The monarch having thus opened a levee for the honour of his Scottish subjects generally, and allowed her official men to drop their honeyed papers and parchments at the court and in the closet,--having devoted two whole days to the hard hands of country lairds, and the greasy lips of parsons and bailies, it was naturally to be concluded, that he would be pretty well saturated of salutation from the men of Scotland, and long for the approach of Scottish women, as the traveller, in the sandy desert, longs for the green spot and the glassy spring. Nor could the desire have been wholly confined to his majesty. The anxiety of the Scottish fair was bent, like the bow of Diana when the arrow is drawn to the barbs; their preparations, positive and negative, for this high honour, had been long, laborious and self-denying; and they were not without feeling that four whole days should not have interposed their twelve-month-looking-lengths between the sight and salutation of their King. It is true, that in Scotland generally, and in the Athens in particular, woman, that grand barometer of civilization, has of late risen many degrees. The time has not long gone by, at which females were mere beasts of burden in rural affairs, and young girls were in many places obliged to ply as ferry-boats. I myself have seen half a score of stout and sinewy Highlanders lying snuffing upon a hillock of manure, while their wives and daughters were bearing heavy baskets of the same to the fields, while all that the lords of the creation condescended to do was to fill the baskets; and I have been--no, I have not been, I was only offered to be--carried across sundry Highland rivers, upon the shoulders of the fairest nymphs which adorned their banks. But the Athens has got the better of all this, and her daughters have not only reduced the tyranny of their husbands to “flytings” and frailties, but have learned to pay them back with interest even in these. Thus the delay which had taken place in consequence of the grand parade of the men, and the small extra drill of the official men, by no means tended to lessen the commodity of curtain-lectures. There were other causes of vexation: the means by which a sufficiency of beauty had been procured were more precious than permanent; the delay of hope not only made the heart sick, but tended to pucker the skin, and, what was more vexatious than all, these careful dames, after they had trimmed themselves for the royal salute, would submit themselves to the salutation of no mere man in the interim. Wherefore, if any casualty had prevented this glorious feast, or even protracted it, the _primum mobile_ of the city might have stood still, and the Athens might have been the Athens no more.