never had the faintest illusion about Leeds or Birmingham. The industrial
dream suited the Scots. Here was a really romantic vista, suited to a
romantic people; a vision of higher and higher chimneys taking hold upon
the heavens, of fiercer and fiercer fires in which adamant could evaporate
like dew. Here were taller and taller engines that began already to
shriek and gesticulate like giants. Here were thunderbolts of
communication which already flashed to and fro like thoughts. It was
unreasonable to expect the rapt, dreamy, romantic Scot to stand still in
such a whirl of wizardry to ask whether he, the ordinary Scot, would be
any the richer.

He, the ordinary Scot, is very much the poorer. Glasgow is not a rich
city. It is a particularly poor city ruled by a few particularly rich men.
It is not, perhaps, quite so poor a city as Liverpool, London,
Manchester, Birmingham, or Bolton. It is vastly poorer than Rome, Rouen,
Munich, or Cologne. A certain civic vitality notable in Glasgow may,
perhaps, be due to the fact that the high poetic patriotism of the Scots
has there been reinforced by the cutting common sense and independence of
the Irish. In any case, I think there can be no doubt of the main
historical fact. The Scotch were tempted by the enormous but unequal
opportunities of industrialism, because the Scotch are romantic. The
Irish refused those enormous and unequal opportunities, because the Irish
are clear-sighted. They would not need very clear sight by this time to
see that in England and Scotland the temptation has been a betrayal. The
industrial system has failed.

I was coming the other day along a great valley road that strikes out of
the westland counties about Glasgow, more or less towards the east and the
widening of the Forth. It may, for all I know (I amused myself with the
fancy), be the way along which Wallace came with his crude army, when he