and continued pealing away in darkness, like one thunder cloud answering another.

But fate was against the honours of the day. The wind suddenly changed, and brought with it a drizzling mist. This is the country of capricious skies. Sun-shine comes like a stranger, pays a brief, reluctant visit, and is gone; mist is congenial to the landscape. The crowd still lingered with patient and dripping loyalty. It was after some pause announced, that the King's landing was postponed till to-morrow. The gazers now dispersed rapidly; the roads were choked with disbanded troops, and flying functionaries; the pomps of the day were utterly drowned, and the evening closed in drenching and dismay.

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To while away the hour, I took up a pamphlet on Bonaparte's character, written since his death. The topic is almost exhausted; in a century or two it may start into renewed importance, and give warning against some military Machiavel. The criminal, dangerous in his life, becomes useful in his anatomy. The pamphlet examines Napoleon in the various lights of war and politics, and pronounces him altogether unrivalled in the preparation for a campaign, in the art of attaching the soldiery, and in the great faculty of discovering the peculiar talents of men; but, as a General, only of the second rank, sanguinary, precipitate, and incapable of resource. As a politician, more crafty than wise, aud more obstinate than firm; foolish enough to be an unbeliever in human principle, and a scorner of the human race. Calculating on the universal weakness, shame, and corruption of mankind, and thus powerless when he encountered men who were neither to be terrified nor corrupted;-no poltroon, but selfish, and, in his monstrous and unmanly love of self, careless of being stigmatized for deficiency of courage. A man of powerful intellect, but utterly heartless-a dwarf, all head-a strange, misshapen combination of strong faculties and abortive

sensibility, full of tricks of mischief, and imbued with an instinctive spite against his species.

The work is ably written. With me the chief wonder of Napoleon is the strange facility of abandoning his feelings of eminence with the opportunities of their exercise. On the throne, full of magnificent projects, of daring courage, of boundless, fearless, sleepless ambition. Off the throne, mean, querulous, and absorbed in contemptible cares. A thunderbolt fallen to the earth, and at once transformed from a ball of fire into a stone. Is it, that to some men sudden exaltation is like vision to the blind, a new sense, filling them with the splendours of a new world, but lost, covering them with their old ignorance? To me, it is of all things the most incomprehensible to see a mind that has once sat at the high feast of Dominion, stooping to enjoy meaner life. There is a depth of fall, like a depth of sorrow, that ought to refuse to be comforted. I can conceive a great mind, flung from a height of supremacy that compels it to seek a wild and haughty self-congratulation in its disdain of petty indulgence, and solicit a last, stern consolation in the darker dungeon, and the heavier chain; an overthrown spirit, that, if it must no more spread the wing towards the gates of its ancient glory, scorns to hover round the twilight of the world, but plunges down at once, and defies the torture and the gloom. Napoleon contradicts all theory. There must be minds that, like summer meteors, spontaneously ignite in the upper regions of the world, but near the ground collapse and die. The suddenness of his rise, and the degrading facility of his adaptation to disgrace, remind me of the Arabian Nights' tale. When the bottle was opened, the Genie expanded into a giant; when the fisherman cajoled him into entering again, the giant narrowed himself into his old dimensions at once, and without a struggle filled the bottle for

ever.

The King landed this morning. The sun shone out, and the whole pomp of Edinburgh was in the streets. Leith-walk, the avenue into town, was VOL. XII.

thick with a tumult of civic deputations; cavalry, Highlanders, citizens turned into constables, very portentous and self-admiring in their new

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clothes and painted staves. The houses were piled with scaffolds, soliciting the curious, at three shillings a seat; banners, with many an unintelligible inscription and frantic device, were hung from the windows; and the whole vista was mob and exultation.

I had other thoughts than to be fixed in balcony or scaffold, and waded down to Leith through the multitude. As I made my way deeper, I passed a long succession of heralds, and archers, men of camp and court, marshalled with their fronts towards the city, and impatient till the King filled up the train, and sent them forwards to witch the general eye "with noble horsemanship."

