Around the cathedral is a graveyard containing fine monuments. I read on a tablet, put up in commemoration of the execution of nine covenanters (1666-1684) the following inscription, which shows once more how they forgive in Scotland. Here is the hint to the persecutors:
"They'll know at resurrection day
To murder saints was no sweet play."
Let us return down High Street as far as Argyle Street, the great artery of Glasgow.
After a few minutes' walking, we come to Buchanan Street, the fashionable street of Glasgow—I mean the one which contains the fashionable shops, the Regent Street of this great manufacturing city. The houses are well-built, I do not say tastefully, but solidly. This might be said indeed of the whole town: it is dirty, but substantial. Let us push on to Sanchyhall Street, and there turn to the west. We presently come to the park of Kelvingrove, undulating, well laid out, and surrounded with pretty houses: it is the only part of Glasgow which does not give you cold shivers. Among the well-kept paths, flowerbeds, and ponds, you forget the coal-smoke for awhile. At the end of the park runs the Kelvin, a little stream which you cross to get to Gilmore Hill, on the summit of which stand the buildings of the university. The interior of these buildings is magnificent.
The Bute Hall is one of the finest halls I ever saw: 108 feet long, 75 broad, and 70 high. A splendid library and all the comfortable accessories, which they are careful to supply studious youth with in this country. The university cost more than half-a-million. With the exception of a few other parks—which, however, cannot be compared to those of London—there is nothing more to be seen in Glasgow, and if your business is transacted, go to your hotel, strap your luggage, and be off.
But if you prefer it, we will arm ourselves with umbrellas and return to the streets, and see what kind of people are to be met there.
That which strikes one at a first visit, is that from five in the afternoon almost every respectable-looking person has disappeared, and the town seems given over to the populace. Like the City proper in London, Glasgow is only occupied by the superior classes during business hours. From four to five o'clock there is a general stampede towards the railway stations. The employé, who earns two or three hundred a year, has his villa or cottage in the suburbs. The rich merchant, the engineer, the ironmaster, all these live far from the city.
The streets of Glasgow, from six or seven in the evening, are entirely given up to the manufacturing population—the dirtiest and roughest to be seen anywhere, I should think.
I have seen poverty and vice in Paris, in London, in Dublin, and Brussels, but they are nothing to compare to the spectacle that Glasgow presents. It is the living illustration of some unwritten page of Dante.
"But there is money in Glasgow."