With far different feelings are we animated as we look at “the poor remains of the stately Cathedral.” If we do not grieve for the rooks, nevertheless we mourn over the wild folly which struck down so glorious a rookery. Would that that fair sight still caught the sailor’s eye which met John Knox’s gaze when, “hanging tired over his oar in the French galley, he saw the white steeples of St. Andrews rising out of the sea in the mist of the summer morning!”[462] Desolate as is the scene of ruin now, it was far more desolate when Johnson saw it. The ground lay deep in rubbish. The few broken pillars which were left standing were almost hidden in the ruins heaped up around them. The Cathedral until very lately had been made a common quarry, “and every man had carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them.” Now all is trim. The levelled ground, the smooth lawn, the gravelled paths, the gently sloping banks, the trees and the shrubs, all bear witness to man’s care for the venerable past, and to his reverence for the dead who still find their last resting-place by the side of their forefathers. The wantonness of the destruction, however, mocks at repair. The work was too thoroughly done by those fierce reformers, and by the quiet quarrymen of after ages. In all the cities of Scotland there were craftsmen, but it was in Glasgow alone that they rose to save their beloved Cathedral. Yet everywhere the people should have felt—to use Johnson’s homely words—as, “wrapt up in contemplation,” he surveyed these scenes—that “differing from a man in doctrine is no reason why you should pull his house about his ears.” We may exclaim, as Wesley exclaimed at Aberbrothick, when he was told that the zealous reformers burnt the Abbey down, “God deliver us from reforming mobs!”[463]
TALK IN THE CLOISTERS.
In the ruined cloisters as our travellers paced up and down, while the old walls gave “a solemn echo” to their steps and to Johnson’s strong voice, he talked about retirement from the world. For such a discourse there could not easily have been found a more fitting scene.
“I never read of an hermit (he said) but in imagination I kiss his feet: never of a monastery, but I could fall on my knees and kiss the pavement. But I think putting young people there, who know nothing of life, nothing of retirement, is dangerous and wicked. It is a saying as old as Hesiod—
‘Ἑργα νέων, βουλαί δε μέσων, εὐχαὶ δὲ γερόντων.’[464]
That is a very noble line: not that young men should not pray, or old men not give counsel, but that every season of life has its proper duties. I have thought of retiring, and have talked of it to a friend; but I find my vocation is rather to active life.”
Here, too, it was a different scene upon which he looked from that which meets our view. The gravestones which are now set against the walls of the cloisters were then buried beneath the rubbish of the cathedral. On the other side of this wall, in the grounds of the priory, were situated those “two vaults or cellars” where our travellers found a strange inmate.
“In one of them (writes Johnson) lives an old woman, who claims an hereditary residence in it, boasting that her husband was the sixth tenant of this gloomy mansion in a lineal descent, and claims by her marriage with this lord of the cavern an alliance with the Bruces. Mr. Boswell staid a while to interrogate her, because he understood her language; she told him that she and her cat lived together; that she had two sons somewhere, who might perhaps be dead; that when there were quality in the town notice was taken of her, and that now she was neglected, but did not trouble them. Her habitation contained all that she had; her turf for fire was laid in one place and her balls of coal dust in another, but her bed seemed to be clean. Boswell asked her if she never heard any noises, but she could tell him of nothing supernatural, though she often wandered in the night among the graves and ruins; only she had sometimes notice by dreams of the death of her relations.”
I made as diligent an inquiry as I could after this kinswoman of the royal family of Scotland, but all in vain.
“The glories of our blood and state