Chapter VI: Part 6

In autumn the voyage to the south is lengthened by stoppages, and frequently the steamer has to leave her direct course and thread long inland running lochs to take wool on board. These stoppages and wanderings out of the direct route would be annoying if you were hurrying south to be married, or if you were summoned to the deathbed of a friend from whom you had expectations; but as it is holiday with you, and as every divergence brings you into unexpected scenery, they are regarded rather as a pleasure than anything else. At Armadale we stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then struck directly across the Sound of Sleat, and sailed up the windings of Loch Nevis. When we reached the top there was an immense to do-on the beach; some three or four boats laden with wool were already pulling out towards the steamer, which immediately lay to and let off noisy steam; men were tumbling bales of wool into the empty boats that lay at the stony pier, and to the pier laden carts were hurrying down from the farm-house that stood remote. The wool boats came on either side of the steamer; doors were opened in the bulwarks, to these doors steam cranes were wheeled, and with many a shock of crank and rattle of loosened chain, the bales were hoisted on deck and consigned to the gloomy recesses of the hold. As soon as a boat was emptied, a laden one pulled out to take its place; the steam cranes were kept continually jolting and rattling, and in the space of a couple of hours a considerable amount of business had been done. On the present occasion the transference of wool from the boats to the hold of the steamer occupied a longer time than was usual; sunset had come in crimson and died away to pale gold and rose, and still the laden boats came slowly on, still storms of Gaelic execration surged along the sides of the ship, and still the steam cranes were at their noisy work. The whole affair, having by this time lost all sense of novelty, was in danger of becoming tiresome, but in the fading light the steward had lighted up the saloon into hospitable warmth and glow, and then the bell rang for tea. In a moment all interest in the wool boats had come to an end, the passengers hurried below, and before the tinklings of cup and saucer had ceased, the last bale of wool had been transferred from the boats alongside to the hold, and the _Clansman_ had turned round, and was softly gliding down Loch Nevis.

[Sidenote: Arisaig.]

A lovely, transparent autumn night arched above us, a young moon and single star by her side, when we reached Arisaig. By this time the ladies had retired, and those of the gentlemen who remained on deck were wrapped in plaids, each shadowy figure brought out more keenly by the red tip of a cigar. The entrance into Arisaig is difficult, and the _Clansman_ was put on half steam. The gentlemen were requested to leave the hurricane-deck, and there the captain stationed himself, while a couple of men were sent to the bows, and three or four stationed at the wheel. Slowly the large vessel moved onward, with low black reefs of rocks on either side, like smears of dark colour, but perfectly soft and tender in outline; and every here and there we could see the dark top of a rock peering out of the dim sea like a beaver's head. From these shadowy reefs, as the vessel moved on, the sea-birds were awaked from their slumbers, and strangely sweet, and liquid as flute-notes, were their cries and signals of alarm. Every now and again, too, with a sort of weary sigh, a big wave came heaving in, and broke over the dark reefs in cataracts of ghostly silver; and in the watery trouble and movement that followed, the moon became a well of moving light, and the star a quivering sword-blade. The captain stood alone on the hurricane deck, the passengers leaned against the bulwarks watching rock and sea, and listening to the call and re-call of disturbed mews, when suddenly there was a muffled shout from the outlook at the bows, the captain shouted "Port! port! hard!" and away went the wheel spinning, the stalwart fellows toiling at the spokes, and the ship slowly falling off. After a little while there was another noise at the bows, the captain shouted "Starboard!" and the wheel was rapidly reversed. We were now well up the difficult channel; and looking back we could see a perfect intricacy of reefs and dim single rocks behind, and a fading belt of pallor wandering amongst them, which told the track of the ship--a dreadful place to be driven upon on a stormy night, when the whole coast would be like the mouth of a wounded boar--black tusks and churning foam. After a while, however, a low line of coast became visible, then a light broke upon it; and after a few impatient turns of the paddles we beheld a dozen boats approaching, with lights at their bows. These were the Arisaig boats, laden with cargo. At sight of them the captain left the hurricane deck, the anchor went away with a thundering chain, the passengers went to bed, and, between asleep and awake, I could hear half the night the trampling of feet, the sound of voices, and the jolt of the steam-cranes, as the Arisaig goods were being hoisted on deck and stowed away.

[Sidenote: Ardnamurchan.]

I was up early next morning. The sky was clear, the wind blowing on shore, and the bright, living, rejoicing sea came seething in on the rocky intricacies through which we slowly sailed. Skye was perfectly visible, the nearer shores dark and green; farther back the dim Cuchullins, standing in the clouds. Eig rose opposite, with its curiously-shaped sciur; Muck lay ahead. The _Clansman_ soon reached the open sea, and we began to feel the impulse of the Atlantic. By the time the passengers began to appear on deck the ship was lurching heavily along towards the far-stretching headland of Ardnamurchan. It was difficult to keep one's feet steady--more difficult to keep steady one's brain. Great glittering watery mounds came heaving on, to wash with unavailing foam the rocky coast; and amongst these the steamer rolled and tossed and groaned, its long dark pennon of smoke streaming with the impulse of the sea. The greater proportion of the passengers crawled amidships--beside the engines and the cook's quarters, which were redolent with the scent of herrings frying for a most unnecessary breakfast--for there the motion was least felt. To an unhappy landsman that morning the whole world seemed topsy-turvy. There was no straight line to be discovered anywhere; everything seemed to have changed places. Now you beheld the steersman against the sky on the crest of an airy acclivity, now one bulwark was buried in surge, now the other, and anon the sheep at the bows were brought out against a foamy cataract. But with all this turmoil and dancing and rolling, the _Clansman_ went swiftly on, and in due time we were off the Ardnamurchan lighthouse. Here we rolled and tossed in an unpleasant manner,--the smitten foam springing to the top of the rocks and falling back in snowy sheets,--and seemed to make but little progress. Gradually, however, the lighthouse began to draw slowly behind us, slowly we rounded the rocky buttress, slowly the dark shores of Mull drew out to sea, and in a quarter of an hour, with dripping decks and giddy brains, we had passed from the great bright heave and energy of the Atlantic to the quiet waters of Loch Sunart; and, sheltered by Mull, were steaming towards Tobermory.

