever that
of Sir Richard Phillips in his glory was by ten-shilling-a-sheet
overpaid authors, but his evening party, in which he shines. Thus
Constable dines with deep-going politicians, Blackwood frequents
prayer-meetings, Manners and Miller whistle,--this one associates with
fiddlers, and that takes the unprotected females under the folds of
his calf-skin mantle.
But, although each of the notable Athenians has his peculiar place and
way of holding forth, there is a regular intercourse among them all;
and accounts current of praise or censure are as regular and frequent
among the Athenians, as those of cash are among other people. Indeed,
if it were not for this curious banking system, it is very doubtful
whether the intellectual “patrimony or conquest” of any one Athenian
would be sufficient to set him up in business as a regular and everyday
subject of conversation. Thus, whenever you find an Athenian cutting
his first figure, no matter what sort of figure it is, in one part of
the city, you are sure to hear somebody making a great deal of noise
either for or against that figure in another part.
But manners are, however, somewhat like the mind itself,--we can
observe their phenomena, and trace their effects; but, as they are in
themselves nothing more than the various states of an ever-changing
something which we can never exactly comprehend, no abstract
disquisition upon them, even as they are found in the Athens, would
bear to be read, although one should be at the trouble of writing it.
When we grapple with them in real flesh and blood, and can say that
this is Archy Campbell, or this his Majesty’s Advocate,--that this is
Mrs. Macspine, who studies the Differential Calculus,--or that Lady
Macfidget, who calculates differences, or makes them for other people’s
calculation,--then the gentle readers draw their chairs together, and
prepare for that most delectable of all entertainments,--the dissection
of an individual character; but when we treat of the disembodied
virtues or vices, we are allowed the sole and exclusive benefit of our
lucubrations.
Still, it is impossible to overlook the rapidity with which all
sorts of things whisk about in the Athens, and how cleverly her
ladies and gentlemen creep into the nut-shells of science, or the
whispering-corners of scandal; or how dextrously they contrive to
make one thing answer many purposes. It is impossible that any
people, and more especially a people so ardent and so educated as
the Athenians, can be without a reasonable commodity of love; but
the talking apparatus is so sensitive to the slightest touch, and
vibrates so instantaneously over the whole city, that this commodity
cannot be brought into action in the ordinary way. Accordingly, the
various systems of philosophy which have from time to time warmed and
gladdened the Athenians, have been, in a great measure, a succession
of bows and quivers for the artillery of Cupid. Sometimes they were
awkward enough for this purpose; and the barbs and feathers of those
instruments of man’s mischief, sticking out at the ends of arguments
against revelation, or disquisitions upon cause and effect, had
rather a ludicrous appearance. When Smellie brought the philosophy of
beasts into vogue, matters mended a little; and youths and virgins
sauntered away into the fields for the pure and intellectual purposes
of investigating the origin and progress of lambs and linnets. The day
of the botanists was equally favourable for erotic purposes; and when
the researches of Doctor Hutton had made the fairy-rings upon Arthur’s
Seat matter of philosophy, thither winded the philosophic fair of the
Athens, under the soft beams of the chaste moon, just to see whether
they could catch a glimpse of the green elves, capering and dancing to
the tune of “Catherine Ogie,” as Scotch fairies had been known to do
from time immemorial.
But the best system that ever came into general practice and belief,
has proved to be that of the skull-men,--a system which, though the
Athenians gainsayed it a little at the outset, they have subsequently
fallen deeper into than any other people upon the earth or moon; and
in a truly-bred Athenian company, you are sure to have your cranium
thumbed over by every lady and gentleman. This is an excellent
system, if there be truth in it; and indeed, whether there be truth
in it or not, it brings the papillæ of the fingers, whose very use is
the receiving of impressions, into contact as it were with the very
elements of the soul; and when the delicate fingers of a lady are
measuring the base and altitude of No. 1. in a gentleman’s neck, there
is every chance that the embers of the tender passion, if they have not
previously been charred to incineration, shall blaze or burn.
Nor is this the only use to which the Athenians apply this philosophy.
