much as the poorest Irish peasant who came rushing in transport from his miserable cabin to meet the smile of his monarch. The Irish grasped out of the King's hand the boon of oblivion of all hatred and heart-burning; and feeling themselves in his presence relieved from the burthen of their daily life, they leapt and they danced and they sang, and the million basked as in the dawning sunshine of a millenium. To comprehend the meaning of that madness and delusion of joy, we must reflect on the strange source from which it was stirred up, and remember that transport can suddenly and slowly spring up out of tears, especially if they have been tears of blood, long shed, and then, it was hoped, however erroneously, about to be dried up for ever. Indeed, nothing is more striking to a stranger in the Irish character, than the easy, natural, and even graceful union of wild with solemn feelings-of mirth, extravagant and grotesque, with the purest and deepest pathos, and of strange imagery brought from a distance by a capricious fancy, with the homeliest furniture of the heart. In scenes of deepest, darkest, and most dismal distress, there is a wild glimmer of joy over their cabins. The last words of the dying man, even when his soul is devoutly prostrate before God, often retain much of the feeling and phraseology of his reckless life, that might needlessly shock the unreflecting stranger. Mirth and misery are twin-born in those cabins-are long playmates there and, if ever separated, are at all times ready to resume their union.

Were such a people to regulate their conduct, on such an occasion, by dull decorum? No. By them nothing could be felt decorous but the freeflowing tide of their agitated joy. All they had suffered, whether self-inflicted by their own folly, or by the fatal ignorance or wilful blindness of their rulers-was not by tacit, but by thundering consent, in a moment forgotten. "What have our miseries to do with us now-that our King is in Ireland? What have they to do with him? Nothing could have brought him hither but love for us-ay, pride in us"-and that thought was enough to make all Ireland mad, from Portrush to Bantry.

Nor was this altogether a bright

ebullition of momentary feeling. No strong passion can ever utterly pass away, except by the power of remorse. But here there was nothing to be ashamed of-nothing of which to repent. A storm of loyal emotion swept over the land; and no doubt it carried off foulness and darkness from many a rebel's heart, not only lending light and room for worthier feelings, but also inspiring the feelings themselves, and giving them thoughts on which to feed and live. What substantial benefit has the King's Visit conferred on Ireland? We answer, there are evils there which the King's Visit was never expected to cure. But if that visit opened the hearts of all the population to a genial and general joy-if they vowed then, and have since, in many instances, proved that their vows were not empty words, to moderate the violence of those party feelings, which, sprung as they are from so deep a source, deserve a better and a nobler name-if, when looking on the face of their King smiling graciously among them, they felt repaid by the joyful burst of their own loyalty for the blood shed to cement his throne-if a strong and lifesupporting pride in their national character, with all its powerful imperfections and glorious defects, has been cherished by the voice of the greatest Monarch on earth, who was elated to declare, that he was "in part and heart an Irishman"-if even such effects as these have been so produced, the King's Visit to Ireland was an incalculable blessing to that country. To what extent such effects have been produced, nobody is yet entitled to give an opinion from what is audible or visible. But we know that the Royal Visit was eminently fitted to produce them widely over such a people. We know that the people did at that time lay open their hearts to receive such influence-we know what hearts they have-and therefore we believe that the harvest will be rich, and yet gathered in peace. Of all nations of the earth, the Irish have perhaps most feeling and fancy--these powers seem native and indigenous in Ireland-and events of far less pith and moment than a visit from a King, have excited them lastingly for good or for evil, and made them traceable in lines of light, or of blood, down the long page of their nation's history.

