Fortunately the Society was sitting,--doing its incubation, upon a refutation of Aristotle’s poetics by Sir George M’Kenzie, of Coul, Bart., and a proposal for lighting all the roads in Scotland with putrid fish-heads, by Sir John Sinclair. The Lord President opened his mouth and his case; and each learned head nodded with the solemnity of that of a Jupiter. The trumpet-call, blown through the nose by a bandana handkerchief, summoned to the charge the commodity of brains that each possessed; and each having returned the bandana to its place, looked as wise as the goddess of the Elder Athens, or even as her sacred bird. The general question propounded to them ran thus,--“What was to be done, and by whom?” and the deliverance of their wisdoms was, that “Every thing ought to be done, and every body ought to do it”--a response surpassing in profoundity any thing ever uttered by the Pythoness herself. The countenance of the dignified delegate was brought parallel to the ceiling; his eyes and mouth had a contest as to which could become the wider; and, he Macadamized the question by breaking it into smaller pieces: “What should they say to the King; what should they give him to eat; and how should they demean themselves?” It was resolved, as touching the first, that they should say very little, for fear of errors in propriety or in grammar; but that they should put in motion the addressing-machinery, of which official men in Scotland had so often felt the benefit, and give, in “change for a Sovereign” as it were, two hundred and forty of those copper coins, for their own benefit, and that of the royal closet. The second point was more puzzling: A king would not care for sheep’s-head or haggis, and as for French cookery, that would be no rarity. Some lamented that the Airthrie whale was petrified, and that Dr. Barclay’s elephant was nothing but bones; and Sir John Sinclair recommended three mermaids dressed entire,--of which he assured them there were plenty on the coast of Caithness. Upon this point there was a difference of opinion; and they resolved to board the King upon the enemy, by getting ten fat bucks from that notorious Whig the Honourable W. Maule, as his Grace of Montrose had only one to spare. Upon the third point their decision was equally summary and clear, “Every one was to do the best that he could.”