gold; I HAVE NOT YET WRITTEN A BOOK ABOUT GLASGOW.

And the story of the town is as eccentric as its
appearance. For centuries it was a capital thatched with
heather, and more than once, in the evil days of English
invasion, it has gone up in flame to heaven, a beacon to
ships at sea. It was the jousting-ground of jealous
nobles, not only on Greenside, or by the King's Stables,
where set tournaments were fought to the sound of
trumpets and under the authority of the royal presence,
but in every alley where there was room to cross swords,
and in the main street, where popular tumult under the
Blue Blanket alternated with the brawls of outlandish
clansmen and retainers. Down in the palace John Knox
reproved his queen in the accents of modern democracy.
In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like
so many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old
Cathedral, that familiar autocrat, James VI., would
gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the
goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly
look down on the Castle with the city lying in waves
around it, those mad and dismal fanatics, the Sweet
Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors, sat day
and night with 'tearful psalmns' to see Edinburgh
consumed with fire from heaven, like another Sodom or
Gomorrah. There, in the Grass-market, stiff-necked,
covenanting heroes, offered up the often unnecessary, but
not less honourable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade
eloquent farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly
friendships, or died silent to the roll of drums. Down