Отрывок из книги
Robert Mudie
A dissection and demonstration of men and things in the Scotch Capital
.....
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.”
.....
