e
Tolbooth where Rob Roy was confined, a solid piece of ancient
architecture. The main building has been removed and a modern house
supplies its place; the tower has been pierced below for a thoroughfare,
and its clock still reports the time of day to the people of Glasgow. The
crowd through which I passed had that squalid appearance which marks
extreme poverty and uncertain means of subsistence, and I was able to form
some idea of the prodigious number of this class in a populous city of
Great Britain like Glasgow. For populous she is, and prosperous as a city,
increasing with a rapidity almost equal to that of New York, and already
she numbers, it is estimated, three hundred thousand inhabitants. Of
these it is said that full one-third are Irish by birth or born of Irish
parents.

The next day, which was Sunday, before going to church, I walked towards
the west part of the city; where the streets are broad and the houses
extremely well-built, of the same noble material as the new town of
Edinburgh; and many of the dwellings have fine gardens. Their sites in
many places overlook the pleasant valley of the Clyde, and I could not
help acknowledging that Glasgow was not without claim to the epithet of
beautiful, which I should have denied her if I had formed my judgment from
the commercial streets only. The people of Glasgow also have shown their
good sense in erecting the statues which adorn their public squares, only
to men who have some just claim to distinction. Here are no statues, for
example, of the profligate Charles II., or the worthless Duke of York, or
the silly Duke of Cambridge, as you will see in other cities; but here the
marble effigy of Walter Scott looks from a lofty column in the principal
square, and not far from it is that of the inventor Watt; while the
statues erected to military men are to those who, like Wellington, have
acquired a just renown in arms. The streets were full of well-dressed
persons going to church, the women for the most part, I must say, far from
beautiful. I turned with the throng and followed it as far as St. Enoch's
church, in Buchanan-street, where I heard a long discourse from a
sensible preacher, Dr. Barr, a minister of the established Kirk of
Scotland.

In the afternoon I climbed one of the steep streets to the north of my
hotel, and found three places of worship, built with considerable
attention to architectural effect, and fresh, as it seemed, from the hands
of the mas