The first appearance of Tobermory is prepossessing; but further acquaintance is if possible to be eschewed. As the _Clansman_ steams into the bay, the little town, with its half circle of white houses, backed by hill terraces on which pretty villas are perched, and flanked by sombre pine plantations, is a pleasant picture, and takes heart and eye at once. As you approach, however, your admiration is lessened, and when you go ashore quite obliterated. It has a "most ancient and fish-like smell," and all kinds of refuse float in the harbour. Old ocean is a scavenger at Tobermory, and is as dirty in his habits as Father Thames himself. The houses look pretty and clean when seen from the steamer's deck, but on a nearer view they deteriorate and become squalid, and several transform themselves into small inns, suggestive of the worst accommodation and the fiercest alcohol. The steamer is usually detained at Tobermory for a couple of hours, and during all that time there is a constant noise of lading and unlading. You become tired of the noise and tumult, and experience a sense of relief when steam is got up again, and with much backing and turning and churning of dirty harbour water into questionable foam, the large vessel works its way through the difficult channel, and slides calmly down the Sound of Mull.

[Sidenote: The Sound of Mull.]

Gliding down that magnificent Sound, the "Lord of the Isles" is in your memory, just as the "Lady of the Lake" is in your memory at Loch Katrine. The hours float past in music. All the scenes of the noble poem rise in vision before you. You pass the entrance to the beautiful Loch Aline; you pass Ardtornish Castle on the Morven shore, where the Lords of the Isles held their rude parliaments and discussed ways and means; while opposite, Mull draws itself grandly back into lofty mountains. Further down you see Duart Castle, with the rock peering above the tide, on which Maclean exposed his wife--a daughter of Argyle's--to the throttling of the waves. After passing Duart, Mull trends away to the right, giving you a space of open sun-bright sea, while on the left the Linnhe Loch stretches toward Fort-William and Ben Nevis. Straight before you is the green Lismore--long a home of Highland learning--and passing it, while the autumn day is wearing towards afternoon, you reach Oban, sheltered from western waves by the island of Kerrera.

[Sidenote: The passengers.]

The longest delay during the passage is at Oban, but then we had dinner there, which helped to kill the time in a pleasant way. The _Clansman_ had received a quantity of cargo at Tobermory, at Loch Aline a flock of sheep were driven on board, goods were taken in plentifully at other places in the Sound at which we touched, and when we had received all the stuffs waiting for us at Oban, the vessel was heavily laden. The entire steerage deck was a bellowing and bleating mass of black cattle and sheep, each "parcel" divided from the other by temporary barriers. The space amidships was a chaos of barrels and trunks and bales of one kind or another, and amongst these the steerage passengers were forced to dispose themselves. Great piles of wooden boxes containing herring were laid along the cabin deck, so that if a man were disposed to walk about it behoved him to take care of his footsteps. But who cared! We were away from Oban now, the wind was light, the sun setting behind us, and the bell ringing for tea. It was the last meal we were to have together, and through some consciousness of this the ice of reserve seemed to melt, and the passengers to draw closer to each other. The Hebridean clergymen unbent; the handsome earl chatted to his neighbours as if his forehead had never known the golden clasp of the coronet; the sporting men stalked their stags over again; the members of Parliament discussed every subject except the affairs of the nation; the rich brewer joked; the merchants from Stornoway laughed immoderately; while the cattle-dealers listened with awe. Tea was prolonged after this pleasant fashion, and then, while the Stornoway merchants and the cattle-dealers solaced themselves with a tumbler of punch, the majority of the other passengers went up stairs to the hurricane deck to smoke. What a boon is tobacco to the modern Englishman! It stands in place of wife, child, profession, and the interchange of ideas. With a pipe in your mouth indifference to your neighbour is no longer churlish, and silent rumination becomes the most excellent companionship. The English were never very great talkers, but since Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the Virginian weed they have talked less than ever. Smoking parliaments are always silent--and as in silence there is wisdom, they are perhaps more effective than the talking ones. Mr Carlyle admired those still smoke-wreathed Prussian assemblies of Frederick's, and I am astonished that he does not advocate the use of the weed in our English Witenagemote. Slowly the night fell around the smokers, the stars came out in the soft sky, as the air grew chill, and one by one they went below. Then there was more toddy-drinking, some playing at chess, one or two attempts at letter-writing, and at eleven o'clock the waiters cleared the tables, and began to transform the saloon into a large sleeping apartment.

[Sidenote: The Mull of Cantyre.]

