hear the notes of flutes and fiddles issuing from those crypts and holes about the hall whence no sounds are accustomed to issue but the dronings of the law. The King, with his selected (I am not bound to say select) guests, had a sort of line of partition, but all “below the salt,” there seemed to be no law of aggregation. The man who had fought at almost every degree of the earth’s circumference sat in close juxtaposition with him who had warred merely with words; he who had done what in him lay to pull down the glory of the old Athens, was amid those who would copy that glory for the new; the sinecurist was at the very ear of him by whom all sinecures are denounced; he who had ploughed the wave was companion to him who had only tilled the ground; and the peer and the bailie were on the most friendly footing. Nor was the varied _status_ in life and expression of countenance, the only thing which gave richness to the harmony. The sober blush of the heads of the Kirk, and the sombre gowns of the Edinburgh magistrates, made a fine contrast with the brightness of stars and ribbons, and epaulettes and lace, and the mingling colours of the Celtic chiefs. There were not many in the Highland garb: the Earl of Fife, Sir Even Mac Gregor, and the Macdonald, were the only three that fell under my inspection; and from the number of uniforms that every where predominated, the party had a good deal of a military air. In the arrangements too, the senses of the civic authorities, which are not upon any occasion very great, appeared to be a little bewildered; for there was no page to carry a bumper from the royal cup to the Mordecais “whom the King delighted to honour.” The only peculiarity of the feast, apart from the number and variety of the guests, was the _reddendo_ of William Howison Craufurd, of Braehead, who came with a basin and water, that his majesty might wash his hands immediately after he had satisfied himself of the dainties before him. There was a certain knot of persons who struck me as being determined to monopolize the whole attention of the King; and, upon the present occasion, two awkward boys, one a son and the other a nephew of the Great Unknown, assisted the laird of Braehead in carrying the basin and ewer, but they came and went unheeded. The tradition upon which this service of the basin is founded, is worth repeating.