cannot think why, in a book to be called deliberately "The Spell of Scotland," there should be a chapter on Glasgow.

I remember that in his "Picturesque Notes," to the second edition Robert Louis Stevenson added a foot-note in rebuke to the Glaswegians who had taken to themselves much pleasure at the reservations of Stevenson's praise of Edinburgh—"But remember I have not yet written a book on Glasgow." He never did. And did any one ever write "Picturesque Notes on Glasgow"?

I remember that thirty years ago when a college professor was making the "grand tour"—thirty years ago seems as far back as three hundred years when James Howell was making his "grand tour"—he asked a casually met Glaswegian what there was to be seen, and this honest Scot, pointing to the cathedral declared, "that's the only aydifyce ye'll care to look at."

I should like to be singular, to write of picturesque points in Glasgow. But how can it be done? Glasgow does not aspire to picturesqueness or to historicalness. Glasgow is content, more than content, in having her commerce and her industry always "in spate."

Glasgow is the second city of size in the United Kingdom, and the first city in being itself. London is too varied and divided in interests; it never forgets that it is the capital of the world, and a royal capital. Glasgow never forgets that it is itself, very honestly and very democratically, a city of Scots. Not of royal Stewarts, and no castle dominates it. But a city made out of the most inveterate Scottish characteristics. Or I think I would better say Scotch. That is a practical adjective, and somewhat despised of culture; therefore applicable to Glasgow. While Scottish is romantic and somewhat pretending.

Glasgow is the capital of the Whig country, of the democratic Scotland of covenanting ancestry. Glasgow is precisely what one would expect to issue out of the energy and honesty and canniness and uncompromise of that corner of the world. Historically it belongs to Wallace, the commoner-liberator. And if Burns is the genius of this southwestern Scotland, as Scott is of the southeastern, it is precisely the difference between the regions; as Edinburgh and Glasgow differ.

The towns are less than an hour apart by express train. They are all of Scotch history and characteristics apart in quality and in genius. Edinburgh is still royal, and sits supreme upon its hill, its past so present one forgets it is the past. Glasgow never could have been royal; and so it never was significant until royal Scotland ceased to be, and democratic Scotland, where a man's a man for a' that, came to take the place of the old, to take it completely, utterly. So long as the world was old, was the Old World, and looked toward the East, Edinburgh would be the chief city. When the world began to be new, and to look toward the New World, Glasgow came swiftly into being, and the race is to the swift.

There is history to Glasgow, when it was a green pleasant village, and there was romance. It is but a short way, a foot-path journey if the pleasant green fields still invited, out to Bothwell Castle; splendid ruin, and, therefore, recalling Mary and Darnley and the Lennoxes, but not Bothwell. But Landside, where Mary was defeated, is a Glaswegian suburb, Kelvingrove—"let us haste"—is a prosperous residence district. The Broomielaw, lovely word, means simply and largely the harbour of Glasgow, made deliberately out of Clyde water in order that Glasgow's prosperity might flow out of the very heart of the city. "Lord, let Glasgow flourish according to the preaching of Thy word," ran the old motto. It has been shortened of late.

The heart of the city is dreary miles of long monotonous streets, where beauty is never wasted in grass blade or architecture. George's Square may be noble, it has some good monuments, but it is veiled in commercial grime, like all the town. What could be expected of a city that would name its principal business street, "Sauchieburn," memorializing and defying that petty tragedy?

There is an art gallery with Whistler's "Carlyle," and a few other notable pictures (John Lavery's I looked at with joy) to redeem miles of mediocrity. (Here I should like to be original and not condemn, but there are the miles.)

There is a cathedral, that "aydifyce" of note, touched almost nothing by the spirit of "reform"; for the burghers of Glasgow, then as now, believing that their cathedral belonged to them, rose in their might and cast out the despoilers before they had done more than smash a few "idols." Therefore this shrine of St. Kentigern's is more pleasing than the reformed and restored shrine of St. Giles. The crypt is particularly impressive. And the very pillar behind which Rob Roy hid is all but labeled. Of course it is "authentic," for Scott chose it. What unrivaled literary sport had Scott in fitting history to geography!

