A V.I.v.u) PIC.ix.RE OF OLD GLASGOW.*

MANY books, some authoritative but dull, others notable chiefly for their bulk, have been written about Glasgow, especially since its growth assumed positively American dimensions. But as a contribution to literature none can compare with this. Its author was in his tolerably long day one of the leading antiquarians in his native city, and the accuracy of his information was on a par with its extent. But there was nothing of the Dryasdust about him. He had a very genuine gift of, and love for, style ; there was a touch of dry humour of a kind that is probably dying out of Scotland, certainly out of the larger Scottish cities, in almost everything he wrote. His own career, as sketched in an introduction to this volume of commendable brevity and lucidity, was an uneventful, but also a typical one. The son of a leading lawyer in Glasgow, he received an excellent training at the University there, and dis- tinguished himself in several of his classes, especially Latin, Greek, and mathematics. He thought for a time of following in his father's professional footsteps; next he con- templated entering the Church ; finally, however, he decided for a commercial life. The failure of a leading bank brought his first ventures to grief, but while still a young man he became a partner in a firm of wholesale hide and leather * Gld Glasgow Essays. By the late John Oswald Mitchell, LL.D. Glasgow; James MacLehose and Sons. [10s. J

merchants which prospered greatly. He remained in this position till he retired from active life in 1902.

Mr. Mitchell, who died in 1904 at the age of seventy- eight, devoted his leisure, like not a few of his Glasgow brothers in commerce, to archaeology and local history. His last act, when he was unable to write, was to dictate a presidential address to the local Archaeological Society on the congenial subject of Glasgow in 1707. Regarding other features of Mr. Mitchell's life his biographer may be quoted:— " A consistent tenacious Whig, he became a Unionist. He was a devotee of laisses fairs and a convinced opponent of Socialism. A note of political pessimism in his later opinions only accentuated an undertone of his earlier writings. In opinion, as in action, he was large of sympathy through and through. Of a spirit essentially reverent, and by its nature Christian, he was to the core a good man, whose thought, like his life, was suffused with intense religious feeling. His simple unquestioning belief in the divine found its most practical expression in the belief in humanity, his own sense of the gladness and worth of life, and his will to help."

Mr. Mitchell was in the habit of writing out his im. pressions of men and things in the past as these occurred to him, or were naturally recalled by some event such as the death of a well-known citizen whose " family " was associated with the life of the old Glasgow he loved, and of embodying them in papers which he sent to the leading Glasgow newspaper or read to one or other of the antiquarian clubs to which he belonged. It is but a selection from these that is now published. But as this volume runs to over four hundred pages the selection is not wanting in quantity, and in quality it may fairly be said to represent the best its author had to say. His biographer alludes to his pessimism, and perhaps the character of that pessimism had better be first illustrated. Though gentle, it is decided, and therefore merits careful attention :— " Nowadays our leading merchant has too often ceased to be a citizen. Glasgow is the place where he has his office, and which is always wanting subscriptions from him. But he lives as far from it as he can. He cultivates other society outside of his own business. The circle of his acquaintance here is gradually narrowing. He would no more mix in municipal matters than Lord Westminster would join the Pimlico Paving Board. If he has himself the misfortune to 'speak Glasgow,' his sons and his daughters shall escape that nnmelodious shibboleth, and they come back from their English schools strangers, knowing nothing and caring nothing about Glasgow or Glasgow folk, and rather ashamed of having anything to do with the big smoky town. They may never have heard the Tolbooth chimes, and could hardly find their way to King William or the Green. They read Burns or Scott, if at all, with a glossary, and they have no idea of the difference between a Freethinker and a U.P. or any other of these puzzling Scotch sects."

Even more distinctly a warning is the following :— " The supremacy of Glasgow as the port of the Clyde is for the first time seriously threatened ; perhaps, at enormous cost to Greenock, it may be maintained. Glasgow has lived through many a trying season and probably she has still vitality to revive now, when a blight seems to have fallen on every branch and to wither every leaf. But the felis arbor is not sound at the roots. Chicago and Glasgow have been likened to each other for

their rapidity of growth But Chicago depends on wheat, which grows, and Glasgow every year depends more and more on minerals, which do not grow As the exhaustion of minerals advances, our industry, and with it our commerce, must fall back, and the general suffering can only end when the population shall have shrunk in keeping ,with the reduced power of production."

It may easily be gathered from extracts like these that Mr. Mitchell was not democratic in the modern sense. His biographer, indeed, says, speaking of the work he did :—

"A constitutionalist might have noted other things, might have dwelt on the growth of civic rights, the rivalry of the merchants and the crafts, the broadening of self-government, and the re- sulting evolution of the modern municipality. He chose other- wise. His interests were frankly_not democratic, and he turned with a glow to the old dons= what some of their successors would give,' he thought, 'a good part of their riches for '—a distinct position of aristocracy, and who enjoyed its first condition, an un- questioned social supremacy. Those old merchants, in great part a hereditary caste, were the centre of his world. Glasgow was his inspiration."

