XXVIII. A WEEK IN SCOTLAND.

You need not be afraid, dear reader, I am not going to treat of the employment of women-my friends the editors are sure to inform you fully on that subject;-but the archways of Glasgow College and the Lion-couchant of Edinburgh waver before my eyes; there is a savor of Finnen haddocks and a flavor of whisky in my nostrils; in my ears there is an echo of the soft burr of Scott and Burns; and I wish to express my feelings.

I have seen a great many newspaper reports, abridgments, analyses, and extracts of papers, statistics as numerous as the grains of sand wherewith Thomas of Eildoun set the de'il to work to make ropes. I have seen the President's address and the Vice-Presidents' addresses, and read the thanks and compliments which everybody showered on everybody from Monday the 24th to Saturday the 29th. But I have seen no account of the real outward aspect of that many-headed thing called the Association, which shows a disposition to increase like those fabled dragon's teeth, from each of whom sprang 66 seven armed men."

Imagine that on a certain day in September deponent goes to Euston Square at the unwonted hour of nine in the morning, and accosting a railway official says, "I understand you are charging reduced fares to Glasgow, on account of the Association?” The official stares with an air of stolid amazement, and replies shortly and decisively, "What Association?" Sic transit gloria mundi! by which I here mean to imply, that half the glories of the world of Social Science (all, in fact, who did not travel by King's Cross and the North British), lords and commoners, physicians and barristers, clergymen and literati, gentlemen innumerable and not a few ladies, had travelled up to Glasgow by those very rails within a few previous days, and the man who sold them their tickets was perfectly oblivious of the cause of their gregarious flight. Did he think that a sudden rage for bannocks and porridge had seized some hundreds of Londoners simultaneously? or had the drought in the City been so excessive that people were going for a change to a town proverbially one of the wettest in the kingdom? I felt quite put down; the importance of my errand shrunk woefully in my imagination, while the official rejoined dryly, "We give excursion tickets and a month's leave of absence." Such were the inglorious terms on which I was compelled to pay my fare. Under the pretence of "excursion" I was allowed to pay £3 10s. for a ticket marked Glasgow, with the privilege of sleeping at Carlisle.

I settled my goods in a carriage and went to buy a newspaper, when, whom should I meet on the platform but a wandering VicePresident, bound like myself for Glasgow College. This Vice-President bears a name famous in one class of English reforms; but I shall not divulge it; it made me, however, anticipate with less dreariness the endless miles to be traversed that day, for the fur

ther solace whereof I bought a Dispatch, which I diligently studied for the first hour, with the intention to post the same from Carlisle to a friend whose continental sympathies possess the extraordinary merit of originality, inasmuch as he does not sympathise with Garibaldi! (For my part I find him quite refreshing-meaning, not Garibaldi, but my dissonant friend.) But I am bound to declare that I found the Dispatch of the 22nd of September so horribly democratic, so exceedingly vicious on everything and everybody connected with "the days that are no more," that I actually concluded my friend would take it as a personal insult, and determined not to send it to him.

It

Having comforted myself with this cheerful and peaceable and Christian literature as far as Rugby, I found we had left the main line of commerce, and were diverging far to the right, amidst the green pastures of Tamworth and Lichfield. What a fair flat England it is! How warm and snug she looks as we roll from village to village, from one little red brick town to another. It was at Tamworth that our last great statesman loved to dwell: though it was not at Drayton Manor that "Sir Robert" was brought home to die. was at Lichfield that Dr. Johnson first saw the light: his father kept a bookseller's shop, as every one very well knows; but everybody may not remember " Mrs. Elizabeth Blaney," who followed Michael Johnson from Teak, in Staffordshire, where he served his apprenticeship, took lodgings opposite his house, and, in the language of those days, “indulged her hopeless flame." Michael Johnson, full of a "generous humanity," hearing of her plight, went across and "offered to marry her;" but "it was too late, her vital power was exhausted," she died, and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral, with this affecting epitaph

HERE LIES THE BODY OF

MRS. ELIZABETH BLANEY, A STRANGER:

SHE DEPARTED THIS LIFE

20TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1694.

Oh traveller! journeying rapidly by express over the obliterated counties whose very names are unmarked on a railway map, remember that every town has yet its history, and every hamlet its romance!

