“There is nothing so certain as the unexpected.” Our first impression, after stepping upon the dry land of Europe, was that it was “limited.” Not that we had been obsessed by the spirit that dwelt in that reinforced Western Yankee, who, while on the island of Britain, was afraid to go to sleep o’ nights lest he might fall off! Yet in Glasgow the word “Limited” stared at us from every shop sign. We had not yet in America adopted the statute of financial limitations for trading firms, but the laws of the United Kingdom even then required that any one doing business with a limited capital or accountability, must state the fact on his shop sign or other public announcement. It was this frequent expression of commercial conditions, then a real novelty, that attracted our initial attention.

It was the day before Scotland’s Sabbath, or, in local dialect, “Sunday First,” that we had our virgin view of Glasgow, and the excellent custom of a Saturday half-holiday was in vogue. This afforded us all the more ease in seeing the principal thoroughfares, which, with the crowd absent and the shops closed, made comfort, but gave to the lengthened areas a deserted look. We sauntered into St. George’s Square, where, in addition to the imposing buildings surrounding it, rises the lofty column on which stands the bronze effigy of Sir Walter Scott. How marvellously did this Wizard of the North delight millions, through many generations, with his poetical numbers and his weird romances! To-day, his name is a magnet that annually brings to Scotland thousands of tourists and millions of dollars. In the long run there are no more valuable assets to a country than its great men and its deathless literature.

There were other statues visible at this time, but the larger number of those which to-day run the risk of being destroyed by bombs from the empyrean, in the new fashions prevalent in aerial warfare, were not then in existence. So it was to the cathedral that we hied, partly for the reason that this was to be the first of the many great sacred and historic edifices to be seen by us in the Old World, but chiefly because the hoary pile was almost the only one which survived the tumult and destruction of the Reformation. Largely by the “rascal multitude,” as Knox called the mob, but also in the then prevalent conviction that these structures, as then used, had survived their original purpose, and should be reduced to ruins, cathedrals, abbeys, and monasteries were levelled. For her size, no country excels Scotland in ruins.

The Glasgow cathedral, in slow evolution during centuries, was never finished. For a time its inner area was divided off to make worship more comfortable and also to bring the structure into closer conformity with those new fashions in religion, according to which the people were given sermons, instead of masses, with more worship through the intellect, and less through the senses and emotions. Yet as we stood within its cold, damp walls, on that July afternoon, we wondered how long human beings, unless clothed in plenty of woollen habiliments, could sit or stand on its stone floor. Despite its age, the interior had an air of newness, indeed, almost of smartness, for its architectural restoration and interior cleansing had been recent. The modern stained glass, made largely in Munich, though very rich, had not yet softened down into the mellowness which only centuries can bestow. One noted that the subjects selected and grandly treated with the glory, yet also within the historic limitations, of the artist in stained glass, were wholly taken from the New Testament. These Biblical and eternally interesting subjects compel thought and provoke contrast with the more garish themes of the modern world.

Going out from the great cathedral, and its wonderful crypt, we visited the Necropolis, Glasgow’s beautiful city of the dead. Being set upon a hill, it cannot be hid. Laid out in the form of terraces, and with many imposing monuments, it challenges our attention. Here sleep the merchant princes of Glasgow and the mighty dead of Scotland. The tombs are of the most costly character, for the most durable materials in nature have been summoned to record facts and to defy oblivion. Everything which love of beauty, chaste refinement, and abundant wealth could command has been wrought with toil and taste to make this lovely home of those at rest a fit resting-place for the brave men and women who are still unforgotten. The long roll of their names forms the brightest page in Scotland’s history, and the native, even when far from home, dearly loves to remember them. On a lofty Doric column, high over all else, is a statue of John Knox, and on its base is the thrilling inscription:—

“Here lies one who never feared the face of mortal man.”

Among the names, read at random on the sculptured stone, were those of Sheridan Knowles, Dr. John Dick, Melville the reformer, and many others familiar and honored in Scottish history. Thus, as out of the past centuries does the old cathedral, so, in the modern day, do the shining monuments of the departed dead look down upon the bustling life that goes on noisily below. One here feels that the spell of Scotland is not only in nature’s glories, but in the matchless landscape of her thought; nor is the empire of Scottish intellect one whit less fascinating than that of her lochs, her moors, her heather, or her granite hills. What Scotland has contributed to religion, in both theoretical study and in fruitage of practical results, argues well for world-unity. Our debt as Americans to her thought is immeasurable.

The next day is the Sabbath. The chimneys are asleep, and after the showers of the night before, even the air seems washed clean. “Like a spell,” the “serene and golden sunlight” lies over land and sea. One can now readily accept another line of verbal genealogy. Remembering that coal smoke is, after all, very modern, and chemical fumes recent, it is easier to believe that “Glasgow” is not derived from words meaning “dark glen,” but is only a modified form of the old Celtic word Gleshui, or Glas-chu, which means “dear green spot,” from glas, green and chu, dear.

Indeed, there are antiquarians who tell us that when the first Christian missionary, St. Kentigern, came to convert the Britons of Strathclyde, this antique term, expressing affection for the place and its beauty, became the name of the settlement. In days when the efficiency of particular saints was believed in more than now, and before the great American god Prosperity was so worshipped, and before both we Yankees and the people whom Napoleon bundled together as “a nation of shopkeepers” did so bow before the golden calf, every city, town, and even village had its patron saint.

