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.