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But no gazer upon earth is less fitted for glories of this rank, than I am. Surcoats and tabards delight not me, nor lancers neither. The most exuberant plumage that ever turned an ancient general into a mountebank, has lost the power of extracting my smile or sigh. I found better occupation with people. I walked by those long scaffolds, as by the shelves of a vast museum. Edinburgh is now crowded with strangers, but they are almost exclusively Scotch. There are but few English here; even the spirit of the court, that enduring quality, which no dangers frighten, and no labours tire," within the realm of England, has shrunk from the Border, and the King has been delivered, bare of the peerage of St James's, into the late loyalty of the Scottish Barons. But in recompense, Scotland had poured out her rigid abundance. Sutherland had sent up; Shetland was not unmoved. The Hebrides had mustered their visages of the rock and the shower; and Berwick had the representatives of her smoke and shine. The whole mighty volume of dried specimens the whole herbarium, was open before me. I perhaps saw it to rare advantage. The excitement of the time had brought out, and given sudden character to the lineaments of the national physiognomy-had injected it with life. Thousands, and tens of thousands of faces, were of course inaccessible to the process, and could be of interest to none but Jameson, and others of the curious in petrifactions. But in some, I thought I could discover the living commentary on the national annals. The grave and bold brow of the old Romish bigotry, and at long intervals,

separated by the acrid and joyless visage of fallen puritanism, a countenance of noble beauty, the pale and lofty forehead, the deep eye, and the coalblack hair, that brought back the memory of Charles, and, with it, of his chivalry and his misfortunes.

The Highlanders made a striking part of the show. They were ranged in small bodies in the interstices of the procession, and looked a bold remnant of the days of the sword. There are about three hundred of them under six or eight heads, a minute representation of the mountain strength of Scotland. But the difficulty was to keep them at home. Those young Douglases "all longed to follow to the field their warlike lords." Lady Gwydyr, the descendant of the Duke of Perth, might, instead of a troop of fifty, have had a whole emigration.— The King's coming was as the sound of a trumpet through the hills; and the streets of Edinburgh would have been flooded with kilts transmitted through three generations back, and claymores brown with the rust of the forty-five. But this formidable volunteering was wisely prohibited. The mountain blood is still hot, and the mountain memory strong. Modern law suits have added their venom to hereditary offence, and it was considered perfectly probable, that some of these gallant sans-culottes would have taken the earliest opportunity to wipe away the insults of pleas, and parchments, and other atramentarious atrocities, in the blood of the successful.

The Highlanders are proud of their costume. Pride is a stirring sensation, and, therefore, valuable among the soul-congealing hills of those aborigines. But the whole fabric is a direct answer to the theory that founds beauty upon utility. Nothing can be fitter for their bitter latitude. There is a palpable defiance of storm in the folds of the tartan; nothing short of a blast that swept away the head could wrench away the little plumeless closecap; the kilt would to our southern cuticle leave grievous entrance to the seasons; but custom renders obtuse, and the Highlander, wrapt in his plaid, must be as impenetrable to the tempest, as the rock, that he makes his burrow. But all this wrapping and refuge is no more picturesque than any other bale of brown blankets.

A list of the Clans has been pub

At twelve the royal salute for the King's leaving the yacht was fired, and his barge was seen winding its slow way through a crowd of plea sure-boats, that absolutely covered the water round the frigates. The shore was lined with officials of every colour, accumulated judges, bailies, and he was received with honest acclamagenerals. On his Majesty's landing, bows. But the charm was completed tion, which he returned with graceful on its being ascertained that he had surmounted his cockade with thistle and heather. Such are the true accesses to the national heart—simple things but honourable; and no wise man will overlook their value; and no Sovereign was ever fortunate, that disdained to feel their influence on the feelings of men.

