like a ram’s tail between the blades of a shepherd’s sheers. And, yonder gaped and wondered the great face of a Glasgow negro-driver, like a Gorgon’s head--not upon the shield of Minerva. Still there was something interesting in the mighty and motley throng: it put one in mind of Noah’s ark, which contained “clean beasts, and beasts that are not clean, and fowls, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth.” The most delectable part of the gathering was the combined clans and the burgh corporations. The former belted like warriors and bellied like weasels, and tricked out for the occasion in their respective tartans of their names, each bearing a sprig of the symbolic tree in his bonnet, a huge claymore in the one hand, and a relay of brogues and stockings in the other, with a great horn snuff-mull thrust into his _sporran_--open and ready for action--hurried along at the _pas de charge_ to their headquarters for the time-being, where they were instantly dispersed into the crowd, thence to reassemble when the bagpipe should frighten the last shadow of night. The corporation-men came in less military but more important guise. Glasgow, the queen of the west, Aberdeen, the glory of the north, Dundee and Perth, the rival empresses of the centre, with Cupar-Fife, Crail, and a hundred others, each charged with a loyal and dutiful address, which had been composed by the town-clerk, revised in the spelling by the schoolmaster, and was to be discharged at the King, in a manner so powerful and point-blank, as to procure knighthood if not earldom for such candle-selling provost, breeches-manufacturing baillie, or other chief magistrate “after his kind,” came on with a splendour and an importance that Scotland never before witnessed. Glasgow, as became her purse and her pride, came blazing like the western star--or rather like a comet whose tail would have girdled half the signs of the zodiac. The van was led by the magistrates, in a coach which previously knew every street and lane of the city, but which was relackered for the occasion, had the city arms emblazoned upon it as large as a pullicate handkerchief, and was drawn by eight grey horses of the genuine Lanarkshire breed,--the thunder of whose feet as they dashed along shook the kirk of Shotts, and had nearly laid Airdrie and Bathgate in ruins. The clatter which they made along Princes’ Street was astounding; the crowd collected in thousands at the din; some cried it was the king himself; but the final opinion was, that it was “naebody but the magestrates o’ Glasgow.”