They are so quick in their perception, that they instantly know the
strong and the weak points of your character, and they regulate
their proceedings accordingly. If, for instance, your indications of
combativeness be strongly developed, they are sure never to offer the
least insult; but if you be wanting in those indications, they make you
feel it. If your forehead shows wit, they are exceedingly humdrum and
metaphysical; but if the contrary, they treat you with quips and puns
without end. Knowing from the peculiar structure and exercise of their
own admiration, that people admire the most that in which they excel
the least, they make sure of shining by turning the conversation to
those subjects of which, judging from your organization, you have the
least.
The religion of the Athenians is, perhaps, one of their greatest
peculiarities: they,--meaning the people of consideration, and not the
populace,--are the most religiously irreligious people that one can
imagine. A few years ago, when it was the fashion to be sceptical,
the very name of going to church stamped a man as belonging to the
veriest vulgar; but the kirk has again come into vogue, and it is
now just as much a mark of vulgarity not to go there, as it then was
to go. If, however, the value of their church-going were to be tried
by their conduct during the week, its moral advantages would not be
found great. But it answers many purposes: the official men find
their interest in being kirk-elders; ladies and gentlemen see each
other; and after so pious and praise-worthy a thing as church-going,
there can be little harm in an assignation, or an adjournment to a
tavern-dinner,--occurrences which are very frequent upon the evenings
of Athenian Sundays. When you have witnessed the deep and prolonged
potations of some Athenian worthy upon the Saturday night, when you
have heard the racy jokes and anecdotes with which he enlivened his
cups, and when you have marked how small store he set by the principles
as well as the practices of religion, you wonder at the calm face that
he puts on as he stands at the church-door, watching the pence and
sixpences that are thrown into the charity-plate. It is all a cloak,
however, and like other cloaks, the more cumbrous that it is, it is the
sooner cast off. One cause of its being put on at all, may be, that
the fashion of the higher classes going to church carries the lower
classes there also; and nobody can pass the receiving hoard, which is
watched by a provost or a judge, without contributing something to the
increase of voluntary charity; which being thus obtained from the poor,
prevents the necessity of levying so large contributions on the rich.
I have stated this reason, not only because it is both pleasurable and
profitable, but because, whatever it may be in its primary intention,
in its ultimate result it is good. Every thing which tends to place
the labouring classes, if but for a moment, or during the performance
of a single act, upon the same level with those who do not labour, is
highly advantageous to them; and thus, admitting that the Athenians go
to church as well to save their pockets as to compound for the doings
of the week, the said Athenians do, upon that account, deserve nothing
but praise.
Leaving the church-going, and subsequent feasting and flirtation out
of the question, there is something peculiar in an Athenian Sabbath:
it seems as though useful labour and innocent amusements were the only
things that deserve to be suspended. The advocates are a privileged
class, and it is no scandal in them to drudge at their cases. As
little is there any harm whatever in oral discussion of any subject
imaginable; but if a maid-servant were to hum a tune, an advocate’s
wife to give a thump to the piano-forte, or a boarding-school miss
to peep into a new novel, the Athens would be in the utmost jeopardy
of sinking in the Forth, in which the sinner would have some chance
of being ducked. It must not, however, be supposed that among such a
people as the Athenians, the Sunday is a day of idleness. It is no
such thing; for with both men and women, it is the choice and chosen
day of the week, set apart to all manner of gossip and enjoyment; and
though it be not the fashion for the people to listen to the music of
instruments, or read profane books, yet the music of woman’s tongue is
soft and sweet, and the book of fate is opened. Whether the present
church-going propensity of the Athens shall continue, is a question
that it would be difficult to solve; but that the Athens will continue
to enjoy herself upon Sunday nights, may be received into the catalogue
of truths that are demonstrated.
CHAPTER XI.
SUNDRY QUALITIES OF THE ATHENS, IN SUPPLEMENT.
“In Ethiopia there is a lizard,
Green on the grass, but golden on the sand,
Of slender form and many-tinctured skin:
Of this, when you suppose that you have counted
The tints and glosses, straight the creature turns,
Or you but step aside, when lo, it seems
As new and strange as ever. What you noted
Is all errata, and your task of telling
Is never at an end.”