The procession then set forwards, and was extremely showy as it spread out. The Lord Lyon (Lord Kinnoul) curvetting and caracoling his handsome horse, in front of a cloud of heralds and horsemen, would have been irresistible in the eye of a dame of the 12th century. His golden coronet, his crimson mantle, flowing to the ground, his broidered boot and golden spur, were worthy of the conservator of the pure pedigrees of this most pedigree-loving land of the earth. Sir Alexander Keith, the Knight Marischall, with his grooms and esquires, was only second to the Lord Lyon. Sir Patrick Walker, the White Rod, with his equerries, also made a most splendid appearance. A long alternation of cavalry and infantry, city dignitaries, and Highlanders, followed. And at the end of the view, surrounded by the royal guard of Archers, Glengarry and his tail, (who had struggled with feudal fierceness for the place of honour,) and a whole galaxy of starred and scarlet aides-de-camp and generals, was seen, the King.

After some delay in going through the city ceremonies, of receiving keys, and listening to a speech of my Lord Provost, the train moved round by the foot of the Calton-hill towards Holyrood House. The road winds considerably, and for nearly a mile the people had a full view of the King, and the King of the people.

I have been a seeker of sights throughout my life; not of mere shows. No man is more immovable to the glories of gilt coaches, and trumpeters laced to the gorge. My delight has

been, where the magnificent of nature combined with some strong excitement of man. I have seen an army marching over mountains, and spreading glen and crag with expanded banners and glittering steel. I have seen an army hurrying to battle, through a huge, ancient city, that had every roof and window clustered with people, listening, without a voice among them, to the roar of the cannon outside their gates. I have seen a bombardment at night. I have seen a whole city startled from its sleep, by the news that the enemy was at hand. I have been in a fortress, whose immediate assault was expected, the garrison under arms, the burgher troops hastily and sadly gathering to the ramparts, the houses emptied of all their pale population into the streets, and every sound caught as if it were the trumpet of the enemy. Yet above all these, in all but the pain of the interest, was the King's passage to Holyrood.

Scotland, since the union, has known nothing of a King. The descendants of James were but the spectres of royalty, and the coming of their sad and shadowy pomp was the sure omen of national sorrow. But the people had now before them the unquestioned heir of their ancient line, the blood of the Bruce, the reconciler of all their feuds of sovereignty-the doubled right of the Stuart and the Brunswick, was comprised and consummated all in their KING. Sophists and habitual scorners may doubt the feeling that surrounds the title. But it is our nature to honour exalted birth and ancient power. The "Divinity that doth hedge a King," is more than the fine romance of poetry. In Scotland, a whole cloud of high impressions, some of melancholy pride, some rich with memories of feudal grandeur, some hallowed by the sense of noble hazards and heroic sufferings, deepened the natural homage of the name; and multitudes, from its remotest borders, too humble for the affectation of zeal, and too incurious to leave their hills and shores for any pageant of earth, crowded down to see their King.

The Calton-hill is a fine feature in the aspect of Edinburgh. Its face, towards the city, is just of that degree of abruptness which harmonizes with human habitation, the medium between the rude and the tame. But modern taste has perpetrated its usual exploits here, and on the verge of this

hill is perched a column in honour of Nelson, and in contempt of all grace. The Town Dilletanti have at length discovered its resemblance to a chamber candlestick, and take comfort in the fortunate friability of the rock, which is already splitting, and must soon abolish the Nelson column.

The hill is a favourite, and, like all favourites, runs a hazard of being spoiled. A celebrated London architect, availing himself of the popular propensity, has recommended that it should be stocked over with pillar and pyramid without delay. The advice is natural to an architect; no man can resist his calling; and this fine hill will be nothing better than an inordinate pin-cussion.-Oremus pro paupertate Edinensi.

I like the Scotch, their manliness, temperance, clean clothes, and incapability of a jest; but more than all, I like their caution. I find a hundred instances of their reverence for the excellent maxim of the Glasgow Bailie, Never to thrust your arm out farther than you can draw it in again. The improvement of Edinburgh commenced on the south, and it is a miniature of the New Town. I can trace in the little squares, centered with dismal-coloured grass, and pining dandelions, the feeble infancy, the first tremulous and vascillating steps of the spirit which was to cover the sister hill with magnificence. Even in the midst of the ancient town, among wynds and closes, worthy of the Clans and Cacuses of the dark ages, in the ruefulness of those "Great Serbonian bogs" of granite, fierce effluvia, and outer darkness, where streets whole have sunk, I find little spots of architectural terra firma, little nisuses at human dwelling, little, tentative circuses and parallelograms. I am charmed with this, because it is characteristic. There is but one race of mankind who would build a small square before they would venture on a large one. I expected to find the Scotch that considerate people, and I find my theory true. In this prudence, they have built a little Greek house on the Calton, as a preparative to the Parthenon.

