The pilgrimage from the Holyrood to the castle, and by Princes Street back to the Holyrood, seemed, to judge from the state of the weather, to be peculiarly alarming or offensive to the “prince of the power of the air,” as well as to the monarch of the British isles. In all the former doings there had been something beyond the mere parading in the street. The procession from Leith was a matter of necessity, and furthermore it was exceedingly novel and interesting in itself; the levee, the court, and the drawing-room, were part of the usual machinery of the state; the court before the throne, and the closet behind, for the receipt of addresses, “according to their generations,” were what the addressing parties could not have been happy without, and though these had been disappointed of the honours and rewards which they had fondly expected would result at the time, yet they fondly hoped that they had “done a do” which would lead to great things in the sequel; and even the dances had brought folks together, and might also have their fruits thereafter; but that the King should be drawn along the whole length of the Cannon-gate and High Street, work his way through the ugly gates and awkward passages to the half-moon battery of the castle, then pull off his hat, give three cheers in concert with the bawlings of the crowd, and then go back to Holyrood by a more circuitous route, was so profound a piece of wisdom,--so much a masterstroke of the good taste of the Great Unknown, and the sage politics of the Athenian tories, as to be by much too deep even for royal comprehension. It seemed too, that none of those counsellors which the King had taken with him from England could fathom its profundity. Sir William Curtis indeed pleaded the lord mayor of London’s pilgrimages to Kew and Rochester Bridge, as being precedents exactly in point; but those who knew the etiquette of courts better, scouted all precedents which could originate within Temple Bar,--partly, because they originate with those who arrogate to themselves the power of closing that gaping portal against the King, and, partly, because nothing possessed in the city is at all acceptable but its money. The King himself scouted the pilgrimage as a piece of idle foolery: declared, that he had seen the assembled people in his progress to the palace; that he had received the noblemen, gentlemen, official men, and addressing men, at levees and courts; that he had sustained a general attack of the ladies at the drawing-room, and sundry particular attacks at the dances; and that, if his Scottish subjects were not yet satisfied with gazing at him, he would hold other levees and other drawing-rooms, till the humblest boors, burghers, and baillies, with their wives, should pass muster before him, provided it were done as a King ought to do such things, in his state apartments at Holyrood; but, that to have him shown along the streets, as they would