Robert Mudie

“ The advocates are a privileged class, and it is no scandal in them to drudge at their cases. As little is there any harm whatever in oral discussion of any subject imaginable; but if a maid-servant were to hum a tune, an advocate’s wife to give a thump to the piano-forte, or a boarding-school miss to peep into a new novel, the Athens would be in the utmost jeopardy of sinking in the Forth, in which the sinner would have some chance of being ducked. It must not, however, be supposed that among such a people as the Athenians, the Sunday is a day of idleness. ”

“ The Athens herself,—the overtopping and overwhelming part of the Athens,—that part which rises by the power, and extends itself by the weight, of the law, produces nothing whatever. It is as sterile as the Castle rock; and, were it not for the folly of other people, its ascendency would not be so great as it makes the Athens feel. This, however, is a matter for the Scotch themselves; and it sometimes happens, with nations as well as with individuals, that a deformity or a vice is praised and cherished, while beauties and virtues are treated with neglect. ”

“ Those times have, however, gone by, and the Athenian university, pressed down by the general circumstances of the Athens, and yet more by the peculiar circumstances of its own patronage, has sunk to rise no more.
Universities, indeed, have much of the general character of stars,—they shine brightest when all else is dark, and fade, if they do not disappear, when illumination becomes general. While the people, generally speaking, are ignorant, they are lights in the path of learning; but when the people become generally well informed, they are not much better than lumber. ”

“ The Athens boasts of herself as a model of elegance and of taste: I found her a compound of squalour and of vulgarity. She boasts of her philosophy: I found it pursuing thistle-down over the wilderness. She boasts of her literary spirit: I found her literature a mere disjointed skeleton, or rather the cast-skin of a toothless serpent. She boasts of her public spirit: I found almost every man pursuing his own petty interests, by the most sinister and contemptible means ”

“ A crowd, usually formed of the ill-dressed and the idle, run and roar about the carriage; the trumpeters play “God save the King,” the attendants wave their hats and cheer, and the spectacle, having passed through its routine, is no more heeded. In London, for instance, those state processions which the etiquette of the court inflicts upon the sovereign, are not more imposing than a Lord-Mayor’s show; and even the most loyal, unless it conduces in some way or other to their personal interest, care little for a second display. ”

“ I had formed my opinion of Scotland from the same persons that, to the injury and the disgrace of Scotland, form the channel through which the British Government sees it; and therefore I was not prepared for that solemn and soul-stirring display,—that rush of the whole intellect of a reflective, and of the whole heart of a feeling people, adorned and kept in measured order, by that intermixture of moral tact and of national pride, which was exhibited to the delighted King, and the astonished courtiers. ”

“ Blackwood too has a sort of den; but still, when there is nobody in it to gossip, you find his hard face poking out at his shop-door, just as the tongue of a church-bell pokes out at the mouth of that instrument of noise and brass. Manners and Miller—one who is said to be the only genuine species of the nightingale north of the Tweed, keeps a saloon for the accommodation of the Edinburgh blue stockings, in which sins, and sentiments, and silks, are, by turns, expatiated upon, in a style and manner which are truly Athenian. ”

“ You are astonished that a place, the real business of which is so dull and so dry, should have charms for so many idle people; but except this Parliament-house there is not another in-door lounge in the whole Athens; and as the business of the courts forms the chief topic of the evening’s conversation, many attend for the purpose of qualifying themselves for displays upon a very different arena. It is long before a stranger can bring himself to relish this first and most favourite of all Athenian pleasures. ”

“ In another place you could catch the broad face and broader bonnet of a lowland farmer of the old school, cased in one uniform garb of home-made blue, with brass buckles to his shoes, a brass key suspended to his watch by a tough thong of black leather, greasy enough,—holding solemn colloquy with that reverend member of the Scottish Kirk, to whom he acted in the capacity of ruling elder, about the danger of compromising the interests of the Whig or high-flying part of that establishment, during the avatar of so many Tories. ”

“ Still, it is impossible to overlook the rapidity with which all sorts of things whisk about in the Athens, and how cleverly her ladies and gentlemen creep into the nut-shells of science, or the whispering-corners of scandal; or how dextrously they contrive to make one thing answer many purposes. It is impossible that any people, and more especially a people so ardent and so educated as the Athenians, can be without a reasonable commodity of love ”

“ If, therefore, the discovery which I am about to relate, singular as those who are not conversant with the modes in which genius, when left to itself, developes itself, may consider it to be, had not been made, a blank page would have remained in the book of knowledge, which is now full and fair in its characters of wisdom. The future philosopher, as was once the case with nearly all the nascent philosophers of Scotland, and may still be the case with a few, not the worst of them, divided the year between the study of learning, and the observation of nature. ”

