GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE
At the junction of salt and fresh water navigation, beside Fort-William,
the tourist begins a new stage of his journey, if in haste, speeding by
the West Highland Railway through beautiful glens and over bleak and
bare moorlands to come on the Clyde at Helensburgh. The older pilgrimage
is by steamer down Loch Linnhe to Oban, past Ballachulish, where, if the
Saxon can get his tongue round its name, he may land to visit “dreary
dark Glencoe,” whose grimly sublime seclusion seems in keeping with its
tragic memories and with its legendary fame as birthplace of Ossian.
Oban, “Charing Cross of the Highlands,” which Cockneys sometimes confuse
with Holborn, and which in thick weather may rather suggest the Tilbury
Docks, had in Dr. Johnson’s day one “tolerable inn,” now multiplied into
a forest of hostelries, “a huddlement of upstart houses,” above which
the shell of an unhatched Hydropathic looks down on darker ruins of the
“Land of Lorne.” Here the not impecunious traveller might tarry long to
visit the islands around or the lochs and falls inland. Turning his back
on the cloudy Atlantic, he may take the Caledonian Railway by Loch Awe,
Loch Tay and Loch Earn, and thus be wafted to Perth, Edinburgh, or
Glasgow, while at Tyndrum it is open to him to make a cut across to the
West Highland Line. But his most beaten path is still a watery one, on
to the Crinan Canal, and through it to Ardrishaig, where he enters on
the safe and luxurious navigation of the Clyde.
This is not a guide-book that can afford to expatiate in small print on
all the aisles and monuments of this grand estuary, with its lochs
opening like side chapels. The stranger will do well to halt almost
wherever he pleases, and at a dozen resorts has a choice of steamboats
plying up and down _the_ water, as a Glasgow man calls it, even as his
ancestors named the Esks and Avons which for them were alone familiar.
The butterfly tourist, if he get a fine day or two, may settle on
Tarbert, the isthmus of Cantire; or at Inveraray, the ducal
village-capital of Argyll; or at Dunoon, its largest town; or at
Rothesay, the Swindon Junction of this inland voyaging; or at the
Cumbraes, whose minister prayed for “the adjacent islands of Great
Britain and Ireland”; or at one and another of those snug bathing-places
that almost line the shores. The gem, the _bouquet_, the crown of all
Clyde scenery is, of course, Arran, to know which _non cuivis
contingit_. But if he can find quarters in some airy hovel with rats
running about the roof, or on some shake-down of an hotel annexe, and if
the rain clears up over Goatfell, the reader will not regret taking my
word for the exceeding loveliness of glens and corries, which have
inspired painters, poets, and even guide-book makers.
Many writers have described Clyde voyaging. To
[Illustration: GLENCOE, ARGYLLSHIRE]
save myself trouble, let me borrow from the ingenious M. Jules Verne,
who in his _Rayon-Vert_ gives a remarkable account of this region and
its inhabitants. It is always well to see ourselves as others see us,
especially through the eyes of a famous story-teller. This story of his
is intended to be amusing, and he appears to succeed in being funnier
than he knew by reading up Sir Walter Scott and other works of fiction,
then “combining his information.”
The time is the present day; the scene opens on the Clyde; the _dramatis
personæ_ are as follows: Two old bachelor brothers, Sam and Sib Melvill,
have been avowedly “lifted” from those chieftains of the southron clan
Cheeryble. They live together in kindly one-mindedness; they take snuff
out of the same box; they quote Ossian in alternate stanzas, also Scott,
and such good old Scottish proverbs as “let us leave that fly tranquil
on the wall.” They especially agree in spoiling their niece, Miss Helena
Campbell, who, like other heroines of fiction, is beautiful to behold,
and like other Scottish damsels of rank, does her hair up in a snood,
believes in valkyries and “browines,” then, though as good as she is
charming, has a most troublesome obstinacy in getting her own way. This
is a rich family, who have a town house in Glasgow and a cottage near
Helensburgh, opposite the promontory always spelt “Rosenheat,” a cottage
of much gentility, with a tower, a terrace, and a park. Over a large
household rule two faithful retainers of the olden time, (1) the
“intendant” Partridge, who always sports tartan in the form of a kilt
“above the philabeg,” with blue bonnet, cow-skin brogues and other
trappings of a Highland butler’s livery; (2) a venerable housekeeper,
who, like all housekeepers in the Highlands, bears the title of
“Luckie,” but is also styled Dame Bess, and addressed by Partridge as
“Mavourneen,” that well-known Scottish term of endearment, while her
masters invariably summon her by crying “Bet! Beth! Bess! Betsey!
