ow
is a grand place. Yet the miracle is achieved; and while I was in
Glasgow I shared the illusion. I have 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 gave battle before Stirling Brig; and, in the midst of mediaeval
diplomacies, made a new nation possible. Anyhow, the romantic quality of
Scotland rolled all about me, as much in the last reek of Glasgow as in
the first rain upon the hills. The tall factory chimneys seemed trying
to be taller than the mountain peaks; as if this landscape were full
(as its history has been full) of the very madness of ambition. The
wageslavery we live in is a wicked thing