They have called it an Observatory; they might more wisely have called it an ice-house. They already had an Observatory, an old hard-featured thing that stood wrapt up in grey rock, like an eternal watchman on the brow of the hill. But they

must try their skill in pediment and pillar, and, as the result, have produced a little three-or-four-cornered thing, like a Ramilies hat squeezed to the top of the hill. It was to have been among the lions of Edinburgh, and strangers were to have wondered and worshipped it at five miles off. But it was found to be the very temple of the winds; Eurus, Notus, and Argestes, made sport of it with impunity. The little Observatory was in hazard of being carried off into the Ocean. To obviate the deportation, they have buried it within walls, where it lies as snug and viewless as an oyster between its valves. The only visible proof of its existence is the extrusion of a leaden cupola, palpably formed on a model, for which no prose of mine shall find a name. After all, it has been a second time discovered, for it was perfectly known before, that the hill is shaken by a passing cart; the more delicate operations of astronomy are thus out of the question, and the rising generation are cheered with the hope of seeing the Sunday sale of cheesecakes added to its present display of a Camera Obscura.

But from this hill, Edinburgh, and all its shows, are seen in the point of view that a painter would love. I tried the slow and gorgeous procession of the day in every scale and terrace of its sides. After mingling with the train below, and being saturated with lacqueys and aides-de-camp, I went up the hill, and saw the multitude at its foot diminished into pigmies. From the top of the Nelson Pillar, the diminution was still more complete : and as the procession rolled away round the heights, and down the declivities of the road, all distinctness was lost, and I could imagine that I saw a mighty serpent, with its long convolutions, here a tinge of darkness, and there a golden scale, until it ga thered in one mass of sunlight and splendour into the Court of Holyrood. On the King's alighting, a salute was fired from all the batteries. This was the finest moment of the day. The coup d'œil was incomparable. It had all the magnificence of a battle, without its terror. Discharges of cannon from the brow of two noble opposite hills, the sides of the valley between, covered with a vast, agitated multitude, that hung, as "one of their own poets hath said,'

"Like the loose crags, whose threatening mass

Lay tottering o'er the hollow pass; As if an infant's touch could urge Their headlong passage down the verge." The air ringing with glorious clamour of bugle and trumpet ;-troops moving backwards and forwards below ;-the hills surmounted with tents and Royal standards;-the Palace crowded with the glitter of arms at one end of the view, and, at the other, the Castle, towering through smoke and fire.

The King's conduct during the day has given great satisfaction. The Scotch were naturally anxious that he should be surprised at their city, and delighted with themselves. No man pays a compliment with more grace than his Majesty ; and his expressions of pleasure and surprise, at the beauty of the general view, and the good order of the people, are repeated with an allowable pride. The whole spirit of his attentions has been popular. His putting off the procession until the weather might enable the citizens to be present without inconvenience,

his personal condescension to every one that approached him,-even the slight matters of his coming in an open carriage, and wearing the thistle in his hat, were proofs of a kindliness and civility, that will make his visit not easily forgotten.

After the Court, at which the King received a promiscuous crowd of law, peerage, and municipality, he went full speed to Dalkeith House, where he is to reside. By this arrangement, he avoids the publicity and staring which the perpetual levee of the mob would provide for him in the Palace. I think it a still more fortunate riddance, that he escapes Holyrood itself. Of all the Royal residences of Europe, this seems to me the most depressing, the most irresistibly sepulchral. Its history is dark with crime and misfortune,-and to me it has the entire past stamped on its grand but sad physiognomy. I have never seen a palace, before whose gate I should be so little surprised to see the scaffold.

A general illumination had been intended for this evening, but the King's departure has postponed it till to-morrow.

This, in London, would have been beyond the power of municipal placards. A gang of glaziers and pickpockets would have been allowed to take the business into their own hands,