These most imperfect, but, we believe, not altogether inapplicable remarks on the state of national feeling in Ireland, produced by the King's Visit, were called forth now by the consideration of the very different circumstances in which we, as a people, have for some centuries been placed. Scotland has long been a calm, quiet, happy, and improving country. We are strong in our deep and placid domestic affections, the stream of which flows undisturbedly on-in our sound, plain, hearty, honest, good, common, or, if you chuse, commonplace sense in an intelligence of perhaps a higher order than was ever before general among all ranks-in the light of a knowledge strictly practical, yet not found unfriendly either to feeling or fancy--in the proper pride of an educated independence, that knows and keeps to its own sphere of actionin a morality that is frequently even austere, and in a religion that is always simple, solemn, and sublime.We do not fear to say, that such is our National Character. A loftier and a wiser people are not to be found now upon the earth, nor do the records of any such survive. Scotland has been a country favoured by the Almighty Providence. Seldom now do dark passions gore the bosom of her domestic happiness with the inroads of atrocious crime. We know little, by our own experience, of the extremities of agony and guilt. Despair drives not our calm, contented, and cultivated population, into mirthful misery and laughing crime. It is not with them to-day a heaven of sunshine, and tomorrow a hell of gloom. They do not alternate between life and deathgrasping and clutching, as they sink or rise, at every mad enjoyment and perilous pleasure, aware in their highest exultation of its coming overthrow, and comforted in their lowest prostration by the hope of some infatuated and outrageous happiness. As it has been beautifully and truly said, that "stillest streams do water fairest meadows," under the calm and undisturbed, and seemingly passionless exterior of the Scottish manners, lies a rich substratum of character, productive of all that adorns and dignifies human life. This is not the poor and pitiful expression of a self-deluding national vanity. It is the opinion expressed by the voice of Europe. Our faults, our

defects, our vices, are not unknown to ourselves, and they have not been spared by the sarcasms of other nations. Pity, indeed, it is, that they should be so many, and, in some respects, so unworthy of companionship with those virtues which we know we possess by the happiness they have spread over Scotland, and by the honour with which they have clothed her in the eyes of every enlightened people. But this is not the time or place even to hint at our national imperfections. We boldly put our foot on this position-that of intelligence, affection, moral feeling, and religious faith, a model worthy indeed of imitation is now exhibited to the whole world by the people of Scotland.

A nation so enlightened and so happy is not easily excited to any outward demonstration of feeling. That is not the habit of our hearts. Our people are sedately happy by their fire-sides

they are sedately happy in their places of worship-it might almost be said, they are sedately happy in domestic festivals-when youth and beauty are united in love, or when a child is born, and new and hallowed hopes spring up like flowers around the poor man's house. They are often sedately happy by the side of the open grave.

If such be the character of life's daily recurring emotions among our people, they will carry much of the same spirit into every situation of rarest interest, and even into pageants and processions; the sober strength of their habitual character will breathe a calmness and a serenity which none but the ignorant may mistake for apathy or indifference, and under which lies a bold but regulated spirit of pas

sion.

Our patriotisin-our loyalty, is of this character. Almost every Scotchman knows something of the history of his country. Wallace sowed over all our rocks the imperishable seeds of high thoughts and great actions. The marks of his feet are shewn, as if the stone and the flint would retain them for ever, by a patriotic peasantry, to their children going to the ploughed field or to the hill-pasture. Bruce is as fresh a name as if he had lain but a few years in the tomb. We know ourselves to be an unconquered people, and that we yet fought against the conquerors of the earth

of late or in old times, Romans and the English. Even our greatest overthrows have been melancholy triumphs --and we fear not, after Bannockburn, to think of Flodden.

But we have no need to look back into distant history for events to justify the pride of our patriotism. Scot land has for ages fought by the side of England, and has not, even in that rivalry, lost any of her ancient renown. Though a small, and not a rich country, she has lent sinews to war, both of gold and steel, and has at all times been prodigal of her blood. Nor has Scotland ever weakly repented of the loss which her best houses have sustained; but although battle has made "lanes through largest families," the survivors have closed in upon the gap with a spirit of stern and unrepining patriotism, and have acknowledged, that for their common country, the sacrifice was but just. In none of those great conflicts, by which liberty had to be saved, was the war-cry of Scotland ever drowned; and her sons who dwelt at home in peace, have shewn that they knew how to cultivate all those arts of civilized life which their compatriots had guarded by arms— When, therefore, their King was about to visit them, they felt that they deserved his presence, and that such a King would be proud to accept the loyal homage of a people, in tranquillity and peace, who had gloriously shewn that they were willing and able to guard him and his throne in danger and in war. His visit, such a nation well knew, was not to be one of cold ceremony, or idle ostentation; but their King, in whose fleets and armies they had fought, and in whose councils, too, many of their wisest spirits had sat, was coming to behold the land from which that valour and that wisdom had sprung, in the calm air and the serene light of hard-earned and glorious repose.

The well-known and fondly-cherish ed history of our present religious establishment, keeps for ever alive in solemn silence a host of holy recollections.