I climbed up to my berth and fell comfortably asleep. I must have been asleep for several hours, although of the lapse of time I was of course unconscious, when gradually the horror of nightmare fell upon me. This horror was vague and formless at first, but gradually it assumed a definite shape. I was Mazeppa, they had bound me on the back of the desert-born, and the mighty brute, maddened with pain and terror, was tearing along the wilderness, crashing through forests, plunging into streams, with the howling of wolves close behind and coming ever nearer. At last, when the animal cleared a ravine at a bound, I burst the bondage of my dream. For a moment I could not understand where I was. The sleeping apartment seemed to have fallen on one side, then it righted itself, but only to fall over on the other, then it made a wild plunge forward as if it were a living thing and had received a lash. The ship was labouring heavily, I heard the voices of the sailors flying in the wind, I felt the shock of solid, and the swish of broken seas. In such circumstances sleep, for me at least, was impossible, so I slipped out of bed, and, steadying myself for a favourable moment, made a grab at my clothes. With much difficulty I dressed, with greater difficulty I got into my boots, and then I staggered on deck. Holding on by the first support, I was almost blinded by the glare of broken seas. From a high coast against which the great waves rushed came the steady glare of a lighthouse, and by that token I knew we were "on" the Mull of Cantyre. The ship was fuming through a mighty battle of tides. Shadowy figures of steerage passengers were to be seen clinging here and there. One--a young woman going to Glasgow as a housemaid, as she afterwards told me--was in great distress, was under the impression that we were all going to the bottom, and came to me for comfort. I quieted her as best I could, and procured her a seat. Once when the ship made a wild lurch, and a cloud of spray came flying over the deck, she exclaimed to a sailor who was shuffling past wearing a sou'-wester and canvas overalls, "O sailor, is't ever sae bad as this?" "As bad as this," said the worthy, poising himself on the unsteady deck, "as bad as this! Lod, ye sud jist a seen oor last vi'age. There was only three besides mysel o' the ship's crew able to haud on by a rape." Delivering himself of this scrap of dubious comfort, the sailor shuffled onward. Happily the turmoil was not of long duration. In an hour we had rounded the formidable Mull, had reached comparatively smooth water, and with the lights of Campbelton behind the pallid glare of furnaces seen afar on the Ayrshire coast, and the morning beginning to pencil softly the east, I went below again, and slept till we reached Greenock.

_GLASGOW._

The idea of Glasgow in the ordinary British mind is probably something like the following:--"Glasgow, believed by the natives to be the second city of the empire, is covered by a smoky canopy through which rain penetrates, but which is impervious to sunbeam. It is celebrated for every kind of industrial activity: it is fervent in business six days of the week, and spends the seventh in hearing sermon and drinking toddy. Its population consists of a great variety of classes. The 'operative,' quiet and orderly enough while plentifully supplied with provisions, becomes a Chartist when hungry, and extracts great satisfaction in listening to orators--mainly from the Emerald Isle--declaiming against a bloated aristocracy. The 'merchant prince,' known to all ends of the earth, and subject sometimes to strange vagaries; at one moment he is glittering away cheerily in the commercial heaven, the next he has disappeared, like the lost Pleiad, swallowed up of night for ever. The history of Glasgow may be summed up in one word--cotton; its deity, gold; its river, besung by poets, a sewer; its environs, dust and ashes; the _gamin_ of its wynds and closes less tinctured by education than a Bosjesman; a creature that has never heard a lark sing save perhaps in a cage outside a window in the sixth story, where a consumptive seamstress is rehearsing the 'Song of the Shirt,' 'the swallows with their sunny backs' omitted." Now this idea of Glasgow is entirely wrong. It contains many cultivated men and women. It is the seat of an ancient university. Its cathedral is the noblest in Scotland; and its statue of Sir John Moore the finest statue in the empire. It is not in itself an ugly city, and it has many historical associations. Few cities are surrounded by prettier scenery; and of late years it has produced two books--both authors dead now--one of which mirrors the old hospitable, social life of the place, while the other pleasantly sketches the interesting localities in its neighbourhood. Dr Strang, in his "Clubs of Glasgow," brings us in contact with the old jolly times; and Mr Macdonald, in his "Rambles round Glasgow," visits, stick in hand, every spot of interest to be found for miles around, knows every ruin and its legend, can tell where each unknown poet has lived and died, and has the martyrology of the district at his fingers' ends. So much for the books; and now a word or two concerning their authors.

[Sidenote: Dr Strang.]