The limited scope of Mr. Mitchell's survey gives point to his illustrations of the "exclusiveness," which he positively loves, as represented by the Glasgow "good" life of the past :—

"Society sixty years ago was very settish. At the top of it was a recognised upper ten, some West India sugar lords, some repre- sentatives of the still older aristocracy of Virginia tobacco lords and of our early foreign merchants, and some who one way or another were in the swim. These gentlemen owned as hof-fiihig the university professors and perhaps the city clergy. On every one else, however worthy or well-bred or well-to-do, they looked like the far-end of a fiddle, and only dined and danced and drank among themselves. Curiously enough, in a place like this their supremacy was never challenged, and some folks worked hard for admission within the sacred circle. Such a system has its good points as well as its bad. It gives us some counterpoise to the leaden weight of mere money, and the competition between two false deities gives a better chance to the worship of the true."

There is, further, very real and pardonable pride in such a reminder as the following :—

" We are apt to forget how long some of these old merchants' names had been known. Glasgow looks almost as new as Chicago. But the luxuriant growth hides an ancient stem. Glasgow was a place of trade before Columbus had sighted the new world, and many of our old families could show their burgess tickets or point to their names in the Civic Fasti for generations and generations. Others had the ‘Jus imaginum' before they had anything to do with Glasgow. As long as Scotland had been a trading country, Scotchmen of good family (wiser than their English fellows) have freely engaged in trade, and many of our old merchants were men of gentle, even of noble, blood."

A very large portion of this book is, as was indeed to be expected both from the special knowledge and the special sympathies of the author, devoted to the history of old Glasgow firms, institutions, and habits and customs. The titles of many, if not the most, of them—such as "William Stirling and Sons," "James Finlay and Co.," "The Stevens of Bellahouston," "Cohn Dunlop Donald," and "Provost Archibald Ingram "—speak for themselves. By means of these and of such a sketch as "Robin Carrick's Will "—in its way the best example of its author's style—Mr. Mitchell is able to reproduce the mercantile aristocracy of his native city. Still more direct information is given in such articles as "Housekeeping Sixty Years Ago" :- "A frequent entry is 'Paid John Sweenie.' Sweenie was a very decent Irishman who sold Irish butter and eggs, and kept a sedan chair. His place was in West Nile Lane, now Drury Street. In those days there were no cabs to be hired from cabstands. There were only ' noddies ' to be ordered from coachyards. The noddy was of the nature of the ponderous fly of little English country places, only more so. It was a great square box for four, with a smaller square box for the driver projecting in front, and it'was hung so high that one clambered into it on either side by heavy folding steps. It was not cheap, and ladies generally went out to dinner in a chair, the husband walking alongside."

Different in character is "The Auld Lichts and Ither Lichts," which is perhaps the most succinct and easily under- stood account that has yet been published of the various bodies into which the fanaticism of sincerity has broken up Scottish Presbyterianism. Then there are delightful travel papers of the old mail-coach days which recall the vigour of "Christopher North"

"I woke to find the sun lighting up the green Lowthers as we galloped up Clydeside, then the summit level, then the plunge down Evan Water, then the pull up at Beattock Inn. I see it now, the blazing fire, the smoking breakfast, the fmnans and the chops, and the ham and eggs, the baps and the buttered toast, how the piles kept on coming in and melting away ! Surely there never were such breakfasts as the breakfasts at Beattock Inn, and there never was such picturesque travel as travel by the old mail coach."

Quite as good in its way is "The Story of Katherine Carmichael." Katherine was the daughter of a Lanarkshire laird, and as a mere girl became maitresse en titre to James V. He built for her a house in one of the loneliest districts of

Scotland :—

"It was a strange choice as the home of a girl of seventeen. Crawfordjohn has its attractions ; it has the charm of solitude—it is perhaps the loneliest village in the Lowlands - in Lanarkshire and six miles from a station—and on a summer day the landscape, though bare even now of trees, is cheerful; white sheep dot the green hills, and fat kine browse in the smiling holms reclaimed from the bog. But I should not have liked to live there in Katherine Carmichael's time. None of the rich fruits of modern husbandry and its capital brightened then the scene—no bleating of sheep, no lowing of cattle broke the silence—and the lonely glen, 1,000 feet above the sea, was reached by rude tracks scarcely passable at best, impassable in winter's snows and glaur."

Mr. Mitchell is of opinion that the girl chose this oubliette to hide from her relatives, and this view is probably correct if her original historian had authority for saying that "it was neither her choyce nor any vitious habits that prevailed over her chastitie, but aue inevitable fate that the strongest resistance could hardly withstand."

We have said and quoted enough to show the quality and readability of one of the best and brightest books which have ever been published about that Scotland of the past which, as it were with a sweet reluctant amorous delay, finds itself gradually being dissociated from the present.