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Appendix C: Balmoralism: Lockhart’s  Life of Sir Walter Scot

 The King [George IV], at his first levee, diverted many, and delighted Scott, by appearing in the full Highland garb - the same brilliant Stuart Tartans, so called, in which certainly no Stuart, except Prince Charles, had ever before presented himself in the the salons of Holyrood. His Majesty’s Celtic toilette had been carefully watched and assisted by the gallant Laird of Garth, who was not a little proud of the result of his dextrous manipulation of the royal plaid, and pronounced the king “a vera pretty man.”
 And did he look a most stately and imposing person in that beautiful dress - but his satisfaction therein was cruelly disturbed, when he discovered, towering and blazing among and above the genuine Glengarries and Macleods and MacGregors, a figure even more portly than his own, equipped, from a sudden impulse of loyal ardour, in an equally complete set of the self-same conspicouous Stuart tartans. In truth, this portentous appartition cast an air of ridicule and caricature over the whole of Sir Walter’s Celtified pageantry. (7)


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