Dr Strang was long chamberlain to the city of Glasgow; for more than half a century he saw it growing around him, increasing in population, wealth, and political importance, as during the same period no other British city had increased; and as he knew everything concerning that growth, he not unnaturally took in it the deepest pride. He could remember the old times, the old families, the old buildings, the old domestic habits; and when well-stricken in years, it pleased him to recall the matters which he remembered, and to contrast them with what he saw on every side. I think that on the whole he preferred the old Glasgow of his boyhood to the new Glasgow of his age. All his life he had a turn for literature; in his earlier day he had written stories and sketches, in which he mirrored as vividly as he could the older aspects of the city; and as, along with this turn for writing, he had that antiquarian taste which has been a characteristic of almost every distinguished Scotsman since Sir Walter, while his years and his official position gave him opportunities of gratifying it, he knew Glasgow almost as well as the oldest inhabitant, who has been a bailie and cognisant of all secrets, knows his native village. He was an admirable _cicerone_; his mind was continually pacing up and down the local last century, knowing every person he met as he knew his contemporary acquaintances; and when he spoke of the progress of Glasgow, he spoke proudly, as if he were recounting the progress of his own son. [Sidenote: Glasgow clubs.] During the last years of his life, it struck him that he might turn his local knowledge to account. The Doctor was a humorist; he was fond of anecdote, had a very proper regard for good eating and drinking; he remembered regretfully the rum-punch of his youth, and he was deeply versed in the histories of the Glasgow Clubs. In a happy hour, it occurred to him that if he told the story of those clubs--described the professors, the merchants, the magistrates, the local bigwigs, the clergymen, the rakes, who composed their memberships--he would go to the very core and essence of old Glasgow Society; while in the course of his work he would find opportunities of using what antiquarian knowledge he had amassed concerning old houses, old social habits, the state of trade at different periods, and the like. The idea was a happy one; the Doctor set to work valiantly, and in course of time in a spacious volume, with suitable index and appendix, the "Clubs of Glasgow" was before the world. Never, perhaps, has so good a book been so badly written. The book is interesting, but interesting in virtue of the excellence of the material, not of the literary execution. Yet, on the whole, it may fairly be considered sufficient. You open its pages, and step from the Present into the Past. You are in the Trongate, through which Prince Charles has just ridden. You see Virginian merchants pacing to and fro with scarlet cloaks and gold-headed sticks; you see belle and beau walk a minuet in the Old Assembly-Room; you see flushed Tom and Jerry lock an asthmatic "Charlie" in his sentry-box, and roll him down a declivity into the river--all gone long ago, like the rum-punch which they brewed, like the limes with which they flavoured it!

[Sidenote: Hugh Macdonald.]

Mr Macdonald is Dr Strang's antithesis, and yet his complement. The one worked in antiquarianism and statistics; the other in antiquarianism and poetry. The one loved the old houses, the old hedges, the old churchyards within the city; the other loved these things without the city and miles away from it--and so between them both we have the district very fairly represented. Mr Macdonald was a man of genius, a song-writer, an antiquary, a devout lover of beast and bird, of snowdrop and lucken-gowan, of the sun setting on Bothwell Bank, of the moon shining down on Clydesdale barley fields. He was in his degree one of those poets who have, since Burns's time, made nearly every portion of Scotland vocal. Just as Tannahill has made Gleniffer hills greener by his songs, as Thorn of Inverury has lent a new interest to the banks of the Dee, as Scott Riddell has added a note to the Border Minstrelsy, has Mr Macdonald taken poetic possession of the country around Glasgow. Neither for him nor for any of his compeers can the title of great poet be claimed. These men are local poets; but if you know and love the locality, you thankfully accept the songs with which they have associated them. If the scenery of a shire is gentle, it is fitting that the poet of the shire should possess a genius to match. Great scenes demand great poems; simple scenes, simple ones. Coleridge's hymn in the Vale of Chamouni is a noble performance, but out of place if uttered in a Lanarkshire glen where sheep are feeding, and where you may search the horizon in vain for an elevation of five hundred feet. Mr Macdonald could not have approached Coleridge's hymn had he been placed in Chamouni; but he has done justice to the scenery that surrounded him--made the ivies of Crookston more sombre with his verse, and yet more splendid the westward-running Clyde in which the sun is setting.

He was one of those, too--of whom Scotchmen are specially proud--who, born in humble circumstances, and with no aid from college, and often but little from school, do achieve some positive literary result, and recognition more or less for the same. He was born in one of the eastern districts