There is a University, one of the first in the Kingdom; the city universities are gaining on the classic Oxford and St. Andrews.

But chiefly there are miles of houses of working men, more humble than they ought to be. If Glasgow is one of the best governed cities in the world, and has the best water supply in the world—except that of St. Paul—would that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow would scatter a little loveliness before the eyes of these patient and devoted workingmen.

But what a chorus their work raises. In shipyards what mighty work is wrought, even such tragically destined work, and manufactured beauty, as the Lusitania!

From Glasgow it is that the Scot has gone out to all the ends of the earth. If the "Darien scheme" of wresting commerce from England failed utterly, and Glasgow failed most of all, that undoing was the making of the town. It is not possible to down the Scot. The smallest drop of blood tells, and it never fails to be Scottish. Most romantic, most poetic, most reckless, most canny of people. The Highlander and the Lowlander that Mr. Morley found mixed in the character of Gladstone, and the explanation of his character, is the explanation of any Scot, and of Scotland.

Ayr

Always the West is the democratic corner of a country; or, let me say almost always, if you have data wherewith to dispute a wholesale assertion. Sparta was west of Athens, La Rochelle was west of Paris, Switzerland was west of Gesler; Norway is west of Sweden, the American West is west of the American East. And Galloway and Ayrshire are the west Lowlands of Scotland.

The West is newer always, freer, more open, more space and more lure for independence. The West is never feudal, until the West moves on and the East takes its place. Here men develop, not into lords and chiefs, but into men. Wallace may come out of the West, but it is after he has come out that he leads men, in the establishment of a kingdom, but more in a wider fight for freedom; while he is in the West he adventures as a man among men, on the Waters of Irvine, in Laglyne Wood, at Cumnock. And a Bruce, struggling with himself, and setting himself against a Comyn, may stagger out of a Greyfriars at Dumfries, and, bewildered, exclaim, "I doubt I have slain the Comyn!" When a follower makes "siccar," and all the religious and human affronts mass to sober The Bruce, a king may come out of Galloway, out of a brawl, if a church brawl, and establish the kingdom and the royal line forever.

If a Wallace, if a Bruce, can proceed out of these Lowlands—and a Paul Jones!—a poet must come also. And a poet who is as much the essence of that west country as chieftain or king. Everything was ready to produce Burns in 1759. William Burns had come from Dunnottar, a silent, hard-working, God-fearing Covenanter, into this covenanting corner of Scotland. It was filled with men and women who had grown accustomed to worshiping God according to their independent consciences, and in the shelter of these dales and hills, sometimes harried by that covenanter-hunting fox, Claverhouse—to his defeat; finally winning the right to unconcealed worship. Seven years gone, and William Burns having built the "auld clay biggan" at Alloway, he married a Carrick maid, Agnes Broun, a maid who had much of the Celt in her. And Robert Burns was born.

It is of course only after the event that we know how fortunate were the leading circumstances, how inevitable the advent of Robert Burns. Father and mother, time and place, conspired to him. And all Scotland, all that has been Scotland since, results from him. It is Scott who reconstructed Scotland, made the historic past live. But it is Burns who is Scotland, Scotland remains of his temper; homely, human, intense, impassioned; with a dash and more of the practical and frugal necessary for the making of a nation, but worse than superfluous for the making of a Burns.

Three towns of this Scottish corner contend not for the birth but for the honours of Burns. If Dumfries is the capital of Burnsland and the place of his burial, Ayr is gateway to the land and the place of his birth; while Kilmarnock, weaver's town and most unpoetic, but productive of poets and poetesses, claims for itself the high and distinct literary honours, having published the first edition in an attic, and having loaned its name as title for the most imposing edition, and having in its museum possession all the published Burns editions.

To follow his footsteps through Burnsland were impossible to the most ardent. For Burns was a plowman who trod many fields, and turned up many daisies, and disturbed many a wee mousie, a poet who dreamed beside many a stream, and if he spent but a brief lifetime in all, it would take a lifetime, and that active, to overtake him.