THE wonderful agility with which the Athenians skip about from opinion
to opinion in other matters, and the great faculty which they show in
altering the attitude and aspect of that everlasting subject, their
own city, render it next to impossible to give a likeness of them that
shall be accurate for one moment beyond the time that you are taking
it. Indeed, if you be not all the readier at your pencil, the chance
is that there shall be no congruity or keeping among the features and
limbs that you sketch. What you begin with as a Jupiter, you have a
chance of ending with as a Vulcan; your Apollo glides into a satyr,
and your Venus becomes a hag under your hands. If you would paint a
philosopher, however limber or however large you design him, he changes
to a driveller or a dandy before you know what you are about; and
when you follow him to his home, in order to contemplate the progress
of those great things with which he is to enlighten and astonish the
world, you find the whole of his mighty mind occupied in fitting false
shoulders to his waistcoat, or dipping his whiskers in the essence of
Tyne, till the tale run down his cheeks in purple demonstration as he
flounders along in the ball-room. Under such circumstances, I ought not
to be blamed, although the light in which I have attempted to represent
the Athenians be not that in which they may have appeared to others;
nor ought they who fancy that their picture is more accurate than
mine, to allow themselves to fall into that idolatrous worship of the
Athenian gods; for they may rest assured that there can be more than
two pictures of the Athens, all very unlike each other, and yet all
very like the original.
The _wit_ of the Athenians may be considered as one of their
“fundamental features,” for many reasons, and for this among the rest,
that it mainly consists of punning, which is accounted the lowest
stratum, and therefore the foundation of all wit whatsoever. It is of
various kinds and degrees, according to the class of persons among whom
it passes current; but still the basis of every Athenian witticism is
a pun, and every Athenian, though he should be nothing else, is sure
to be a punster. There are two original species of Athenian pun,--the
legal and the learned: the first is said to have been introduced
by the late Henry Erskine, and the second is contested by the late
Professor Hill, Dr. Brewster, and others. Whether this be true at all,
and if true, how far the truth of it extends, I am not either bound
or prepared to say, but certain it is that those learned and humorous
persons get more of it laid at their door than do any others now in
existence; and the “gentleman of the Dunciad” who was “determined
that every good thing should be Shakspeare’s,” has many praise-worthy
imitators in the Gem of the North. You cannot meet with an idle draper
yawning at the door of a shop, who has not some good thing of Harry
Erskine to tell you; nor is there a student within the Athenian college
who has not John Hill by rote. Brewster, indeed, is not so often
quoted; but Brewster is still alive, and what is more, he holds no
public function or situation of any great consequence.
I went to view the Advocates’ Library, in company with two of that
faculty; and they edified me with sundry choice sayings of the immortal
Harry. I remarked, that it was singular that the advocates, the most
illustrious body within the Scotch seas, should have been the last to
have a hall in which to contain their collection of books. “The same
remark was made,” said my conductor, “to the late Honourable Henry
Erskine, and he said a very clever thing upon the subject.” I very
naturally gave him that wishing and inquiring look, which brings out
a good thing without any preamble; and he, after working a-while at
his ears, hemming, and rubbing his spectacles, said, “Why, Sir, I must
condescend, _in limine_, that the Dean of Faculty, (Mr. Erskine was
once Dean, and the title continues longer than the office,) was a great
wit, and that ‘a mortification,’ according to our vocabulary, means a
bequest of money or property of any kind; and, having given in this
condescendence, I will proceed to the argument of the case. Well, Sir,
a gentleman was remarking to the Dean, the shame that it was to the
faculty, that they had not a better apartment for their library. ‘We
shall get it some time, and get it in a Christian way,’ said the Dean,
with that happy look which always indicated that there was something
to come. ‘Why in a Christian way?’ said the gentleman. ‘Because,’ said
the Dean, ‘we shall get it through the _mortification of our members_,’
at which the gentleman laughed very heartily.” I, of course, had no
choice but to laugh also, although the wit ran a little too slow for
me; but my laugh was taken with more cordiality than I had grace to
give it with, and that was a signal for more of the same kind, of which
I may mention a specimen or two. A case was argued one day before Lord
Braxfield, in which the counsel had rather exposed a position which
that hasty judge had laid down a few days previous; and his lordship
was so much irritated, that he snatched up a ruler, and brandished it
at the counsel, as much as to say, “if I had you out of court, I would
cudgel you.” “What does he mean by that?” said an English barrister
who happened to be present. “He is doing that which you must have
done often,” said Erskine, “he is _taking a rule to show cause_.”