of Glasgow, lived for some time in the Island of Mull, in the house of a relative--for, as his name imports, he was a pure Celt--and from his sires he drew song, melancholy, and superstition. The superstition he never could completely shake off. He could laugh at a ghost story, could deck it out with grotesque or humorous exaggeration; but the central terror glared upon him through all disguises, and, hearing or relating, his blood was running chill the while. Returning to his native city, he was entered an apprentice in a public manufactory, and here it was--fresh from ruined castle, mist folding on the Morven Hills, tales told by mountain shepherd or weather-beaten fisherman of corpse lights glimmering on the sea; with English literature in which to range and take delight in golden shreds of leisure; and with everything, past Highland experience and present dim environment, beginning to be overspread by the "purple light of love"--that Mr Macdonald became a poet. Considering the matter now, it may be said that his circumstances were not unfavourable to the development of the poetic spirit. [Sidenote: Glasgow poets.] Glasgow at the period spoken of could boast of her poets. Dugald Moore was writing odes to "Earthquake" and "Eclipse," and getting quizzed by his companions. Motherwell, the author of "Jeanie Morrison," was editor of the _Courier_, and in its columns fighting manfully against Reform. Alexander Rodger, who disgusted Sir Walter by the publication of a wicked and witty welcome--singular in likeness and contrast to the Magician's own--on the occasion of the visit of his gracious Majesty George IV. to Edinburgh, was filling the newspapers of the west with satirical verses, and getting himself into trouble thereby. Nay, more, this same Alexander Rodger, either then or at a later period, held a post in the manufactory in which Mr Macdonald was apprentice. Nor was the eye without education, or memory without associations to feed upon. Before the door of this manufactory stood Glasgow Green, the tree yet putting forth its leaves under which Prince Charles stood when he reviewed his shoeless Highland host before marching to Falkirk. Near the window, and to be seen by the boy every time he lifted his head from work, flowed the Clyde, bringing recollections of the red ruins of Bothwell Castle, where the Douglases dwelt, and the ivy-muffled walls of Blantyre Priory where the monks prayed; carrying imagination with it as it flowed seaward to Dumbarton Castle, with its Ossianic associations, and recalling, as it sank into ocean, the night when Bruce from his lair in Arran watched the beacon broadening on the Carrick shore. And from the same windows, looking across the stream, he could see the long straggling burgh of Rutherglen, with the church tower which saw the bargain struck with Menteith for the betrayal of Wallace, standing eminent above the trees. And when we know that the girl who was afterwards to become his wife was growing up there, known and loved at the time, one can fancy how often his eyes dwelt on the little town, with church tower and chimney, fretting the sky-line. And when he rambled--and he always _did_ ramble--inevitably deeper impulses would come to him. Northward from Glasgow a few miles, at Rob Royston, where Wallace was betrayed, lived Walter Watson, whose songs have been sung by many who never heard his name. Seven miles southward from the city lay Paisley in its smoke, and beyond that, Gleniffer Braes--scarcely changed since Tannahill walked over them on summer evenings. [Sidenote: A poetic education.] South-east stretched the sterile district of the Mearns, with plovers, and heather, and shallow, glittering lakes; and beyond, in a green crescent embracing the sea, lay a whole Ayrshire, fiery and full of Burns, every stock and stone passionate with him, his daisy blooming in every furrow, every stream as it ran seaward mourning for Highland Mary--and when night fell, in every tavern in the county the blithest lads in Christendie sitting over their cups, and flouting the horned moon hanging in the window pane. And then, to complete a poetic education, there was Glasgow herself--black river flowing between two glooms of masts--the Trongate's all-day roar of traffic, and at night the faces of the hurrying crowds brought out keenly for a moment in the light of the shop windows--the miles of stony streets, with statues in the squares and open spaces--the grand Cathedral, filled once with Popish shrines and rolling incense, on one side of the ravine, and on the other, John Knox on his pillar, impeaching it with outstretched arm that clasps a Bible. And ever as the darkness came, the district north-east and south of the city was filled with shifting glare and gloom of furnace fires; instead of night and its privacy, the splendour of towering flame brought to the inhabitants of the eastern and southern streets a fluctuating scarlet day, piercing nook and cranny as searchingly as any sunlight--making a candle needless to the housewife as she darned stockings for the children, and turning to a perfect waste of charm, the blush on a sweetheart's cheek. With all these things around him, Mr Macdonald set himself sedulously to work, and whatever may be the value of his poetic wares, plenty of excellent material lay around him on every side.

[Sidenote: Hugh Macdonald.]

To him all these things had their uses. He had an excellent literary digestion, capable of extracting nutriment from the toughest materials. He assiduously made acquaintance with English literature in the evenings, gradually taking possession of the British essayists, poets, and historians. During this period, too, he cherished republican feelings, and had his own speculations concerning the regeneration of the human race. At this time the splendid promise of Chartism made glorious the horizon, and Macdonald, like so many of his class, conceived that the "five pints" were the _avant-couriers_ of the millennium. For him, in a very little while, Chartism went out like a theatrical sun. He no longer entertained the idea that he could to any perceptible extent aid in the regeneration of the race. Indeed, it is doubtful whether, in his latter days, he cared much whether the race would ever be regenerated. Man was a rascal, had ever been a rascal, and a rascal he would remain till the end of the chapter. He was willing to let the world wag, certified that the needful thing was to give regard to his own private footsteps. His own personal hurt made him forget the pained world. He was now fairly embarked on the poetic tide. His name, appended to copies of verses, frequently appeared in the local prints, and gained no small amount of local notice. At intervals some song-bird of his brain of stronger pinion or gayer plumage than usual would flit from newspaper to newspaper across the country; nay, several actually appeared beyond the Atlantic, and, not unnoticed by admiring eyes, perched on a broadsheet here and there, as they made their way from the great cities towards the Western clearings. All this time, too, he was an enthusiastic botanist in book and field, a lover of the open country and the blowing wind, a scorner of fatigue, ready any Saturday afternoon when work was over for a walk of twenty miles, if so be he might look on a rare flower or an ivied ruin. And the girl living over in Rutherglen was growing up to womanhood, each charm of mind and feature celebrated for many a year in glowing verse; and her he, poet-like, married--the household plenishing of the pair, love and hope, and a disregard of inconveniences arising from straitened means. The happiest man in the world--but a widower before the year was out! With his wife died many things, all buried in one grave. Republican dreamings and schemes for the regeneration of the world faded after that. Here is a short poem, full of the rain cloud and the yellow leaf, which has reference to his feelings at the time--

Gorgeous are thy woods, October!
Clad in glowing mantles sear;
Brightest tints of beauty blending
Like the west, when day's descending,
Thou'rt the sunset of the year.

"Fading flowers are thine, October!
Droopeth sad the sweet blue-bell;
Gone the blossoms April cherish'd--
Violet, lily, rose, all perish'd--
Fragrance fled from field and dell.

"Songless are thy woods, October!
Save when redbreast's mournful lay
Through the calm gray morn is swelling,
To the list'ning echoes telling
Tales of darkness and decay.

"Saddest sounds are thine, October!
Music of the falling leaf
O'er the pensive spirit stealing,
To its inmost depths revealing:
'Thus all gladness sinks in grief.'

"I do love thee, drear October!
More than budding, blooming Spring--
Hers is hope, delusive smiling,
Trusting hearts to grief beguiling;
Mem'ry loves thy dusky wing.

