Edinburgh, Rob Roy's country,
railroads, cathedrals, country inns, Arthur's Seat, lochs, glens, and
home by sea. DO think of this, seriously, at leisure." It was very
tempting, but not to be.

Early in April Jeffrey came, many feasts and entertainments welcoming
him, of which he very sparingly partook; and before he left, the visit
to Scotland in June was all duly arranged, to be initiated by the
splendid welcome of a public dinner in Edinburgh, with Lord Jeffrey
himself in the chair. Allan the painter had come up meanwhile, with
increasing note of preparation; and it was while we were all regretting
Wilkie's absence abroad, and Dickens with warrantable pride was saying
how surely the great painter would have gone to this dinner, that the
shock of his sudden death[37] came, and there was left but the sorrowful
satisfaction of honoring his memory. There was one other change before
the day. "I heard from Edinburgh this morning," he wrote on the 15th of
June. "Jeffrey is not well enough to take the chair, so Wilson does. I
think under all circumstances of politics, acquaintance, and _Edinburgh
Review_, that it's much better as it is--Don't you?"

His first letter from Edinburgh, where he and Mrs. Dickens had taken up
quarters at the Royal Hotel on their arrival the previous night, is
dated the 23d of June: "I have been this morning to the Parliament
House, and am now introduced (I hope) to everybody in Edinburgh. The
hotel is perfectly besieged, and I have been forced to take refuge in a
sequestered apartment at the end of a long passage, wherein I write this
letter. They talk of 300 at the dinner. We are very well off in point of
rooms, having a handsome sitting-room, another next to it for _Clock_
purposes, a spacious bedroom, and large dressing-room adjoining. The
castle is in front of the windows, and the view noble. There was a
supper ready last night which would have been a dinner anywhere." This
was his first practical experience of the honors his fame had won for
him, and it found him as eager to receive as all were eager to give.
Very interesting still, too, are those who took leading part in the
celebration; and in his pleasant sketches of them there are some once
famous and familiar figures not so well known to the present generation.
Here, among the first, are Wilson and Robertson.

"The renowned Peter Robertson is a large, portly, full-faced man, with a
merry eye, and a queer way of looking under his specta