him, might have driven the enemy
over the Tweed, and taken possession of the whole of Scotland; but that
the Pretender's duke did not venture to move when the day was his own.
Edinburgh Castle might have been in King James's hands; but that the men
who were to escalade it stayed to drink his health at the tavern, and
arrived two hours too late at the rendezvous under the castle wall. There
was sympathy enough in the town--the projected attack seems to have been
known there--Lord Mahon quotes Sinclair's account of a gentleman not
concerned, who told Sinclair, that he was in a house that evening where
eighteen of them were drinking, as the facetious landlady said, "powdering
their hair," for the attack of the castle. Suppose they had not stopped to
powder their hair? Edinburgh Castle, and town, and all Scotland were King
James's. The north of England rises, and marches over Barnet Heath upon
London. Wyndham is up in Somersetshire; Packington in Worcestershire; and
Vivian in Cornwall. The Elector of Hanover, and his hideous mistresses,
pack up the plate, and perhaps the crown jewels in London, and are off
_via_ Harwich and Helvoetsluys, for dear old Deutschland. The king--God
save him!--lands at Dover, with tumultuous applause; shouting multitudes,
roaring cannon, the Duke of Marlborough weeping tears of joy, and all the
bishops kneeling in the mud. In a few years, mass is said in St. Paul's;
matins and vespers are sung in York Minster; and Dr. Swift is turned out
of his stall and deanery house at St. Patrick's, to give place to Father
Dominic, from Salamanca. All these changes were possible then, and once
thirty years afterwards--all this we might have had, but for the _pulveris
exigui jactu_, that little toss of powder for the hair which the Scotch
conspirators stopped to take at the tavern.

You understand the distinction I would draw between history--of which I do
not aspire to be an expounder--and manners and life such as these sketches
would describe. The rebellion breaks out in the north; its story is before
you in a hundred volumes, in none more fairly than in the excellent
narrative of Lord Mahon, The clans are up in Scotland; Derwentwater,
Nithsdale and Forster are in arms in Northumberland--these are matters of
history, for which you are referred to the due chroniclers. The Guards are
set to watch the streets, and prevent the people wearing white roses. I
read presently of a couple of soldiers almost flogged to de