At The Close Of The Exercises, He Announced That A
Third Service Would Be Held In The Evening.
"The subject," continued he,
"will be the thoughts and exercises of Jonah in the whale's belly."
In returning to my hotel, I passed by another new church, with an
uncommonly beautiful steeple and elaborate carvings. I inquired its name;
it was the new St. John's, and was another of the buildings of the Free
Church.
On Monday we made an excursion to the birthplace of Burns. The railway
between Glasgow and Ayr took us through Paisley, worthy of note as having
produced our eminent ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, and along the banks
of Castle Semple Loch, full of swans, a beautiful sheet of water, sleeping
among green fields which shelve gently to its edge. We passed by Irvine,
where Burns learned the art of dressing flax, and traversing a sandy
tract, close to the sea, were set down at Ayr, near the new bridge. You
recollect Burns's dialogue between the "auld brig" of Ayr and the new, in
which the former predicted that vain as her rival might be of her new and
fresh appearance, the time would shortly come when she would be as much
dilapidated as herself. The prediction is fulfilled; the bridge has begun
to give way, and workmen are busy in repairing its arches.
We followed a pleasant road, sometimes agreeably shaded by trees, to
Alloway. As we went out of Ayr we heard a great hammering and clicking of
chisels, and looking to the right we saw workmen busy in building another
of the Free Churches, with considerable elaborateness of architecture, in
the early Norman style.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 169 of 396
Words from 45672 to 45949
of 107287