Such an association of ideas—of connecting public welfare with holy men and prosperity with obedience to their exhortations—was perhaps fully as reasonable as is the modern desire of our City Councils and Boards of Trade for railways, electric lights, and the location within their municipal bounds of factories and commercial establishments. Even villages then welcomed the monks with free hand, much as our towns boom their reputation by offering building-sites free to those who will locate. So also the reason why in Europe we find so slight a variety of names for boys and girls, and why in certain regions particular local names are so frequently repeated, is because of the zeal and industry of certain old-time saints. According to the popularity of the holy man or woman was the census of boys’ and girls’ names—as, for example, in Holland, Kilaen and Fridolin; in France, Henri or Denis; in Ireland, Patrick and Bridget; in England, George and Mary; and in Scotland, Mungo, Andrew, or some other Christian name once borne by a spiritual pioneer, whose story is one of inspiration.

In such a climate and era of opinion, Glasgow took for its patron saint, Mungo, and the municipal motto and arms are wholly identified with his career. “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word” was his verbal gift and bequest, though in ordinary use and conversation the municipal motto is shortened to “Let Glasgow flourish.” This is very much as in the Netherlands the national motto, once much longer, is now abbreviated to two words in Dutch (or rather French) which in English mean “I will maintain.” Our own native city has the advantage of having adopted that scriptural command, or desire, which begins a famous chapter in Hebrews, “Let Philadelphia continue.”

Kentigern, whose name meant “chief lord,” was one of the three pioneer apostles or missionaries of the Christian faith in Scotland. Ninian took as his task the converting of the tribes of the south; St. Columba was the apostle of the west and north; while Mungo restored or established the religion of the British folk in the region between the Clyde and Cumberland. Of high birth and of early British stock, he saw the light at Culross in the year 514. His mother Thenau was the daughter of a saint of the Edinburgh region. So dearly was he beloved by the monastic brethren that his baptismal name of Kentigern was exchanged in common speech for Mungo, meaning “lovable,” or “dear friend.” Leaving Culross, he made use of the chief forces of missionary propagation in that age, by planting a monastery at a place now known as Glasgow. He became bishop of the kingdom of Cumbria, as the region, partly in the later-named England and partly in Scotland, was then called.

When this holy missionary lived, there were no such specific regions, with boundaries fixed by surveyors and known as England and Scotland, nor were Highlanders or Lowlanders discriminated by any such later and useful terms of distinction. The region which Mungo first entered was called Cumbria and was then and long afterwards an independent kingdom. It has since been broken up into Cumberland in England, and that part of Scotland which is now divided into the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Selkirk, Roxborough, and Dumfries. The name of Cumbria, notably differentiated from what in recent centuries has been called England, was governed by its own kings, who had their seat at Dumbarton or Glasgow. The name still lingers in the Cumbria Mountains. In this great knot of peaks and hills lies the famous British “lake district,” which is very much in physical features like Wales, being unsurpassed in the British archipelago for picturesqueness and beauty.

When the varied Teutonic tribes—Saxons, Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and what not from the Continent—pressed into the Lowlands, the natives inhabiting the western and more mountainous districts, north of the Forth and the Clyde, had to be distinguished from the newcomers. Then it was that these people of the hill country received names not altogether complimentary. They were called the “Wild Scots” or the “Irishry of Scotland,” and only in comparatively recent times “Scotch Highlanders.” The last prince of Cumbria, named in the records, was the brother and heir of King Alexander I of Scotland.

Glasgow is really a very modern city. As the city on Manhattan is the evolution from a fortress, so the cathedral was the nucleus around which the ancient town of the “dark glen” grew. The university, when founded, became also a magnet to attract dwellers. In the twelfth century, King William the Lion erected the settlement into a burgh, with the privilege of an annual fair. Yet even down to the sixteenth century, Glasgow was only the eleventh in importance among Scottish towns. It was the American trade, after the union with England, which gave an immense stimulus to its commerce. If “Amsterdam is built on herring bones,” the Scottish city became rich through the tobacco leaf. For a long time the merchants of Glasgow, who traded with Virginia, formed a local aristocracy, very proud and very wealthy. For a century or more, this profitable commerce lasted. Then our Civil War paralyzed it, but other industries quickly followed.

The permanent wealth of Glasgow comes, however, from its situation in the midst of a district rich in coal and iron. Furthermore, the improvements made in the steam engine by James Watt, and the demonstration, by Henry Bell, that navigation with this motive power was possible, wrought the transformation of Glasgow into the richest of Scottish cities. Speaking broadly, however, as to time, Glasgow’s wealth is the creation of the nineteenth century, and its influence upon the world at large is not much older. As upon a ladder, whose rungs are sugar refining, the distillation of strong liquors, the making of soap, the preparation of tobacco, the introduction of the cotton manufacture, calico printing, Turkey-red dyeing, beer-brewing, and the iron trade, including machine-making and steamboat building, the prosperity of Glasgow has mounted ever upwards.

The tourist seeking rest, refreshment, and inspiration is but slightly interested in mere wealth or prosperity that is wholly material. So, despite the attractive solidity of its houses, built of free-stone, and of its streets running from east to west, in straight lines and parallel with the river, the city of Glasgow, with its dingy and ever smoky aspect, has little to attract the traveller whose minutes are precious and whose days on the soil are few. So on this first visit, a day and a night sufficed us, and then we left the burgh of the (once) dear green spot and took the train to “Edwin’s burgh,” or Edinburgh.

Many times did we revisit Glasgow, noting improvement on each occasion. We came to consider this the model city of Great Britain in its municipal spirit and constant improvement. We blessed the Lord for electricity which is steadily annihilating smoke and brightening the world. “The city is the hope of democracy.”