"I have no dearer aim than to make leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia; to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse on the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes."

He did this abundantly. We have followed him in many a place. But in Burnsland it were all too intimate, if not impossible. He knew all the rivers of this west country, Nith, Doon, Ayr, Afton.

"The streams he wandered near;
The maids whom he loved, the songs he sung,
All, all are dear."

He did not apparently know the sea, or love it, although he was born almost within sound of it; and he sings of it not at all. He knew the legends of the land. "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins," and he deliberately followed the Bruce legend, hoping it would enter into his blood and spirit, and something large and worthy would result. It did, not an epic, but the strong song of a nation, "Scots wha hae."

His land was the home of Lollards and Covenanters. Independence was in the blood. It was the land of the "fighting Kennedys," who disputed with each other, what time they were not furnishing an Abbot of Crossraguel to dispute with John Knox, or a Gude Maister Walter Kennedy to have a "flytting" with the Kynge's Makar, William Dunbar. Where Burns secured his Jacobitism I do not know, but, of course, a poet is by nature a Jacobite; as he himself said, "the Muses were all Jacobite."

Burnsland is rich in other literary associations. Johannes Scotus is reckoned to have been born also at Ayr; and there are John Galt, James Boswell, James Montgomery, Alexander Smith, Ainslie, Cunningham, and the Carlyles, and Scott in some of his most lively romances. The Book of Taliessin is written in part of this land, the Admirable Crichton was born here. It is a close-packed little port-manteau of land. There is pursuit enough for at least a summer's travel. And, without doubt, there are as many pilgrims who explore Ayrshire as Warwickshire, and much more lovingly.

The entrance is by Ayr. And this I think can be made most claimingly, most fitly, by steamer from Belfast. For one thing, it avoids entrance at Glasgow. Ayr is still a sea port of some importance; and Ireland, democratic, romantic, intimate, is a preparation for this similar country of Galloway and about; both lands are still Celtic.

Ayr looks well from the sea as one comes in, although in the day of Burns the Ratton-key was a more casual place, and harbour works to retain the traffic were not yet built. But the town sits down well into the waterside of its Doon and Ayr rivers, much like a continental town where fresh waters are precious. There is long suburban dwelling, not as it was a hundred and fifty years ago.

And Ayr looks out on the sea with a magnificent prospect from any of her neighbouring segments of coast, with ruined castles set properly, with the dark mass of romantic Arran purple across the waters, with Ailsa Rock evident, and to a far-seeing eye the blue line of Ireland whence we have come.

There is small reason for staying in Ayr, unless for a wee bit nappie in Tam o' Shanter's inn, which still boasts itself the original and only Tam and hangs a painting above the door to prove itself the starting point, this last "ca' hoose," for Alloway.

To Alloway one may go by tram! It sounds flat and unprofitable. But the gray mare Meg is gone, has followed her tail into the witches night. And if it were not the tram it would be a taxi. And what have witches and warlocks to do with electricity, in truth how can they compete with electricity?

"Nae man can tether time or tide;
The hour approaches Tam maun ride;
That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
An' sic a night he taks the road in
As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in."

To follow, in a tram, in broad daylight, oh, certainly the world has changed, and the Deil too since "the Deil had business on his hand." The occupations that are gone! It is a highway one follows to-day, suburban villas and well-kept fields line the way; no need to "skelpit on thro' dub and mire." Tam would be quite without adventure. And to-day one wonders if even the lightning can play about this commonplace way. There is however the Race-course—some reminder of Meg!

Yet, it is possible to forget this pleasant day, and to slip back into old night as

"Before him Doon pours a' his floods;
The doubling storm roars through the woods;
The lightnings flash frae pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll;
When, glimmering through the groaning trees,
Kirk Alloway seem'd in a bleeze."

The walls of the Auld Kirk lie before us—and "Auld Nick in shape o' beast" is sitting under "the winnock bunker i' the east." Who would deny that he also like Tammie "glower'd amazed and curious"?

