During Queen Victoria’s memorable progress through her metropolis in the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, I was seated with two ladies of my family in the stand set up for members of Parliament in Palace Yard. The long hours of waiting on that shining summer forenoon were enlivened by the march of many regiments, headed by their bands, passing to their appointed places in the route. It was a shifting pageant of stirring sight and sound. Presently, over Westminster Bridge came the Seaforth Highlanders stepping to the lively strains of _The Muckin’ o’ Geordie’s Byre_.[8] The effect was indescribable--the swing of kilts and sporrans, the dark waving plumes, the gallant but simple melody, thrilled all spectators. As for myself, I felt a big lump in my throat, and I was ashamed to feel something trickle down both cheeks. Yet am I a Lowland Scot, if anybody is; so far as I am aware, I can lay no claim to any strain of Celtic blood. If such an one was so deeply moved by the passing of a single Highland regiment, why should not all the Scottish regiments be clothed in the romantic garb of Old Gaul, with the desirable result of rendering the Lowland corps as well-beloved by the people as the Highlanders? If this were carried out, it would be esteemed a privilege by the former and a compliment by the latter. Objection on the score of economy would be raised because of the cost of the full-dress feather-bonnet, which, though picturesque, is but a tailor’s parody of the bonnet of the _duine uasail_. Let the Lowland regiments be content, then, with the Glengarry. Nobody who has seen a battalion of the London Scottish marching through Pall Mall, and listened to the comments of those who crowd to the club windows at the sound of the pibroch, will tell you that that fine corps would gain anything in soldierly appearance by wearing feather-bonnets. That head-dress was condemned in 1882, but in deference to Queen Victoria’s wishes it was restored. Its abolition had previously been hotly challenged in the House of Commons by certain perfervid Scots, one of whom volunteered a quaint explanation to an honourable member who had ventured to express some doubt about ostrich feathers being an appropriate ornament for a Scottish soldier. He gravely assured the House that the costume had its origin in Sir Ralph Abercromby’s Egyptian campaign in 1801, when the Highland soldiers picked up ostrich feathers in the desert and stuck them in their bonnets as a protection from the sun!