"Joyous hearts may love the summer,
Bright with sunshine, song, and flower;
But the heart whose hopes are blighted,
In the gloom of woe benighted,
Better loves thy kindred bower.

"'Twas in thee, thou sad October!
Death laid low my bosom flower.
Life hath been a wintry river,
O'er whose ripple gladness never
Gleameth brightly since that hour.

"Hearts would fain be with their treasure,
Mine is slumb'ring in the clay;
Wandering here alone, uncheery,
Deem 't not strange this heart should weary
For its own October day."

The greater proportion of Mr Macdonald's poems first saw the light in the columns of the _Glasgow Citizen_, then, as now, conducted by Mr James Heddenvick, an accomplished journalist, and a poet of no mean order. The casual connexion of contributor and editor ripened into friendship, and in 1849, Mr Macdonald was permanently engaged as Mr Hedderwick's sub-editor. He was now occupied in congenial tasks, and a gush of song followed this accession of leisure and opportunity. Sunshine and the scent of flowers seemed to have stolen into the weekly columns. You "smelt the meadow" in casual paragraph and in leading article. The _Citizen_ not only kept its eye on Louis Napoleon and the Czar, it paid attention to the building of the hedge-sparrow's nest, and the blowing of the wild flower as well.

Still more to prose than to verse did Mr Macdonald at this time direct his energies; and he was happy enough to encounter a subject exactly suited to his powers and mental peculiarities. He was the most uncosmopolitan of mortals. He had the strongest local attachments. In his eyes, Scotland was the fairest portion of the planet; Glasgow, the fairest portion of Scotland; and Bridgeton--the district of the city in which he dwelt--the fairest portion of Glasgow. He would have shrieked like a mandrake at uprootal. He never would pass a night away from home. But he loved nature--and the snowdrop called him out of the smoke to Castle Milk, the lucken-gowan to Kenmure, the craw-flower to Gleniffer. His heart clung to every ruin in the neighbourhood like the ivy. He was learned in epitaphs, and spent many an hour in village churchyards in extracting sweet and bitter thoughts from the half-obliterated inscriptions. Jaques, Isaak Walton, and Old Mortality, in one, he knew Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and Ayrshire by heart. Keenly sensible to natural beauty, full of antiquarian knowledge, and in possession of a prose style singularly quaint, picturesque, and humorous, he began week, by week, in the columns of the _Citizen_, the publication of his "Rambles Round Glasgow." City people were astonished to learn that the country beyond the smoke was far from prosaic--that it had its traditions, its antiquities, its historical associations, its glens and waterfalls worthy of special excursions. These sketches were afterwards collected, and ran, in their separate and more convenient form, through two editions. No sooner were the "Rambles" completed than he projected a new series of sketches, entitled, "Days at the Coast"--sketches which also appeared in the columns of a weekly newspaper. Mr Macdonald's best writing is to be found in this book--several of the descriptive passages being really notable in their way. As we read, the Firth of Clyde glitters before us, with white villages sitting on the green shores: Bute and the twin Cumbraes are asleep in sunshine; while beyond, a stream of lustrous vapour is melting on the grisly Arran peaks. The publication of these sketches raised the reputation of their author, and, like the others, they received the honour of collection, and a separate issue. But little more has to be said concerning his literary activity. The early afternoon was setting in. During the last eighteen months of his life he was engaged on one of the Glasgow morning journals; and when in its columns he rambled as of yore, it was with a comparatively infirm step, and an eye that had lost its interest and lustre. "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her;" and when the spring-time came, Macdonald, remembering all her former sweetness, journeyed to Castle Milk to see the snowdrops--for there, of all their haunts in the west, they come earliest and linger latest. It was a dying visit, an eternal farewell. Why have I written of this man so? Because he had the knack of making friends of all with whom he came into contact, and it was my fortune to come into more frequent and more intimate contact with him than most. He was neither a great man nor a great poet--in the ordinary senses of these terms--but since his removal there are perhaps some half-dozen persons in the world who feel that the "strange superfluous glory of the air" lacks something, and that because an eye and an ear are gone, the colour of the flower is duller, the song of the bird less sweet, than in a time they can remember.

Both Dr Strang and Mr Macdonald have written about Glasgow, and by their aid we shall be able to see something of the city and its surroundings.

[Sidenote: Early history of Glasgow.]

