In the train of this goodly leading, there followed full fifty thousand,--or to speak by measure, as number was quite out of the question, full forty-four miles of merchants and makers of muslin; and the vehicles which carried the car-borne part of them were more strange and varied than ever appeared at the triumph of a Roman emperor upon his return from smiting the barbarous nations, and carrying themselves and all their utensils captive. Here you would see the equipage of a rich dealer in turmeric or tobacco, fashionable enough except in its contents; there you were presented with a Glasgow _Noddy_, squeezing forward its lank form like a tile, and dragged by a steed with three serviceable legs, and one eye the worse for the wear; in another place you would meet with a hearse, with a tarpaulin over it to hide the death’s head and the bones, and crammed full of the saints of the Salt-market laid lengthways for the convenience of stowage; while the rear was brought up by an enormous tilted waggon, which, though it was at first conjectured to contain Polito’s collection of wild beasts, was, upon examination, found to be charged very abundantly with that more important and polished matter--the ladies and gentlemen of Paisley and Greenock. The pride of the north had been more than usually upon the _qui vive_. The Provost had been attitudenizing before a great mirror for a week, and getting his pronunciation translated into English by Mr. Megget, of the Academy, for at least a fortnight; the town-clerk had been drudging at “steps” in private with Mr. Corbyn for a month, and the learned Mr. Innes had been applied to, to cast the nativity of the city; and, from the horoscope--Saturn in conjunction with Mars, and Venus lady of the ascendant, it was sagely inferred by the clubbed wisdoms of King’s and Mareschal that the Provost “wad get a gryte mickle purse o’ siller, for the gueed o’ the ceety, forby a triffle to himsel’;” and that, if not a duke, the town-clerk would be a _goose_ at any rate, if both eschewed during their sojourn that hankering after the sex which was portended by the lady Venus being in the middle house. Those polite and philosophic preparations having been made, the state coach, with two cats (the emblems of _bon accord_) the size of a couple of yeanling lambs, gilt with Dutch fulzie, and spotted with coffin black, “all for the sparin’ o’ the cost,” rattled along the bridge of Dee at the tail of six hardy shelties from the Cabrach, “which could mak’ a shift to live upo’ thristles, or fool strae, or ony thing that they cou’d pyke up at a dykeside.” Still, however, this mighty magisterial meteor streamed across Drumthwackit, along the “how o’ the Mearns,” and adoun Strathmore, like an aurora borealis flashing from the pole to the zenith, flickering and crackling, and smelling of brimstone. While its tail drew the third part of the wilie natives of the city; the other two-thirds took their way in barks and steam-boats,