These recollections are all that we ask to consecrate our places of worship. The pure and undefiled faith, which in days of persecution our ancestors guarded with steel, and against which all the tortures of steel were of no avail, either in the field, or in the

prison, or in the council-chamber of the oppressor, we now guard, in times of toleration, by a reverent spirit that owns no other mode of worship than solemu meditation and humility in the presence of God. That spirit of unostentatious, unadorned, and austere simplicity, has gone deeply into the concerns of our human life. The influence of the Sabbath is not confined to that one single day. The peasantry of Scotland have few other days of rest. But their Saturday night is of itself a milder Sabbath; and all the week through, the mind of the people feels that working hours are gently receding from one kirk-day, and advancing to another. When the "big-ha'-Bible" is shut by the hand, its pages are kept open before the heart. Its contents are known to all-young and old. They carry them in their memories even when they know it not; and there are thoughts of as frequent recurrence, and far deeper import, arising in the heart of the lonely labourer, from that book, than from the traditional poetry or history of his native land, (from the noblest part of which, indeed, it never can be divided,) when, not "in glory and in joy," but in contentment and peace, he

is

"Following his plough upon the mountain-side."

Those high and solemn thoughts-of himself as an immortal being-of his God as a Judge-of his country as the scene of his toils, preparative for beaven, will not easily yield to any other on any day, but not at all on the Sabbath. This we all witnessed, when the King, who, the day before, was hailed from the Palace to the Citadel with successive storms of rising joy from his faithful and devoted subjects, passed through them on the Lord's Day to the place of worship, all standing with heads uncovered, silent, and sedate-nothing heard but a kind and general whisper, invoking blessings on his head at the Throne of Mercy, at whose feet he and they were going to bow down together, for there is no distinction of persons before God.

Happy, contented, and proud of our country, we therefore, as a People, had no boon to beseech from the Royal Hand. He did not come among us to force us, by his graciousness and benignity, to forget for a while what never could be altogether forgotten;

no rankling wounds were with us which his touch was to heal; we wished for no oblivion to gather over the past, for it was to our recollection either bright or serene, or solemn with the present we were well pleased, and to the future we looked forward with perfect confidence, derived from a thorough knowledge of our progressive prosperity, knowledge, and science. We prayed, therefore, that our King might come, not to make us happier, but to see how happy we were that he might with his own eyes behold the placid aspect of a people who were grateful to God for the rank they held among the nations-who knew their own worth - and, knowing it, felt that they had a King of whom proud Scotland might be proud, and to support whose throne they would bring hands steeled by the labours of a life of freedom, and hearts fearless of man in the fear of God.

When, therefore, it was known certainly that the King was come to Scotland, Scotland and all her hills rejoiced. There was no need to tell her what to feel, or how to behave. It was natural, indeed, that some of her many men of genius should try to express some of those emotions experienced by all men who had hearts. And they did so. But under the strong power of present passion, genius is borne down to the level of ordinary thought. There is an intensity of homely human feeling that will not give itself vent in measured words; and which, bursting forth from the eyes, and lips, and gestures, according as the most trifling circumstance brings it to an acmè, makes poor the studied expression even of the most brilliant genius. What need was there to put open or concealed engines at work to make Scotsmen give a glorious welcome to their King? Have we no pride in ourselves, in our cities, in our straths, and in our mountains? No power on earth could have suppressed the strong emotion which majestically spread over the whole land. It is not so long since we had a royal line of our own; and Holyrood, though silent and deserted, had never, in our imaginations, been without its Court and its King. We have been for ever a loyal people; and in nothing, greatly as we love and admire our English brethren, in nothing have we ever envied them but the pos

session of their own Monarch in their own metropolis. Old times, we felt, were about to be revived. The vision of our dreams was to be brightly realized before our waking eyes; and a King, with Scottish blood in his veins, and as nobly adorned with kingly accomplishments as our own James I himself, was about to grace the Halls of his Ancestors, while the royal standard floated in its pomp over the most magnificent city of his empire. We deserve no credit for such feelings; for they come up from the pride of our hearts-and, thinking on our country, we hailed our king.

As the day drew near on which it was hoped his ship might be seen in the horizon from some of the magnificent heights around the city, the national feeling can be described fitly by no other word than-Enthusiasm. We had all of us calmly contemplated the events at hand-had viewed it in all its bright and solemn lights, and thought that we should all receive our King with that due mixture of emotion and calmness becoming a grave and thinking people. But our hearts misgave us at the first peal of thunder from the Castle-hill; and when all the city knew that the King's ship was in the Frith, it was seen that we are not that philosophic people we sometimes are proud to suppose; and that nowhere else does a deeper, more reverent, passionate, and imaginative spirit of loyalty exist, than in Scotland.