“Why that is rather a novel rule to take in a court of justice,” said
the Englishman. “Not at all,” replied Erskine, “it is merely a rule
_nisi_.” One of the latest of Erskine’s witticisms that were repeated
to me was that of the two Macnabs, father and son,--the first of whom
was chief of that sept of the Celts, and the other the author of a
system of the universe, too sublime even for Athenian comprehension.
The chief was the most patriarchal as well as the most powerful man of
his day, and the number of his sons and daughters rivalled that of some
of the illustrious patriarchs of olden time. Harry Erskine said, that
“these two Macnabs were the two greatest men that ever had lived, for
the one could make a world, and the other could people it.” Another
saying of his was very often repeated to me, but I confess I never
could see the point of it. A Tory lawyer, of feeble body and feebler
mind, was elevated to the bench, and the Athenians supposed that a
Whig, remarkable alike for his talents and the slowness of his motions,
had been improperly overlooked, while the little Tory was promoted. It
was remarked to Erskine, that they “had put the cart before the horse.”
“No,” said Harry, “they have not done that, they have only put the
ass before the elephant.” Another time, when a client was hesitating
into which of the hands of two writers to the signet he should throw
himself, somebody said, he was like the ass between the two bundles
of hay. “No,” said Erskine, “he is like the bundle of hay between the
two asses; for, whichever way he goes, he will be eaten up.” This
species of pun is mostly confined to Whigs, or gentlemen who have some
pretensions to literature or taste; and in as far as intellectuality
can be predicated of such matters, it may be called the _pun
intellectual_. From Harry Erskine, the intellectual pun of the Athenian
barristers does not appear to have descended full and entire to any
one individual. A small piece fell to the share of George Cranstoun;
but he is too independent for using it, and therefore he is said to
have laid it out at interest for the benefit of the next generation.
John Archibald Murray got a slice, but it was from the side upon which
the article had lain for some time, and thus it is said to be somewhat
musty. Jeffrey got a choice cut, but he is said to have carried it so
long in his breeches-pocket, among slips of the Review, that it is as
hard as granite. Cockburn got a large piece out of the very middle, but
he is reported as having stuck it over so thickly with sugar-plums,
that the original owner would have great difficulty in knowing it. The
kissing-crust, and a dainty crust it is, fell to the share of John
Clerk, but John is said to have soaked it so much in butter, that
delicate stomachs are unable to bear it. After such a distribution, it
seems exceedingly doubtful whether the whole can be again reunited; and
while one laments the cutting up of the thing itself, one is amused
at the more slender Whiglings, who run about showing, boasting, and
smacking the waste-paper in which it was originally wrapped up.
There is another species of legal pun, which first came to maturity
under M’Queen, of Braxfield. This may be styled the pun _ad hominem_,
and is calculated to depress the spirits in the same ratio as the other
is calculated to raise them. While I was in the Athens it was by no
means common in the Parliament-House, but I was told that it forms a
standard dish at all loyal and official feasts, and that upon ordinary
occasions it lies in Blackwood’s shop for the inspection of the curious.
The learned pun is of several kinds, according to the class by whom it
is used. That which was brought to perfection by Professor Hill was a
sort of polyglot. For instance, in order to indicate learning, and wit,
and tea, the Professor inscribed his tea-chest with the word “_doces_,”
and when upon a cold winter day, one of his students kept bawling
“_claude ostium_;” so loud as to give annoyance, the Professor turned
upon him with “_claude os tuum_,” which gained him more admiration with
the Athenians than if he had rivalled Porson himself.
None of those kinds of punning are, however, to be regarded as purely
Athenian. They were all invented or improved by strangers; and if
one wishes to become acquainted with the genuine Athenian pun in
all its simplicity, one must seek it at those coteries of small
philosophers and blue-stockings, which are found at Athenian suppers,
more especially on Sunday evenings, for it is by much too delicate and
weakly a thing for lasting even till the day following.
