The day, however, was very unfavourable, a fog shrouded the city, and it rained heavily; still, the King stood up, waved his hat, and spoke to the people, while the cannon from the lower batteries of the Castle, and from the Calton-Hill, and Salisbury Craggs, told the news. Dark as was the scene, it was most sublime. Through one opening of the clouds, one could catch a glimpse of Arthur’s Seat; through another, the smoke of a cannon from the Craggs, and through a third, some tower or turret of the city. Among these, by the way, the finest is the monument erected in St. Andrew’s-Square, to the late Lord Melville. It is a fluted Doric column, with a rich base and capital, and most appropriately surmounted by a bee-hive, in testimony, doubtless, of the countless friends and relatives for whom the noble lord had the means of providing. When the King had escaped from the pleasure of this inspection, he filed off for Dalkeith-House, and the _pecus_, who had been ducked and delighted, retired to evaporate the external moisture by moisture within. The _plebs_ of different places have different modes of expressing their joy or their grief; those of the Athens, whatever be their rank or denomination, and whether in weal or in woe, close the most social as well as the most sad of their exhibitions, by pouring out a drink-offering, and pouring it out abundantly. I must now say something of that act of the royal drama in which the official and loyal men of Scotland gave, before the King, ocular demonstration of how substantially they could eat, and how copiously they could drink. Eating and drinking are, in all civilized countries, and more especially, perhaps, in the British dominions, so closely allied with loyalty, that the bason and the bowl would perhaps be its most appropriate symbols. Corporations have ever been pre-eminent for those demonstrations of support to the throne; and as the Athenian corporation is pre-eminent among corporations in the northern part of this island, so the feastings of that corporation have ever been the fullest and the fattest.