The history of the city, from the period of St Mungo to the commercial crisis in 1857 and the fall of the Western Bank, presents many points of interest. Looking back some thirteen centuries into the gray morning-light of time, we see St Mungo led by an angel, establishing himself on the banks of the Molendinar, and erecting a rude chapel or oratory. There for many summers and winters he prayed his prayers, sung his aves, and wrought his miracles. The fame of his sanctity spread far and wide, and many pilgrims came to converse with, and be counselled by, the holy man. In process of time--the prayers of the saint proving wondrously efficacious, and the Clyde flowing through the lower grounds at a little distance being populous with salmon--people began to gather, and a score or so of wooden huts, built on the river bank, was the beginning of the present city. In 1197 the cathedral was consecrated by a certain Bishop Jocelyn, and from thence, on to the Reformation, its affairs continued in a prosperous condition; its revenues, taking into consideration the poverty of the country and the thinness of the population, were considerable; and its bishops were frequently men of ambition and of splendid tastes. Its interior was enriched by many precious relics. On days of high festival, the Lord Bishop and his officials, clad in costly vestments, entered by the great western door, and as the procession swept onward to the altar, incense fumed from swinging censers, the voices of the choir rose in rich and solemn chanting, the great organ burst on the ear with its multitudinous thunders, and rude human hearts were bowed to the ground with contrition, or rose in surges of sound to heaven in ecstasy. Glasgow, too, is closely connected with Wallace. The Bell o' the Brae saw the flash of his sword as the Southrons fled before him. At the kirk of Rutherglen, Sir John Menteith and Sir Aymer de Vallance met to plan the capture of the hero: and at Rob Royston the deed of shame was consummated. Menteith, with sixty followers, surrounded the house in which Wallace slept. Traitors were already within. His weapons were stolen. Kierly, his servant, was slain. According to Blind Harry, at the touch of a hand Wallace sprung up--a lion at bay. He seized an oaken stool--the only weapon of offence within reach--and at a blow broke one rascal's back, in a second splashed the wall with the blood and brains of another, when the whole pack threw themselves upon him, bore him down by sheer weight, and secured him. He was conveyed to Dumbarton, then held by the English, and from thence was delivered into the hands of Edward. The battle of Langside was fought in the vicinity of the city. Moray, lying in Glasgow, intercepted Mary on her march from Hamilton to Dumbarton, and gave battle. Every one knows the issue. For sixty miles without drawing rein the queen fled towards England and a scaffold. Moray returned to Glasgow through the village of Gorbals, his troopers, it is said, wiping their bloody swords on the manes of their horses as they rode, and went thence to meet his assassin in Linlithgow town. During the heat and frenzy of the Reformation, nearly all our ecclesiastical edifices went to the ground, or came out of the fierce trial with interiors pillaged, altars desecrated, and the statues of apostles and saints broken or defaced. Glasgow Cathedral was assailed like the rest; already the work of destruction had begun, when the craftsmen of the city came to the rescue. Their exertions on that occasion preserved the noble building for us. They were proud of it then; they are proud of it to-day. During the persecution, the country to the west of Glasgow was overrun by dragoons, and many a simple Covenanter had but short shrift--seized, tried, condemned, shot, in heaven, within the hour. The rambler is certain to encounter, not only in village churchyards, but by the wayside, or in the hearts of solitary moors, familiar but with the sunbeam and the cry of the curlew, rude martyr stones, their sculptures and letters covered with lichen, and telling with difficulty the names of the sufferers and the manner of their deaths, and intimating that--

"This stone shall witness be
'Twixt Presbyterie and Prelacie."

[Sidenote: Prince Charles.]

The next striking event in the history of the city is the visit of Prince Charles. Enter on the Christmas week of 1745-46 the wild, foot-sore, Highland host on its flight from Derby. How the sleek citizens shrink back from the worn, hairy faces, and fierce eyes in which the lights of plunder burn. "The Prince, the Prince! which is the Prince?" "That's he--yonder--wi' the lang yellow hair." Onward rides, pale and dejected, the throne-haunted man. He looks up as he catches a fair face at a window, and you see he inherits the Stuart smile and the Stuart eye. He, like his fathers, will provoke the bitterest hatred, and be served by the wildest devotion. Men will gladly throw away their lives for him. The blood of nobles will redden scaffolds for him. Shepherds and herdsmen will dare death to shelter him; and beautiful women will bend over his sleep--wrapped in clansman's plaid on bed of heather or bracken--to clip but one shred of his yellow hair, and feel thereby requited for all that they and theirs have suffered in his behalf. But with all his beauty and his misfortunes, his appearance in Glasgow created little enthusiasm. He scarcely gained a recruit. Only a few ladies donned in his honour white breast-knots and ribbons. He levied a heavy contribution on the inhabitants. A prince at the head of an army in want of brogues, and who insisted on being provided with shoe-leather gratis, was hardly calculated to excite the admiration of prudent Glasgow burgesses. He did not remain long. The Green beheld for one day the far-stretching files and splendour of the Highland war, on the next--in unpaid shoe-leather--he marched to his doom. Victory, like a stormy sunbeam, burned for a moment on his arms at Falkirk, and then all was closed in blood and thunder on Culloden Moor.

[Sidenote: Glasgow Clubs.]

It is about this period that Dr Strang's book on the "Clubs" begins. In those old, hospitable, hard-drinking days, Glasgow seems to have been pre-eminently a city of clubs. Every street had its tavern, and every tavern had its club. There were morning clubs, noon-day clubs, evening clubs, and all-day clubs, which, like the sacred fire, never went out. The club was a sanctuary wherein nestled friendship and enjoyment. The member left his ordinary life outside the door, like his greatcoat, and put it on again when he went away. Within the genial circle of the club were redressed all the ills that flesh is heir to: the lover forgot Nerissa's disdain, the debtor felt no longer his creditor's eye. At the sight of the boon companions, Care packed up his bundles and decamped, or if he dared remain, he was immediately laid hold of, plunged into the punch-bowl, and there was an end of him for that night at least. Unhappily those clubs are dead, but as their ghosts troop past in Dr Strang's pages, the sense is delicately taken by an odour of rum-punch. [Sidenote: The Anderston Club.] Shortly after the Pretender's visit to the city, the Anderston Club--so called from its meetings being held in that little village--flourished, drank its punch, and cracked its jokes on Saturday afternoons. Perhaps no club connected with the city, before or since, could boast of a membership so distinguished. It comprised nearly all the University professors. Dr Moore, professor of Greek; Professor Ross, who faithfully instilled the knowledge of Humanities into the Glasgow youth; Drs Cullen and Hamilton, medical teachers of eminence; Adam Smith; the Brothers Foulis--under whose auspices the first Fine-Art Academy was established in Scotland, and from whose printing-press the Greek and Roman classics were issued with a correctness of text and beauty of typography which had then no parallel in the kingdom--were regular and zealous members. But the heart and soul of the Anderston Club seems to have been Dr Simson, professor of mathematics. His heart vibrated to the little hostelry of Anderston as the needle vibrates to the pole. He could have found his way with his eyes shut. The following story, related of the professor by Dr Strang, is not unamusing in itself, and a fair specimen of the piebald style in which the greater portion of the book is written:--