It had been known from the first that the King was to confine his visit to Edinburgh. Edinburgh, therefore, was now indeed a striking city. All the nobility of Scotland-all her gentry the strength of her peasantryand thousands on thousands of her artizans from her many flourishing towns, all poured into the metropolis. Every countenance was happy; every figure was becomingly apparelled; every action of the immense crowd was, even in the utmost fervour of their excitation, decent,-we had almost said dignified, as if the poorest in the crowd had felt a respect for himself, and determined, as if the eye of Majesty was to single him out in the throng, to demean himself with spirit and propriety before the King.

Edinburgh, during this season of the year, is deserted by many of its first inhabitants; but now the stream of life

was heard louder than it ever had been since it was a city. It must have been interesting to the least observant, to walk the long, wide, spacious streets. One saw passing along, old men with weather-beaten faces, and sometimes silvery hairs, that spoke, in language not to be misunderstood, of the hail-blasts of the hills,-men come from afar, from the dwellings of poverty, but not of want,-with intelligent countenances and stately steps, unbowed by age, such as at one look we knew feared God and honoured the King. Here, was to be seen the bright-faced and wondering peasantboy from the country school, now for a few holidays shut up; and there some ancient grandam, leading in her hand her children's children, that they might tell in their distant valleys, that they had seen the King. Here walked men who appeared to have served their country many long years ago, and who now forgot its real or imagined ingratitude in that loyalty which made them scorn their wounds received in youth, and which now makes them proud of them in their old age. In no other country is there a greater variety of original character than in our own. The rich and the poor are often connected by fine and almost imperceptible gradations; and where the first men in the land are often sprung from the bosom of the people, there is a pride of worth and successful talent, which claims and receives equality with the pride of birth and hereditary rank. The minister of religion, famous for eloquence, or venerable for piety, is not ashamed, but proud, to walk by the side of his humble parents, who live in their own retired cot-house. He who has commanded armies or navies, honours the grey hairs of his peasant father; and the merchant, whose aid government may have required in the day of need, does not forget the poor men of his native village. On such a great occasion, when the honour of the country was concerned, no man was forgetful of his own; and that could not be better preserved than by guarding all the sanctities of life from forgetfulness or shame, and shewing Scotland as it was, "in cute et intus." The collected people were therefore, though a variegated, yet an harmonious mass, and there was as much nationality displayed by the lower as

by the higher orders, while to an eye that knew how to look on it, the whole was amalgamated by a spirit of respectful attachment and pride. To those who had not leisure or inclina tion to study in detail, the whole mass together was animating, beautiful, and magnificent.

The King did not arrive for some days after he had been expected, so that the spirit of friendship, as well as loyalty, had time to be breathed into, and to circulate through the loyal assemblage. Friends from the most distant parts of the kingdom recognised each other; a constant greeting and grasping of hands was seen on the streets; there was a feast, or a festival, or a rehearsal, in every house; and there could not be a better preparation of heart, mind, and soul, for the reception of a King, than the joyous, exhilarating, and unrestrained intercourse of friendship and social glee, that now prevailed among so many of his subjects.

Soon as the King's vessel was seen in the Frith, it was felt that he was in Scotland. Many thousand eyes were fixed upon it from the hills, and from many a lofty range of building whose windows, unthought of in that aerial wilderness of the "Old Town," command, one and all of them, perhaps the noblest prospect in the world. All the signals had been published over the city, by which the people were to be instructed of their Sovereign's movements; and every ear was open to hear the Castle guns. But the day was decidedly overcast; and the King's entrance into such a city was not, if possible, to be under a cloud. So we were told that the King was not to land-and in a few seconds his resolution was known to three hundred thousand people. All felt that his resolution was right—and there was but one wish-one prayer, among all the vast multitude, that to-morrow's sun would come forth like a giant from the sea, and do justice to Edina, the city of Palaces, with her Castle and her cliffs, and her pillared Hill, and the Mountain of the old heroic British King.

Never was there a bolder, brighter, more beautiful day, than that "tomorrow." The high blue arch of heaven girdled the city, with here and there a palace-like pile of clouds.