The operation of those feelings, or prejudices, or call them what you will, produced upon the occasion of which I am speaking, a scene, or rather a succession of scenes, of a more intense and powerful interest than any which I had ever witnessed, or, indeed, could have pictured to myself in the warmest time and mood of my imagination. I had thought the thronging of the people to Edinburgh a ridiculous waste of time; I had laughed till every rib of me ached, at the fantastic fooleries of the Celts and Archers, and the grotesque array of the official men; and founding my expectations upon these, I had made up my mind that the whole matter was to be a farce or a failure. But I had taken wrong data: I had formed my opinion of Scotland from the same persons that, to the injury and the disgrace of Scotland, form the channel through which the British Government sees it; and therefore I was not prepared for that solemn and soul-stirring display,--that rush of the whole intellect of a reflective, and of the whole heart of a feeling people, adorned and kept in measured order, by that intermixture of moral tact and of national pride, which was exhibited to the delighted King, and the astonished courtiers. It seemed as though hundreds of years of the scroll of memory had been unrolled; and that the people, carrying the civilization, the taste, and the science, of the present day along with them, had gone back to those years when Scotland stood alone, independent in arms, and invincible in spirit. As, to the shame of the literature of Scotland, and more especially to that of the Athens--who arrogates to herself the capability of saying every thing better than any body else, no account of this singular burst of national feeling has appeared, except the gossiping newspaper-reports at the time, and a tasteless _pot pourri_, hashed up of the worst of these, with scraps of gazettes, and shreds of addresses,--in which, more especially the latter, it would be vain to look for any trace of the spirit of the people,--it is but an act of common justice in me to devote a few pages to it, though I know well that I shall fail of the effect which I am anxious to produce. In order, as much as I can, to guard against this, I shall divide the remainder of this chapter, (which, in spite of me, will be rather a long one,) into as many sections as there were acts in the drama of the King’s visit. The first of these will of course be, THE PROCESSION TO HOLYROOD. ----------“He comes, he comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.”