"The piper loud and louder blew,
The dancers quick, and quicker flew;
They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark."

The ride on this tram has developed a dizziness.

"Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil;
Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil!"

Did we cry "weel done, cutty sark!" Then we, too, must descend and hurry on foot to the old Brig o' Doon. Not pausing long for The Monument, even to look at the wedding ring of Jean Armour, or the Bible Burns gave to Highland Mary; but on to the Auld Kirk which stands opposite.

To Burns we owe this church in more ways than one. When a certain book of "Antiquities" was being planned, Burns asked that the Auld Kirk of Alloway be included. If Burns would make it immortal? yes. So the story of Tam o' Shanter came to make Kirk Alloway forever to be remembered. What would William Burns, covenanter, have thought? For I cannot but think that William looked often askance at the acts of his genius-son. But William was safely buried within the kirk, and if the epitaph written by the son reads true, William was excellently covenanted.

"O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious rev'rence and attend.
Here lies the loving husband's dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen'rous friend.
The pitying heart that felt for human woe,
The dauntless heart that fear'd no human pride,
The friend of man, to vice alone a foe,
For 'ev'n his failings lean'd to virtue's side.'"

The auld clay biggan still stands in Alloway, and "the banks and braes o' bonnie Doon" bloom as "fresh and fair" to-day as they did a century and a half ago. It is a simpler place than the birth house on High Street in Stratford, and a simpler environment than College Wynd in Edinburgh. This is a true cotter's home, and Saturday nights within must have been of the description.

Somehow it is less of a tourist's way of forced entry, this through the barn, than the basement door at Abbotsford; and so one passes through the byre and into the kitchen, where stands the bed in which Robert Burns was born. It is all beautifully homely, as lowly as a manger; and, how the world has been filled by what was once small frail life herein!

It is difficult to divide the poet's relics among so many claimant places, but here and in the museum are many mementoes of the poet. For this as well as Kirk Alloway is a national monument, or something like.

There was a century during which this was merely a clay biggan, and a public house, and that offended no one, least of all the friends of the poet. Except Keats. He came hither in 1818. The host was drunk most of the time, and garrulous. Keats complained that it affected his "sublimity." And, for once, Keats turned severe self-critic. "The flat dog made me write a flat sonnet."

It was while living at Mount Oliphant, two miles east of Ayr, when Burns was fifteen, that he began that long, long list of lasses whom he loved and whom he made immortal with a verse. He might have said with James V,—and much he resembled that Gudeman o' Ballangeich—"it came wi' ane lass and it will gae wi' ane lass." The first was Nelly Kilpatrick, daughter of the miller of Perclewan—

"O, ance I lov'd a bonnie lass,
Ay, and I love her still."

The last was Jessie Lewars, who ministered to him in those last days in the Millhole brae in Dumfries—

"O wert thou in the cauld blast
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee."

To Kilmarnock one goes for its name. But "the streets and neuks o' Killie" are changed since that Burns' day. It is a sprawling, thriving factory town, a town of weavers—and a town of poets. There is something in the whirr of wheels, to those who are within it, which establishes rhythm in the ear, and often leads to well-measured poetry! Surely a weaver is equal to a plowman, and I fancy that many a workingman and working lass with lines running through the head walk this Waterloo street, pass Tam o' Shanter's arms, and looks above the Loan Office at the attic where that precious first edition was printed in 1786. Poems and pawn broking—Waterloo Street is a suggestive Grub street.

From Kilmarnock to Dumfries by train is a Burns pilgrimage, even though it be taken without break, and in seventy-seven minutes! And interspersed are other memories. It is entirely what Burnsland should be, nothing set down in high tragedy, but all lyrical, with gentle hills, whispering rivers, and meadows and woodlands all the way.

Mauchline, where the burst of song was like that of a skylark, the very outpouring of the man's soul; here lies the field where he turned up the daisy and found an immortal lyric.

