Upon hurrying into the street,--into that Princes’ street, which, as I afterwards learned, is at certain seasons of the year the favourite lounge of the Athenian dandies, and at certain hours of the day the favourite haunt of the Athenian fair, who resort thither as the clock strikes four, to feast their fair and anxious eyes upon the self-important forms of dashing advocates, the more dapper and pursey ones of pawkie writers to his Majesty’s signet, or the attenuated striplings of the quill--the future Clerks and Jefferys, who at that hour are returning from the harvest of law and profits to such feast as awaits them in ample hall or elevated cock-loft, according to their talents, their connexions, or their purses;--upon hurrying into that street, in the expectation of feasting my eyes upon the natural and architectural glories of the city, I found that those glories were in the mean time veiled in the maddening preparations of a whole people, who had come from every portion of the main land, and from the remotest isle of Thulè, to wonder at and to admire that mightiest marvel of human nature--a king. So novel and so varied were the costumes, so unexpected and so singular were the features and expressions, and so uncouth and Babylonish were the voices, that the eye and the ear were confounded, the judgment could not understand, and the memory could preserve no record. Here you might see some brawny and briefless barrister--the younger son of a loyal family, with a pedigree at least twice as long as its rental, with trowsers and jacket _à la_ Robin Hood, and huge blue bonnet adorned with the St. Andrew’s cross and a turkey-cock’s feather--looking for all the world like a chimney-sweep’s Jack-o’-the-Green, or a calf dressed entire and garnished with cabbage-leaves; while close by him trotted a loyal toast-composing crown-lawyer, with his hinder end cased in a phillibeg, a feathered bonnet, at least a third of his own height, an iron-hilted sword somewhat more than the whole, and a dirk that might have served for a plough-share, puffing and blowing under the weight of his own importance, and the accoutrements of the Celtic society. In close juxtaposition with these was a genuine _Glhuine dhu_, plaided, plumed, and whiskered, and looking as if all the kings of the earth were nothing to that swaggering chieftain, of whose _tail_ he formed no inconsiderable portion. In another place you could catch the broad face and broader bonnet of a lowland farmer of the old school, cased in one uniform garb of home-made blue, with brass buckles to his shoes, a brass key suspended to his watch by a tough thong of black leather, greasy enough,--holding solemn colloquy with that reverend member of the Scottish Kirk, to whom he acted in the capacity of ruling elder, about the danger of compromising the interests of the Whig or _high-flying_ part of that establishment, during the _avatar_ of so many Tories. The reverend gentleman himself was no bad sight. His