Amid this darkness and din, the royal barge rowed softly towards the Scottish strand, and the sovereign of these realms was the first to set his foot upon Scottish ground, while the author of these pages occupied the very pinnacle of the Scottish palace. The magistrates of Leith, all tingling and but ill at their ease, stood shaking and speechless to receive him; but their blushes were a good deal spared by those grand monopolists of Caledonian loyalty, the lords president, justice clerk, baron register, and advocate, and that mighty master of the ceremonies, and that mightier memorialist, (who, it was hoped, would cut the thing into everlasting brass,) Sir Walter Scott. But though the monopolizing lords blushed not, they blanched a little, when they found the eyes of the king turning everywhere with the same beaming delight upon the people, whose appearance and whose conduct showed him that Scotland, if not the most polished, was by no means the least polished jewel of his crown; and the baronet, who haply was brought there, chiefly from the eclât which his literary renown would confer upon his less gifted but more official associates, found perchance that the glory of an author, however high in itself, and however rewarded, is but a tiny instrument of Royal joy. The guardsmen, who very judiciously were chiefly either Scottish citizens or Scottish soldiers, succeeded, not in keeping order among their countrymen, but in preventing breaches of it among themselves; but the _Craggan nan phidiach_,--the Raven of the Rock of Glengarry, was of too bold spirit, and too bustling wing, to be so restrained. To prevent accidents, this mighty personage, who had stood up bonnetted, dirked, and pistolled, at the King’s coronation, to the utter dismay of the ladies of England, had been sent upon this occasion to keep watch and ward upon the state-coach; but when the coach had taken its place in the procession, the chieftain stepped a little way out of his, bustling through the crowd to give Mac Mhic Alistair Mhor’s welcome; and it was not till the Lion of England had knitted his brows and shaken his mane, that the Raven of the Rock flew back to her station. Onward moved the procession, through avenues of people, and arches of triumph,--one of which latter spoke as much as ten volumes upon the learning of the Athens, and the ignorance of the _mercatores_ of Leith: “_O felicem diem!_” said that side of the first triumphant arch which looked towards the Athens; “O happy day!” quoth the one which smiled upon the lack-Latin lieges of Leith.