Nothing could exceed in breadth of humour, the countenances of many of Scotland’s important sons, as they came, with eyes and mouth set wide to worship and to wonder, into the presence-chamber. Not a few of them, when they raised their “leaden eyes that loved the ground,” in lack-lustre astonishment, from the drab-coloured drugget which had been nailed down by Mr. Trotter as fit carpeting for their feet, beheld more kings than were exhibited to Banquo in the wizard glass. As is not unfrequent with men whose wits are neither great, nor altogether at home, not a few of them mistook the right one; and the portly Sir William Curtis, who was “dressed in tartan sheen,” with a kilt marvellously scant in its longitude, and dangling a bonnet, in which was displayed a grey goose feather of the largest size, took the edge off the loyalty of a full third; while his great grace of Montrose, who was drudging at the honours of the day, monopolized another, leaving only thirty-three and one-third per cent. of the loyalty of Scotland to be inflicted directly upon the King. It is needless to tell how brief were the salutations: there were two thousand persons who had to make their entrée, their bow, and their exit, in about a hundred minutes, which was, as nearly as possible, one second to each act of each person; and thus, however discordant might be the bearing of the different _bodies_, the unity of time was admirably preserved. The ceremony came upon them like an electric shock, or rather they came upon it as moths come upon the flame of a candle,--a buz, a singe of the wings, and down they dropt into insignificance. “Hech, Sirs!” said a brawny yeoman from the kingdom of Fife, as he attempted in vain to squeeze his minimum of opera hat upon his maximum of skull,--“Hech, Sirs! but its quick wark this! We might hae gotten a snuff wi’ him at ony rate;” and, as he strode across the court, and found himself fairly without the great gate, he fumbled over his head-piece with his paws, saying, “I’m thankfu’ that it’s upo’ my shouthers after a’!” Those who attended the civic authorities, who stuck to each other as closely as if they had been in their council-chambers at home, wore faces of the most broad and boundless delight; for, of the men of more ample calibre, the tories looked blank, because they were elbowed and perhaps outnumbered by the whigs in the presence of the King. Some of the clods of the valley lost themselves in the long galleries and cold corridors of the Holyrood; and, after all was over, and the fatigued Monarch had retired to Dalkeith, a few of them were heard at the windows bawling, like Sterne’s Starling, “I can’t get out.” So ended the levee; and the King and the people rested for the sabbath without any thing of remarkable occurrence.