“ You meet not with one of the delightful little boxes which are scattered round London by thousands, and of which there are always a few in the vicinity of even third-rate towns in England. The ambition of the Athenians appears to be, to make every four stone walls a joint stock company, as dull, as tasteless, and as heavy, as a stack of warehouses in Thames Street. ”

“ When a day and night more than had been calculated upon were expired, without any tidings of the royal squadron, the gloom of the Athenian authorities became sad in the extreme. Here you would find one wight twining up the steep acclivities of Arthur’s Seat, jerking his fatigued corpus upon the pile of coal which had been collected upon the top for a bon-fire, and straining his owl-like eyes to penetrate the dense fog of the eastern horizon, like a conjuror ogling the volume of futurity ”

“ It is no such thing; for with both men and women, it is the choice and chosen day of the week, set apart to all manner of gossip and enjoyment; and though it be not the fashion for the people to listen to the music of instruments, or read profane books, yet the music of woman’s tongue is soft and sweet, and the book of fate is opened. Whether the present church-going propensity of the Athens shall continue, is a question that it would be difficult to solve; but that the Athens will continue to enjoy herself upon Sunday nights, may be received into the catalogue of truths that are demonstrated. ”

“ Margaret Sibbald, an able-bodied matron of Fisher-Row, had been induced, through the compound stimulus of curiosity and loyalty, to leave her home all unbreakfasted, in order to take her place in the royal procession; Margaret had stored her ample leathern pouch with a penny-worth of Parliament-cake, in order to support nature through this praise-worthy work; but Margaret’s eyes had been so much feasted, that Margaret’s stomach was forgotten. ”

“ Even when he is shooting along like a small but swift meteor through the crowd in the Parliament-House, they are beaming so as to force you to turn away your eyes, and if he looks at you, you find yourself utterly unable to withstand it. When that look is darting for any important purpose, such as to ascertain whether a witness be or be not speaking the truth, it is more searching than that of Garrow even in his best days, so that the most hardened tremble before it, and are instantly divested of all power of concealing the truth. ”

“ The observations which I had occasion to make respecting the dramatic taste of the Athenians are equally applicable to their taste, not only in literature, but in every thing else. In youth their education is too superficial, and when they grow up, the drudgery of the law, to which so many of them are doomed, and which influences the habits of the whole, together with that dissipation in which they indulge as habitually and more deeply than any people with whom I am acquainted, give a turn to their minds which is the very opposite of literary. ”

“ Perhaps it is this total absence of every thing elegant in the shape of man from the public streets and walks of the Athens, that has given so singular a twist to the minds and manners of the Athenian fair. ”

“ The Tron-kirk and St. Giles’ successively tingled their bells, and every thing demonstrated the satisfaction of the people. The bodies which had their booths about St. Giles’ now did reverence, and lifted their voices just as his Majesty was passing over the spot which long groaned beneath the mass of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. When the King had arrived at the Castle-Hill, the procession turned aside, and he passed between the assembled counties, who were very fervent in their demonstrations of joy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Lord President opened his mouth and his case; and each learned head nodded with the solemnity of that of a Jupiter. The trumpet-call, blown through the nose by a bandana handkerchief, summoned to the charge the commodity of brains that each possessed; and each having returned the bandana to its place, looked as wise as the goddess of the Elder Athens, or even as her sacred bird. ”

“ Every one who has seen Edinburgh must know the perfect resemblance which her High-street—that street in which magistracy is pre-eminently dominant, and where shows are wont to be exhibited—bears to the back-bone of a red-herring. Westward you have the castle in form, in elevation, and in grandeur, the very type of the head; eastward, at the further extremity, you have the palace of Holyrood, which from its lowly situation among cesspools and bankrupts, and its usual gloomy and forlorn condition, may very properly be likened to the tail; the intermediate street is the spine ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor could the desire have been wholly confined to his majesty. The anxiety of the Scottish fair was bent, like the bow of Diana when the arrow is drawn to the barbs; their preparations, positive and negative, for this high honour, had been long, laborious and self-denying; and they were not without feeling that four whole days should not have interposed their [77] twelve-month-looking-lengths between the sight and salutation of their King. It is true, that in Scotland generally, and in the Athens in particular, woman, that grand barometer of civilization, has of late risen many degrees. ”

“ Society is indeed, as it were, reversed in the Athens; the men of the law give their evenings to Bacchus; those who are called philosophers, give theirs to butterflies; the ladies associate for the purposes of gossipping; and the gentlemen, with praise-worthy gallantry, assist the ladies; while the artizans pursue literature, and study philosophy. Thus, although there be more both of the one and the other in the Athens, than one would at first sight suppose, the supposition is excusable because they are not to be found where one would first and most naturally seek for them. ”