Chapter 9 - Page 2

doubtless, there was a difference between
clinking on gold and silver, and clattering upon pewter."

On they glided, by the assistance of the oars of four stout watermen,
along the Thames, which then served for the principal high-road
betwixt London and Westminster; for few ventured on horseback through
the narrow and crowded streets of the city, and coaches were then a
luxury reserved only for the higher nobility, and to which no citizen,
whatever was his wealth, presumed to aspire. The beauty of the banks,
especially on the northern side, where the gardens of the nobility
descended from their hotels, in many places, down to the water's edge,
was pointed out to Nigel by his kind conductor, and was pointed out in
vain. The mind of the young Lord of Glenvarloch was filled with
anticipations, not the most pleasant, concerning the manner in which
he was likely to be received by that monarch, in whose behalf his
family had been nearly reduced to ruin; and he was, with the usual
mental anxiety of those in such a situation, framing imaginary
questions from the king, and over-toiling his spirit in devising
answers to them.

His conductor saw the labour of Nigel's mind, and avoided increasing
it by farther conversation; so that, when he had explained to him
briefly the ceremonies observed at Court on such occasions of
presentation, the rest of their voyage was performed in silence.

They landed at Whitehall Stairs, and entered the Palace after
announcing their names,--the guards paying to Lord Glenvarloch the
respect and honours due to his rank.

The young man's heart beat high and thick within him as he came into
the royal apartments. His education abroad, conducted, as it had been,
on a narrow and limited scale, had given him but imperfect ideas of
the grandeur of a Court; and the philosophical reflections which
taught him to set ceremonial and exterior splendour at defiance,
proved, like other maxims of mere philosophy, ineffectual, at the
moment they were weighed against the impression naturally made on the
mind of an inexperienced youth, by the unusual magnificence of the
scene. The splendid apartments through which they passed,
the rich apparel of the grooms, guards, and domestics in waiting, and
the ceremonial attending their passage through the long suite of
apartments, had something in it, trifling and commonplace as it might
appear to practised courtiers, embarrassing, and even alarming, to
one, who went through these forms for the first time, and who was
doubtful what sort of reception was to accompany his first appearance
before his sovereign.

Heriot, in anxious attention to save his young friend from any
momentary awkwardness, had taken care to give the necessary