It was at Rugely, small and quiet, with a square church tower, that Palmer ran his ill career; at Stafford he was tried, and toward Stafford the eyes and ears of all the kingdom turned. It is quiet enough to-day. It was perhaps owing to some subtle unrecognised association that the Vice-President here roused himself, and began discoursing on the death rate of different localities, and the wonderful powers conferred by modern sanitary science of calculating the effects of certain remedies. Said the Vice-President, "If I had plenary powers, I would contract to diminish the death rate of certain localities in a given time by so much per cent. My drains and my paving, and my building and my ventilating, would tell on the

amount of sickness and death with the certainty of a law." What has become of the Angel of Death, with sword uplifted? what of the genius with torch reversed, in whom the ancients believed? Modern science hedges him into a narrow track,-snatches the children from under his grasp,-gives up the old man of three score and ten to the inevitable destroyer, but casts a shield of protection over man and matron, youth and maid, and is willing to "contract" that the scythe of the mower shall be too blunt to cut down the grass of the field.

This singular discourse and these lively reflections were cut short by the entrance of a-Dutchman, who took his seat at Wigan, and was likewise bound for the Association. Alas! he was far from resembling the typical Dutchman of our picture-books. He was not a bit like Mynheer van Dunk, who never got drunk, though he "sipped brandy and water daily." He was neither red, nor round, nor very short; and he spoke very good English. He had been sent over by some parties connected with insurance," and he entered into discourse with the Vice-President on the bad sanitary condition of the canals at Rotterdam. He was much excited about the Cumberland mountains, and disappointed when we told him they were hardly visible from the railway; but we showed him the lovely grey vision of Morecambe Bay, looming softly in the twilight, like an artist's study in neutral tints, and that was the last we saw of the face of nature. Twilight deepened and darkened, and we rolled from Lancaster up to Kendal Junction, and thence to Penrith. It was pitch dark when we snorted and whistled with weary throbbing heads into the great station of "merrie Carlisle."

The next morning saw us driven forth again by the unresting spirit of Social Science, past Gretna, where folks go to get married no more; past Solway Firth, which always reminds one of the sands o' Dee; past Locherbie where lingers an echo of the dance-music amidst which his stolen bride was vaulted into the saddle by young Lochinvar, then right through the heart of Scottish hills, till ugly chimneys loom, and fierce fires belch out by daylight, looking ghastly in the sun, and buildings thicken, and smoke gets blacker, and the atmosphere decidedly objectionable, and we stop to have our tickets taken, and finally tumble out more dead than alive on to the platform at Glasgow.

But there is no rest for the scientific;-they must look for lodgings: -and where on earth are they to find them in this wilderness of brick and mortar? We-meaning myself and a companion, whom I had picked up at Carlisle-set our luggage on to a cab, and drive to the " Office of the Association," of which the address has been printed into our brains for some weeks past. But there is no one at the " Office," which is a merchant's private counter, and we are told that all letters, addresses, lodgings, acquaintances, General Secretary included, are to be left and found at the "Reception Room." Off again to the Reception Room, a huge apartment in the Trades'

Hall, where are numerous counters with tickets, prospectuses, and addresses; we inquire breathlessly for the General Secretary; the General Secretary is not there, but at the College. Off again to the College, trunks and all; into the heart of old Glasgow, across a main street, through a black old archway, into a black old quadrangle, up a grand flight of black old stairs, past a black old door, into a very black old room, wainscoted from ceiling to floor, and the best part of four hundred years old, and there is the General Secretary in a state of distraction, amidst a dozen talking luminaries of Social Science, and piles of MSS., which are always disappearing when wanted, and turning up when superfluous; and to that amiable functionary and personal friend we helplessly stagger, demanding-lodgings.

The General Secretary immediately gets more distracted than ever, and says, "You should go to the Reception Room." We helplessly reply, "We have just come from there." So a Glasgow gentleman takes pity on our affliction, dismounts the trunks, and hunts up a messenger, who presently appears, an immense tall Scotchman with light curly hair and a good-natured face, and a blue badge of Social Science round his arm, and he takes us in tow, and gives us a printed list of lodgings, and strides on in advance, with much the air of Ben Lomond trotting out Hampstead and Highgate Hill on a pedestrian

excursion.

