SCOTLAND.
The inauguration of Mr. Steell's equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in Edinburgh, on Friday last week, was a very grand affair. The cost of the statue was raised by public subscription; Mr. Steel! gained the commission by public competition ; and his work is described as "a beautiful piece of art, creditable at once to the subject and to na- tive genius." " The figure of the Duke is excellent, and the likeness extremely accurate." Its situation is in front of the Register Office. The work is of bronze ; and it is the first of its sort ever cast in Scot- land : Mr. Steel erected the foundry himself, and personally super- intended the casting.
The ceremony of inauguration was masonic. The Duke of Atholl, Grand Master for Scotland, at the head of the Edinburgh Lodge, and of deputations forming a body of about 1500 from all the principal lodges in Scotland, went through the forms of testing the poise of the work, and of reporting it to the Wellington Statue Committee. The Duke of Buc- clench was at the head of this Committee, and made a speech recounting the deeds of the hero whom the statue will commemorate to future gene- rations. All the civic and academical dignitaries of Edinburgh were pre- sent : the Commander of the Forces in Scotland, with his staf and two regiments, the Seventh Hussars and the Seventy-ninth Highlanders, and the local corps of Pensioners, martially lined the margins of the streets ; while "all the rest of Edinburgh," and a vast throng from the parts around, crowded the main track of the thoroughfares, and all the windows and house-tops which commanded a view of the procession and ceremo- nial. The fall of the covering of drapery which veiled the statue was followed immediately by salutes of cannon from the Castle, and from a temporary battery erected above the heights on Salisbury Crags. Public dinners and other social agremens closed the day.
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