Sundry Qualities in Supplement p. 305. Throughout the Volume, there will be found _attic_ touches of real character, in illustration of the general and local truths. THE MODERN ATHENS. CHAPTER I. THE AUTHOR AND THE KING ARE INDUCED TO VISIT THE MODERN ATHENS. “Ego et Rex meus.”--WOLSEY. The renown of the Scottish Metropolis,--that city of wonders and of wisdom, of palaces and of philosophy, of learned men and of lovely women, had sounded so long and so loudly in their ears, that toward the close of summer 1822, the Author of these pages and the Sovereign of these realms, were induced to pay it a visit, each in that state and with that pomp and circumstance which was becoming his station in the world. The one, in that unmarked guise which is fitting for one who lives more for the glory of others than of himself, and who sets more value upon the single sentence which preserves his memory when he is no more, than upon all that he can possess or enjoy in this world. The other, in that glow and grandeur, which gains in intensity what it stands some chance of losing in duration,--which is the grand idol of its day; and which, when that day has closed, is gathered to the sepulchre of its fathers, to make room for another--and the same. The Author of these pages must not be blamed, or deemed disloyal, for having given his own name the precedence of that of his Sovereign. Every man in reality prefers himself before all the sovereigns in the world; and wherefore should not one man state this preference in words? The courtier declares that all his services are devoted to his king,--but he devotes them no longer than that king can afford to pay for them: the soldier swears that he will die in defence of the crown,--but he never dies till he is compelled by the superior strength or skill of another. Even upon general grounds, therefore, there is candour if not courtesy in this order of precedence.