I remember that thirty years ago when a college professor was making the "grand tour"—thirty years ago seems as far back as three hundred years when James Howell was making his "grand tour"—he asked a casually met Glaswegian what there was to be seen, and this honest Scot, pointing to the cathedral declared, "that's the only aydifyce ye'll care to look at."
I should like to be singular, to write of picturesque points in Glasgow. But how can it be done? Glasgow does not aspire to picturesqueness or to historicalness. Glasgow is content, more than content, in having her commerce and her industry always "in spate."
Glasgow is the second city of size in the United Kingdom, and the first city in being itself. London is too varied and divided in interests; it never forgets that it is the capital of the world, and a royal capital. Glasgow never forgets that it is itself, very honestly and very democratically, a city of Scots. Not of royal Stewarts, and no castle dominates it. But a city made out of the most inveterate Scottish characteristics. Or I think I would better say Scotch. That is a practical adjective, and somewhat despised of culture; therefore applicable to Glasgow. While Scottish is romantic and somewhat pretending.
Glasgow is the capital of the Whig country, of the democratic Scotland of covenanting ancestry. Glasgow is precisely what one would expect to issue out of the energy and honesty and canniness and uncompromise of that corner of the world. Historically it belongs to Wallace, the commoner-liberator. And if Burns is the genius of this southwestern Scotland, as Scott is of the southeastern, it is precisely the difference between the regions; as Edinburgh and Glasgow differ.
The towns are less than an hour apart by express train. They are all of Scotch history and characteristics apart in quality and in genius. Edinburgh is still royal, and sits supreme upon its hill, its past so present one forgets it is the past. Glasgow never could have been royal; and so it never was significant until royal Scotland ceased to be, and democratic Scotland, where a man's a man for a' that, came to take the place of the old, to take it completely, utterly. So long as the world was old, was the Old World, and looked toward the East, Edinburgh would be the chief city. When the world began to be new, and to look toward the New World, Glasgow came swiftly into being, and the race is to the swift.
There is history to Glasgow, when it was a green pleasant village, and there was romance. It is but a short way, a foot-path journey if the pleasant green fields still invited, out to Bothwell Castle; splendid ruin, and, therefore, recalling Mary and Darnley and the Lennoxes, but not Bothwell. But Landside, where Mary was defeated, is a Glaswegian suburb, Kelvingrove—"let us haste"—is a prosperous residence district. The Broomielaw, lovely word, means simply and largely the harbour of Glasgow, made deliberately out of Clyde water in order that Glasgow's prosperity might flow out of the very heart of the city. "Lord, let Glasgow flourish according to the preaching of Thy word," ran the old motto. It has been shortened of late.
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE, BY WHISTLER.
The heart of the city is dreary miles of long monotonous streets, where beauty is never wasted in grass blade or architecture. George's Square may be noble, it has some good monuments, but it is veiled in commercial grime, like all the town. What could be expected of a city that would name its principal business street, "Sauchieburn," memorializing and defying that petty tragedy?
There is an art gallery with Whistler's "Carlyle," and a few other notable pictures (John Lavery's I looked at with joy) to redeem miles of mediocrity. (Here I should like to be original and not condemn, but there are the miles.)