I Made My Way With
Difficulty Through The Crowd To The Ancient Street Called The Salt Market,
In Which Scott Places The Habitation Of Baillie Jarvie.
It was obstructed
with little stalls, where toys and other inconsiderable articles were
sold.
Here at the corner of one of the streets stands the old tower of the
Tolbooth where Rob Roy was confined, a solid piece of ancient
architecture. The main building has been removed and a modern house
supplies its place; the tower has been pierced below for a thoroughfare,
and its clock still reports the time of day to the people of Glasgow. The
crowd through which I passed had that squalid appearance which marks
extreme poverty and uncertain means of subsistence, and I was able to form
some idea of the prodigious number of this class in a populous city of
Great Britain like Glasgow. For populous she is, and prosperous as a city,
increasing with a rapidity almost equal to that of New York, and already
she numbers, it is estimated, three hundred thousand inhabitants. Of
these it is said that full one-third are Irish by birth or born of Irish
parents.
The next day, which was Sunday, before going to church, I walked towards
the west part of the city; where the streets are broad and the houses
extremely well-built, of the same noble material as the new town of
Edinburgh; and many of the dwellings have fine gardens. Their sites in
many places overlook the pleasant valley of the Clyde, and I could not
help acknowledging that Glasgow was not without claim to the epithet of
beautiful, which I should have denied her if I had formed my judgment from
the commercial streets only. The people of Glasgow also have shown their
good sense in erecting the statues which adorn their public squares, only
to men who have some just claim to distinction. Here are no statues, for
example, of the profligate Charles II., or the worthless Duke of York, or
the silly Duke of Cambridge, as you will see in other cities; but here the
marble effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column in the principal
square, and not far from it is that of the inventor Watt; while the
statues erected to military men are to those who, like Wellington, have
acquired a just renown in arms. The streets were full of well-dressed
persons going to church, the women for the most part, I must say, far from
beautiful. I turned with the throng and followed it as far as St. Enoch's
church, in Buchanan-street, where I heard a long discourse from a
sensible preacher, Dr. Barr, a minister of the established Kirk of
Scotland.
In the afternoon I climbed one of the steep streets to the north of my
hotel, and found three places of worship, built with considerable
attention to architectural effect, and fresh, as it seemed, from the hands
of the mason. They all, as I was told, belonged to the Free Kirk, which
has lately been rent from the establishment, and threatens to leave it a
mere shadow of a church, like the Episcopal church in Ireland. "Nothing,"
said an intelligent Glasgow friend of mine, "can exceed the zeal of the
friends of the Free Church. One of our Glasgow merchants has just given
fifteen hundred pounds towards the fund for providing _manses_, or
parsonages, for the ministers of that Church, and I know of several who
have subscribed a thousand. In all the colleges of Scotland, the
professors are obliged, by way of test, to declare their attachment to the
Presbyterian Church as by law established. Parliament has just refused to
repeal this test, and the friends of the Free Church are determined to
found a college of their own. Twenty thousand pounds had already been
subscribed before the government refused to dispense with this test, and
the project will now be supported with more zeal than ever."
I went into one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr.
Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school.
It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are
in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their
besetting infirmity. 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. The day was very fine, the sun bright, and the sky
above us perfectly clear; but, as is generally the case in this country
with an east wind, the atmosphere was thick with a kind of dry haze which
veils distant objects from the sight.
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