The whole sports and amusements that are peculiar and congenial to
the Athenians seem to be regulated by a kind of Salique Law. They
being such as females can neither join in nor, in most instances,
witness. They are of two kinds: the amusements of the tavern, and the
amusements of the turf. In the former, “high jinks,” and the other
harmless fooleries of the olden time, have given place to the orgies
of hell-fire clubs, and others that are better undescribed; but in
the latter, “golf” and “curling” continue to divide the year, and the
wisdom of the Athens may be seen during the summer exercising itself
daily in urging the ball upon Bruntsfield-Links, and during the winter
in hurling large stones along the ice upon the Loch of Duddingstone.
Although there be many good places for walking in the vicinity of the
Athens, no such thing is known as a public promenade--that is forbidden
on Sunday, and, except a trot along Princes Street, and a moon-light
turn around the Calton, the gentlemen of the Athens are too busy,
either in doing something, or in doing nothing, for promenading during
the week. Drive there is none, and it is not much to be regretted, for
there is absolutely nothing to be driven.
Another small feature in the character of the Athenians is the high
and supercilious disdain with which they affect to look down, not
merely upon their fellow-Scotchmen, but upon all the world. How they
originally came by this quality, it would not be easy to determine, and
therefore it is, perhaps, needless to inquire; but, as it is permanent
and general, it must have something upon which it permanently feeds.
It is by no means peculiar to those who are born in the Athens; for no
sooner does a Lowland clown take up his locality there as a writer’s
clerk, than he begins to toss up his head at the land which produced
and fed him, and “writes himself _armigero_; in any bill, warrant,
quittance, or obligation, _armigero_.” And no sooner does a tattered
and trowserless _Rorie_ escape from the wilds of Sutherland, or the
woods of Rannoch, to lug half an Athenian fair one from tea-party to
tea-party, than “she is a shentlemans, and teuks her whisky wi’ a ‘Cot
tam’ like a loört;” and, in fact, it seems a contest between those
two sets of worthies, which shall take the lead in Athenian dandyism.
Indeed, in personal grace at least, the “shentlemans” must be allowed
to have much the better of the “armigero.” Light food and long
journeys give to the former great buoyancy of spirits, and elasticity
of muscle; and it is wonderful to notice, with what a dignified and
chieftain-like air, they thumb a pitch-black pack of cards, or “teuk
oot the linin’” of a quart pot of small beer, or quartern of the dew of
the mountains, as they hold their morning levee at a corner in Queen
Street or Abercrombie Place. The “armigero,” on the other hand, is as
gawky-looking an article as it is possible to meet with, or even to
conceive. His feet, which probably not six weeks previous were dragging
a stone weight of shoes and mud, through the clay of Gowrie, or the
tough loam of Lothian or Fife, are squeezed into a pair of boots, upon
which they are taking vengeance, by stretching the leg an inch and a
half over every side of the heel; his great red hands, put you more in
mind of lobsters than of any thing human, and they are dangling from
his shoulders as if each articulation were strung with wire; and when
his deep and dismal Doric is drawled out into what is reckoned the
fashionable accent in the Athens, you can liken it to nothing but a
duet composed of the love songs of Jack Ass and Tom Cat. In consequence
of the number of those two classes of Athenian dandies, dandyism of a
higher order is banished. I mentioned formerly that there is no such
thing either as a drive or an article driven (quills always excepted,)
anywhere about the Athens; and therefore no fashionable gentlemen
could endure the association of the Athenian pavé. If such men should
by accident get there, he would not be eclipsed, but he would be
absolutely buried under the thick mass of the turf of the mountains,
and the clods of the valleys.
