Among the many very friendly invitations extended to me about this time, there was one which I cannot omit to notice in this place.--I was invited to take a seat at the _Royal Highland Society's_ annual dinner, at which his Grace the Duke of Richmond presided. The name of this society explains its character, and most of the guests at the table were in full highland dress, with their kilts, and with the badges and plaids of their peculiar clans. The scene was altogether a very picturesque one, and I observed that their chiefs wore the eagle's quills for the same purpose and in the same manner that the Indians do; but I did not see any of them painted red, as the Indians paint them, to adorn their heads as symbols of war when they are going to battle. The banqueting hall was beautifully arranged, and two of Her Majesty's pipers from the Palace, in the most gorgeous Highland dress, were perambulating the table "in full blast" whilst we were eating. The Duke of Richmond, who is an easy, affable, and entirely unostentatious man, and the best president at a convivial table that I ever saw, offered the customary healths, of--the Queen--the Prince--the Duke, &c., which were drunk with the usual enthusiasm, and after that proceeded to pay his ingenious and judicious compliments to individuals at the table, by alluding, in the most concise and amusing manner, to their exploits or other merits, and then proposed their healths. After we had all joined in the uproar of--Hip, hip, hips,--with one foot on our chairs and the other on the table, in a number of such cases, he arose and said-- "Gentlemen, I now rise quite confident of your approbation of the sentiment I am to propose, and the sentiments I am to offer. The nations of the earth, like the individuals in the different branches of a great family, stand in certain degrees of relationship towards each other; and as those degrees of consanguinity are more or less remote, so are the friendships and attachments of those nations for each other. Now, gentlemen, as an individual component part of one of the great nations of that great national family, I feel proud to say, that there are two of that family so closely related, not only in commercial interests, but by blood, as almost to identify them in an unity of existence.--The relationship that I speak of, gentlemen (and which I believe will be familiar to many of you, as married men), is that of parent and child." At this period commenced a tremendous cheering, and all eyes seemed to be in a rotary motion, endeavouring to fix upon the representative of that nearly related country on whom the next responsibility was to fall. His Grace proceeded:--