deserted and leaning towards decay; birds we might admit
in profusion, the play of the sun and winds, and a few
gipsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare; but these
citizens with their cabs and tramways, their trains and
posters, are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists,
they make free with historic localities, and rear their
young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human
indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat
clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little
air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the
least striking feature of the place. *

* These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my
native town, and a proportionable pleasure to our rivals
of Glasgow. I confess the news caused me both pain and
merriment. May I remark, as a balm for wounded fellow-
townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accusations?
Small blame to them if they keep ledgers: 'tis an
excellent business habit. Churchgoing is not, that ever
I heard, a subject of reproach; decency of linen is a
mark of prosperous affairs, and conscious moral rectitude
one of the tokens of good living. It is not their fault
it the city calls for something more specious by way of
inhabitants. A man in a frock-coat looks out of place
upon an Alp or Pyramid, although he has the virtues of a
Peabody and the talents of a Bentham. And let them
console themselves - they do as well as anybody else; the
population of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as
rueful a figure on the same romantic stage. To the
Glasgow people I would say only one word, but that is of