Even as early as the levee day, those persons had found that they were not in their proper element, and the discovery had become more plain and palpable every day. Their first and fondest hopes were that each would be made a peer; then they came down to baronets; next to simple knights; and again each would have been pleased if the King had given him a snuff-box,--or even, latterly, a pinch of snuff. But all that the King gave was an Irish giving--he gave himself no trouble about them; and the whole court, or, as tails were the fashion, the whole royal tail, from the Right Honourable Robert Peel, Secretary of State for the Home Department, to Sir Patrick Walker, Knight, Usher (not, as some say, of the white feather,) but of the White Rod, followed at the hinder parts of its royal master. Even with regard to the counties, there were few of the men in office who met with much regard. A Scotch lord-lieutenant has commonly a very capacious swallow himself; thus whatever the minor officers happen to pick up is only at second hand through him; and upon the occasion alluded to, a few wary wights who gave themselves airs haughty and tyranic enough, while in their own localities, might be seen twittering after the great man who made them, just as Irish beggars twitter after a mail-coach. But hope is like the sun, it ever rises the soonest, and sets the latest, upon the most elevated point; and so, ere the last and lingering ray had gone down upon the pinnacle of royalty, the middle men of Scotland and of the Athens were dark as Erebus. Long before that feast of which they were forbidden to eat, and that solitary honour to Provost Arbuthnot which they were forbidden to witness, the greater part of the “bodies” had taken their knapsacks and their departure. For a day or two previous, they who one little week before had looked down not only upon great merchants and little squires, but absolutely upon the nobles of the land, might be found at the corners and crossings of streets, begging a bow from the poorest of their townsmen.