The Review of the Scottish Volunteers on Thursday was a
grand spectacle, of which half the picturesqueness was spoiled by that miserable weather to which the Queen, on great occasions, is so little accustomed. The rain began to fall at one o'clock, and the Queen did not appear till four, and by that time the rain was descending in torrents. Nevertheless, the bad weather made the patience and endurance of the Scotch Volunteers all the more remarkable. Forty thousand of them bore the miseries of the day,—of the march-past through a Slough of Despond,—and of the long, previous waiting,—without any failure of discipline ; and the Queen, who remained to the last in an open carriage, shared freely with her Volunteers the dis- comforts and fatigues of the day. At all events, the review answered its purpose, of testing the hardihood and mettle of the Scottish Volunteers.