Auchinleek, where Boswell and Dr. Johnson paused on their journey and where to the hot-flung query of the Doctor, "Pray, what good did Cromwell ever do the country?" the judicial and wrathful father of our Boswell flung the hotter retort—"He gart kings ken they had a lith in their necks." The Scottish tongue is the tongue of rebellions. Should we stay in this corner of the world longer we might turn covenanting and Cromwellian!

Cumnock, which William Wallace made his headquarters between the battle of Stirling bridge and that of Falkirk.

New Cumnock, whence the Afton so sweetly falls into the Nith—

"Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise."

Kirkconnel, which is said not to be the Kirkconnel where Fair Helen lies—but like the blasted heath, will it not serve?

"I wish I were where Helen lies,
Baith night and day on me she cries."

And in any event "The Bairnies cuddle doon at Nicht" were "waukrife rogues" in Kirkconnel.

Sanquhar to Thornhill, with rounding green hills along the Nith, with memories of Old Queensberry and Defoe and Wordsworth and Coleridge and Allan Ramsay and Dr. John Brown, and Carlyle. Thornhill is Dalgarnock, where fairs were held—

"But a' the niest week, as I petted wi' care,
I gaed to the tryste o' Dalgarnock,
And wha but my fine, fickle lover was there?
I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock, a warlock,
I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock."

Dunscore lies to the right with "Redgauntlet" memories, and a few miles farther on is Craigenputtock.

Ellisland a brief moment, where immortal "Tam" was written as under the spell of a warlock.

Dumfries

It is a proud little city, more than a bit self-satisfied. It realizes that its possession of the mortal remains of Burns gives it large claim in his immortality, and the Burns monument is quite the center of the town.

Yet Dumfries is well satisfied from other argument. Historically, it goes back to Bruce and Comyn, and even to a Roman beyond. But there is nothing left of old Greyfriars where the killing of Comyn took place. Dumfries had its moment in the Forty Five, for the Bonnie Prince was here as he went down to the invasion of England, and his room in what is now the Commercial Hotel may be looked into but not lodged in; Dumfries, in spite of Covenant, has its modicum of Jacobitism.

It is in "Humphrey Clinker" that Smollett compels some one to say "If I was confined to Scotland I would choose Dumfries as my place of residence." Confined to Scotland, forsooth!

Dumfries is larger than it was in the days of Burns, and very busy withal, in factories and railroads. But it is still a country town, still hints at something of dales and woods and streams, even on High Street. The land about is true Burnsland; low, gentle hills closing in the horizon in a golden sea of warmth and sunlight, and the Nith a pleasant stream. It makes a great bend about Dumfries, with Maxwelltown across the water, and still

"Maxwellton's braes are bonny
Where early fa's the dew."

Farther a-field there lies Sweetheart Abbey, built by the Lady Devorgilla, widow of John Balliol, and founder of Balliol at Oxford; one of the most beautiful ruins not only in Scotland but in the Kingdom. Caerlaverock castle, the Ellangowan of "Guy Mannering," stands on the Solway, which still, like love, ebbs and flows. Ecclefechan lies east. "O, wat ye wha's in yon toun," Burns sang from here, but later it was made a place of pilgrimage, with its immortal dust come back from London for Scottish rest.

And in St. Michael's Burns was laid to rest in 1796, and twenty years later was placed in this mausoleum in the corner of the churchyard. A sumptuous monument for so simple a man.

"He came when poets had forgot
How rich and strange the human lot;
How warm the tints of Life; how hot
Are Love and Hate;
And what makes Truth divine, and what
Makes Manhood great.
"A dreamer of the common dreams,
A fisher in familiar streams,
He chased the transitory gleams
That all pursue;
But on his lips the eternal themes
Again were new."

The road leads southward, the Via Dolorosa Mary took after Langside, the Via Victoriosa which Prince Charles took—

"Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a',
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a',
We'll up and gie them a blaw, a blaw,
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'.
Oh, it's ower the Border awa', awa',
It's ower the Border awa', awa',
We'll on an' we'll march tae Carlisle Ha'
Wi' its yetts and castles an' a', an' a'.
Wi' a hundred pipers an' a', an' a'."