We desire to be near the College; the College being for the nonce the centre of existence in Glasgow, and it is decided that we are to try South Mecklenburgh Street, where apparently are several lodgings to let; names and prices being affixed. Now South Mecklenburgh Street (that's not the name, so you need not look for it on the map at the back of your old ticket) is as nearly perpendicular as anything I ever saw of the nature of a street. We are accustomed in London to think Holborn Hill a respectable acclivity, and some of the houses in Clerkenwell tolerable specimens of an incline; but South Mecklenburgh Street, Glasgow, is so steep that cabs and horses have a tendency to go skirting round a quarter of a mile, and descend upon it from the top, (in as much as a quadruped by firmly planting his fore-feet down hill has a better chance of standing steady than if all the weight hung (figuratively) on his tail,) and when brought to a standstill they invariably do so in a long slant across the street, on some instinctive principle of mechanical safety, or else double up in various acute angles, forty-five degrees and under.

But I am anticipating;-we are yet looking out for lodgings, and our tall Scotchman plunges into a high doorway at the bottom of the incline, and presently emerges informing us that Mrs. Macgilivray has not "let." We enter, and follow him under an arched passage right through the house into a court at the back, flanked by two round towers, such as you might see at Cawdor Castle. In each is a staircase, and at the top of the one on the left lives Mrs. Macgilivray, professing to let a sitting-room and two beds. We enter the sittingroom, large and very gloomy; Mrs. M. throws open a cupboard door,

and there before our astonished eyes is a bed made up apparently on a cupboard shelf, wherein, if one slept, one would certainly be devoured by the rats, or else get locked up like Ginevra, and never be heard of again. Our stout Saxon hearts quail, and we run down the turret stair considerably faster than we came up, assuring our tall guide with the blue badge of Social Science that "It won't do at all." We refer to the next on our list-same street-Mrs. Macdonald-but her rooms are let. Finally we stop at ninety-three, written down as Mrs. Mackenzie's. Into ninety-three we go: up one flight of

stairs, Mr. Forbes; up two flights of stairs, -Mrs. Ramsay; up three flights of stairs,-Mr. Stewart;-good gracious, where does this lady live?-up four flights of (stone) stairs—and a neat brass plate announces Mrs. Mackenzie at last. Now do not think, dear reader, that I am going to lay bare the sacred hospitalities of an honest Scotch hearth. Too well I know that the Lares and Penates of every home watch the portals with finger on the lips; suffice it that at the first sight of Mrs. Mackenzie and her sweet little daughter we closed at once; forgot the four flights of stone stairs, and the steep flags of South Mecklenburgh Street, and settled in, trunks and all (how they got up, the brawny shoulders of the Scotch cabman only knows) and forthwith sent our names with the above address to the "list of members" published every day for the comfort and curiosity of visitors to the Association.

And now that I have brought you so far, dear reader, I feel a certain hesitation as to what shall be said-what left unsaid-I need not describe the "President's Address," delivered in the evening at the City Hall, where the white-haired President sketched the triumphs of the year, and enunciated the claims of 1861 with the same accents which had addressed the sires and grandsires of that very assemblage in the city of Glasgow sixty years ago.

Do you want to know what an Association looks like on the outside? I will try and describe it.

In the heart of old Glasgow city, where the irregular streets are mercifully left to the caprice of antiquity, not far from the cathedral which Knox preserved, when Melrose and Dunfermline were laid bare to the winds of heaven, stands Glasgow College. It is more than four hundred years old, and owes its origin to one of the popes. It is curiously black and sombre, and there is not a straight line about it. The wall seems to stand crooked with the street, and the grand old tower stands crooked to the rest of the building; it reminds one of the palace of the Doges at Venice, whose specific beauty, according to Ruskin, consists in its utter want of rule and line. The College has turrets in the corners of the quadrangle turrets with peaked tops like a witch's cap; and the staircase, on which fabulous beasts mount guard, is of massive stone, and winds from the Fore-Hall over the main entrance down into the quadrangle again like the Doges' palace. A splendid room is this Fore-Hall, dark and paneled; the floor is polished, and at the head of the long table