Stonebyres Linn, the last of the three great leaps of Clyde, is somewhat more than a mile below Lanark Bridge, and close to the road that holds down the left bank of the stream to Crossford, Dalserf, and Hamilton. It has not the romantic surroundings of Corra Linn. But the fall of water descending headlong over rocky ledges in a dizzy plunge into the “Salmon Pool”—the “thus far and no farther” of the lordly fish that once swarmed in the Clyde—has by many been adjudged more graceful, if less majestic, than the upper linn. Two miles further on comes in the Nethan, winding through its wooded strath under the base of Craignethan Castle. It is the Tillietudlem of “Old Mortality,” the name being probably borrowed by Scott from “Gullietudlem,” a ravine adjacent to Corra Linn. It was a stronghold of the Hamiltons; and, with its strong position on a steep peninsulated bluff between the Nethan and a tributary burn, its moat, and its massive walls and towers of hewn stone, of which a goodly portion yet keep its place, it must when first built have been well-nigh impregnable. The traditional tale is that the Scottish monarch of the time, taking alarm at the portentous and threatening strength, rewarded the builder and owner—the “Bastard of Arran”—by hanging him betimes as a suspected rebel. The chief incident in its annals is the stay made at Craignethan by Mary Stuart before fortune went finally against her at Langside. More vividly do the frowning keep, the crumbling vaults, the ivy-clad garden walls, and the steep copse-clad dells and braes, recall to our minds Lady Margaret Bellenden sitting down to “disjeune” in the chamber of daïs, Jenny Dennison scalding the too-adventurous Cuddie Headrigg with the porridge, Henry Morton before the Council, and Burley lurking like a wounded wolf in his cave.
From this point downward the stream of Clyde, as it winds towards Glasgow through the centre of the great coal and iron field that has fed the wealth of the city and the commerce of the river, becomes more and more closely beset by the great armies of industry. For a time they still keep at a respectful distance; their camp fires—pillars of flame by night and of cloud by day—rising from furnace chimney and pit head on the high ground enclosing the “Trough of the Clyde.” Up there, in an intricate network of railway lines, are busy and growing towns and villages sending forth their smoke to overshadow the valley, and pouring down into it, by a score of tributary streams, the lees and pollutions of labour and of crowded urban life. But for a while the sheltered haughs and sloping banks of the Clyde still deserve the name of the “Orchard of Scotland.” The drumlie gills and burns, that higher up have drained moss hags and skirted mounds of slag and mean rows of miners’ cottages, break into the central valley through bosky and craggy dells, and through acres of fruit trees and the woods and lawns of stately mansion houses, or past venerable parish churches or fragments of old castles, to join the Clyde. There are such fine sweeps of river as those, for instance, that skirt the grounds of Mauldslie Castle, and wind round Dalserf, before the now broad and full stream takes a straighter course under Dalserf Bridge, past Cambusnethan, towards Dalziel and Hamilton.
STONEBYRES LINN (p. [351]).
All these names invite the down-stream wayfarer to pause and survey the beauties of Clydesdale. But the spot of really commanding interest is Hamilton, the centre for four or five centuries of the power of the great family of Hamilton, that succeeded to so much of the dominion and influence owned by the Douglases in the valley of the Clyde. The haughlands here spread out to a truly noble width; and the lawns and parks that surround the chief seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, and stretch down to the right bank of the river and extend along its windings from Hamilton Bridge down to Bothwell Bridge, have space enough to give an air of grandeur and seclusion to the scene, spite of the crowding around it of a modern workaday world. For the town of Hamilton is at the very gate of the palace; and over against the low parks and the racecourse by the riverside rise sheaves of chimney-stacks, crowned with smoke, that proclaim the neighbourhood of Motherwell and other grimy haunts of the Lanarkshire coal and iron industries.
From the plain white baronial house of “The Orchard,” built in 1591 and set among its pleasant fruit trees, Hamilton Palace has spread and risen into one of the princeliest piles in the land. Its long and lofty façade, adorned with Corinthian columns, overlooks its parterres and flower gardens; the grand mausoleum of the Hamiltons, built—at a cost, it is said, of £150,000—in the style of the castle of San Angelo at Rome; and the spacious parks, dotted with trees, that slope gently towards the margin of Clyde.
The soul of Hamilton Palace has departed since the sale in 1881 of the unrivalled collection of pictures, books, and rare works of art, brought together by the taste and wealth of Beckford, the author of “Vathek,” and of successive dukes. With this removal the centre of interest seems once more to have shifted to the further side of the busy burgh, where, in the High Parks adjoining the original seat of the Hamilton family, the “crumbled halls” of Cadzow Castle, are to be found the yet more venerable remains of the Caledonian Forest—huge gnarled and decayed boles of ancient oaks, sadly thinned by latter-day gales—and the survivors of what are supposed to be the native breed of wild white cattle.
When Queen Mary escaped from Lochleven, she fled for shelter and aid to her kinsfolk at Cadzow. A few years later, as Scott’s ballad rehearses, another refugee spurred thither—Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, after assassinating the Regent Moray in the street of Linlithgow. The Magician waves his wand and restores the scene, by Avon side, as it was more than three centuries ago:—