"The mathematician ever made it a rule to throw algebra and arithmetic 'to the dogs,' save in so far as to discover the just _quadratic equation_ and _simple division_ of a bowl of punch. One thing alone in the club he brought his mathematics to bear upon, and that was his glass. This had been constructed on the truest principles of geometry for emptying itself easily, the stalk requiring to form but a very acute angle with the open lips ere its whole contents had dropped into the æsophagus. One fatal day, however, Girzy, the black-eyed and dimple-cheeked servant of the hostelry, in making arrangements for the meeting of the club, allowed this favourite piece of crystal, as many black and blue eyed girls have done before and since, to slip from her fingers and be broken. She knew the professor's partiality for his favourite beaker, and thought of getting another; but the day was too far spent, and the Gallowgate, then the receptacle of such luxuries, was too far distant to procure one for that day's meeting of the fraternity. Had Verreville, the city of glass, been then where it has since stood, the mathematician's placid temper might not have been ruffled, nor might Girzy have found herself in so disagreeable a dilemma. The club met, the hen-broth smoked in every platter, the few standard dishes disappeared, the _medoc_ was sipped, and was then succeeded, as usual, by a goodly-sized punch-bowl. The enticing and delicious compound was mixed, tasted, and pronounced nectar: the professor, dreaming for a moment of some logarithm of Napier's, or problem of Euclid's, pushed forward to the fount unconsciously the glass which stood before him, drew it back a brimmer, and carried it to his lips; but lo! the increased angle at which the professor was obliged to raise his arm, roused him from his momentary reverie, and, pulling the drinking-cup from his lips as if it contained the deadliest henbane, exclaimed, 'What is this, Girzy, you have given me? I cannot drink out of this glass. Give me my own, you little minx. You might now well know that _this_ is not mine.' 'Weel-a-wat, it's a I hae for't, Maister Simson,' answered Girzy, blushing. 'Hush, hush,' rejoined the mathematician, 'say not so. I know it is not _my_ glass, for the outer edge of this touches my nose, and _mine_ never did so.' The girl confessed the accident, and the professor, though for some minutes sadly out of humour, was at length appeased, and swallowed his _sherbet_ at the risk of injuring his proboscis."

[Sidenote: Dr Simson.]

Dr Strang informs us that the eccentric mathematician, in his progress from the University to Anderston, was in the habit of counting his steps, and that, walking blind-folded, he could have told the distance to a fraction of an inch. He has omitted, however, to tell us whether the Doctor's steps were counted on his return, and if the numbers corresponded!

Along with the notices of the clubs subsequent to the one mentioned, Dr Strang gives his reader a tolerable notion of how it went with Glasgow in those years. We have a peep of the Trongate during the lucrative tobacco trade, when Glasgow had her head not a little turned by her commercial prosperity. There are rich citizens now in the streets. Behold Mr Glassford, picking his steps daintily along the Crown o' the Causeway, with scarlet cloak, flowing wig, cocked-hat, and gold-headed cane! He has money in his purse, and he knows it too. All men warm themselves in the light of his countenance. If he kicks you, you are honoured, for is it not with a golden foot? How the loud voice droops, how the obsequious knee bends before him! He told Tobias Smollett yesterday that he had five-and-twenty ships sailing for him on the sea, and that half-a-million passed through his hands every year. Pass on a little farther, and yonder is Captain Paton sunning himself on the ample pavement in front of the Tontine. Let us step up to him. He will ask us to dinner, and mix us a bowl of punch flavoured with his own limes--

"In Trinidad that grow."

For hospitality was then, as now, a characteristic of the city. The suppers--the favourite meal--were of the most substantial description. A couple of turkeys, a huge round of beef, and a bowl--a very Caspian Sea--of punch, seething to its silver brim, and dashed with delicate slices of lime or lemon--formed the principal ingredients. Good fellowship was the order of the day. In the morning and forenoon the merchants congregated in the Tontine reading-room for news and gossip, and at night the punch-bowl was produced, emptied, replenished, and emptied again, while the toasts--"Down with the Convention," "The Pilot that weathered the storm"--were drunk with enthusiasm in some cosy tavern in the then aristocratic Princes Street. At a later period, during the disturbed years that preceded the Reform Bill, we see the moneyed classes--"soor-milk jockeys" they were profanely nicknamed by the mob--eagerly enrolling themselves in yeomanry corps: on field days resplendent in laced jacket and shako, or clanking through the streets with spur and sabre. As we approach our own times the clubs pale their ineffectual fires--they shrink from planets to will-o'-the-wisp; at last

"They die away
And fade into the light of common day."

Glasgow is now, so far as history is concerned, a clubless city.

[Sidenote: The Glasgow operative.]