Perhaps it is this total absence of every thing elegant in the shape of
man from the public streets and walks of the Athens, that has given so
singular a twist to the minds and manners of the Athenian fair. Those
dandies, instead of being objects for admiration, are subjects for
criticism; and when an Athenian belle first quits her bread and butter,
and flits forth to conquer the world--heedless of the fact, that such
was the condition of a dear papa ere he _booed_ himself into some
government office, “processed” (I do not use that word in the Yankee
meaning,) into the management of some laird’s estate, or the estate
itself--she curls up her nose at these, the only “creatures” that she
meets, with so much force as to give it, as Dr. Barclay would say, “a
sidereal aspect” for life. For a long time she holds fast her aversion;
but though her nose be elevated, her fortunes do not rise along with
it. Time drives the wheels of his curricle across her countenance,
and there is no filling up the ruts which they leave. Meanwhile the
despised clerks become wigged advocates, or wily solicitors; and the
lady stretches her neck over her six-pair-of-stairs window, to catch a
glance of the bustling man of business whom she despised and contemned
when he was a Princes-street walking boy, and would have accounted her
society and countenance the very choicest thing in the world. Time,
who is the most delightful of all visitors during the early stage
of his acquaintance, gradually introduces his friends; and at last,
old hobbling Despair is admitted into his coterie. In some places,
the ladies to whom he has been introduced seek their quietus at the
card-table; in others, they abandon this world for the next, and very
frequently choose the by-paths to heaven--because a way thronged with
dissenting ministers is always a sort of love-lane, in which a lady may
at least gather the dry stalks of those flowers which she neglected
to pull while they were in season. But in the Athens they go another
way to work,--they dip their stockings in heaven’s azure, pass through
the hoops of small philosophy to the heaven-ward attic, (from which,
perchance, the Athens takes its name,) and thence launch the bolts of
their criticism against all the world below--that is, all the world of
their own sex, and below their own age.
Thus have I with, as an Athenian _Literatus_ would say, “the softest
feather dipt in mildest ink” and with uniform watchfulness against
unmerited praise and undeserved censure, noted down a few of those
features and traits which stamp upon the Modern Athens, the isolation
and individuality of her character, as she stands away from other
cities, and appears in herself. Had I followed her own _modus
operandi_,--had I torn in pieces the private characters of all to
whom I found it necessary to advert for the purposes of illustration,
and sported with the mangled fragments in the open streets,--had I
dug into their family vaults, and wantonly exposed the bones of their
ancestors to the gaze of every passer by,--and had I set the signet of
my approbation or disapprobation upon them, not on account of what they
were in themselves, but of whence they sprung, what they possessed, and
how they were connected,--then, assuredly, the spirit of my writing
would have been more in accordance with the Athenian spirit, and I
would have been loved, lauded, and adopted as a worthy and hopeful son
of the aspiring attic of the _Græcia mendax_. But such honour is not my
ambition; and therefore my study has been to describe things with all
the simplicity of truth, and, as in whatever bearing the semblance of
censure I have written, I have wished and attempted to be corrective
rather than caustic--to go to the causes of evil rather than to play
with the symptoms of it, I must conclude, that if any shall blame me
for the freedom of my words, they must do it because their hearts are
smitten, and not because their deeds are misrepresented. The Athens
boasts of herself as a model of elegance and of taste: I found her a
compound of squalour and of vulgarity. She boasts of her philosophy: I
found it pursuing thistle-down over the wilderness. She boasts of her
literary spirit: I found her literature a mere disjointed skeleton, or
rather the cast-skin of a toothless serpent. She boasts of her public
spirit: I found almost every man pursuing his own petty interests, by
the most sinister and contemptible means; and, perchance, the most
noisy of her patriots standing open-mouthed, if so that the very
smallest fragment of place or pension might drop into them. She boasts
of the encouragements that she has given to genius: I looked into the
record, and I found that every man of genius who had depended upon her
patronage, had been debauched and starved. She boasts of the purity of
her manners: I found the one sex engaged in slander as a trade, and the
other in low sensuality as a profession. Under those findings--and they
required not to be sought--I had no alternative for my judgment. When
she redeems herself from them, and becomes in reality even something
like what she would call herself in name, let her then make comparisons
with the Gem of ancient Greece. Let her give some proof that Minerva
Parthenon is her tutelar goddess; when she has done so, let her build
the temple to that divinity; and, as she finishes the sculpture of
the last metope, with deeds of her own worthy of being recorded, I
(as the Turk did when her countrymen completed the spoliation of the
ancient Athena,) shall to the completion of the merit which she claims,
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