Betty!” each word taking up a line, so as to make what printers call
“fat” and what French authors, from the great Dumas downwards, must find
very convenient for stretching out “copy.”
Though Sam and Sib are Glasgow aristocrats, they seem so far in touch
with the great metropolis as to take in the _Morning Post_, in which one
day Miss Campbell reads an account of a wonderful green ray shed by the
unclouded sun at his setting on an open sea horizon. Nothing will serve
this wilful young lady but at once setting out to behold such an optical
phenomenon. Gifted as she is, our heroine can have passed no high
standard of geography, but her uncles explain to her that Oban is the
nearest place at which an open sea view can be had. _Va pour Oban!_ she
exclaims. The sly uncles agree on the trip, all the more readily as they
are aware how at Oban happens to be sojourning a certain Aristobulus
Ursiclos, on whom they have their eye as an _excellent parti_ for their
ward.
The household is at once thrown into a confusion of packing, for by
seven o’clock next morning it is necessary to be in Glasgow to catch the
Oban steamer _Columba_, which seems rather a roundabout route for
residenters at Helensburgh. At this early hour the party punctually
embark, to be carried admiringly down the scenery of the Clyde, though,
indeed, the faithful steward and housekeeper, always in attendance,
shake their heads in sad harmony at every stage over the engines and
smoke stacks that are overshadowing good old Highland customs, the sole
example of which here given is unhappily referred to the Orkney
Kirkwall. Messrs. MacBrayne have no cause of complaint as to praise of
the steamer and her accommodations; but the proprietors of Murray’s
_Guide_, with which the party are provided rather than Black’s, might
find ground of action in the French printers’ libellous misspellings of
names. That work is duly drawn on for notices of Dumbarton Castle, of
Greenock, of ruined strongholds, and of the distant crests of Arran and
Ailsa Craig. The passengers hold stiffly aloof in groups, except of
course some French tourists, who bring their native sociability with
them; but there is none of the British _morgue_ about Partridge, when he
claps his hands in applause at the sight of a tower ruined for the
MacDouglases by his young mistress’ clan. They sail safely through the
Kyles of Bute, past Ardrishaig, by the Crinan Canal, then up the
Hebrides archipelago to Oban, where they install themselves, regardless
of expense, in the best rooms of the Caledonian Hotel, awaiting the
first fine sunset to catch the green ray.
At this _ville des bains_, not more than “a hundred and fifty years
old,” in August crowded with bathers, who do not satisfy French ideas of
propriety by a bathing costume _souvent trop rudimentaire_, our friends
soon fall in with Aristobulus Ursiclos, a mere Lowlander, who wears no
kilt but, on the contrary, aluminium spectacles and such like, and
having graduated both at Oxford and Edinburgh, is a scientist _pour
rire_, not to say a prig and pedant of the darkest dye, seizing every
chance to lecture on meteorology, mineralogy, chemistry, astronomy, in
short _de omni re scibili_. It goes without saying that Miss Campbell at
first sight takes a strong dislike to this false hero, who at once sets
about playing the superior person over such a childish fancy as the
green ray, also excites her contempt by his awkwardness at the British
game of “crocket.” Equally of course, a true hero has already been
provided, a ram caught in one of the handy thickets of romance as due
sacrifice to Hymen. This is Oliver Sinclair, a young and sympathetic
artist, who sends notes of his travels to the celebrated _Edinburgh
Review_, but at present has nothing more pressing on hand than to attach
himself to the party.
The episodes of the story henceforth turn upon repeated efforts to see
the green ray, always baffled by the weather or by some clumsy
interference of Mr. Aristobulus, who can never understand when he is not
wanted, though able to rebuke his companions’ enthusiasm for the sea by
instructing them that it is merely a chemical compound of hydrogen and
oxygen with 2½ per cent of chloride of sodium. In vain they hire a
carriage-and-four to drive to the “village of Clachan,” and on to one of
the outlying islands, from which there is a clear sea view, at Oban, as
we know, blocked by the island of “Kismore.”
After weeks of disappointment and bad weather, the whole party take
steamer for Iona, where they put up at the “Duncan Arms,” feasting daily
upon a truly Scottish _menu_ of haggis, hotch-potch, cockie-leekie,
sowens and oat cake, the Highland Cheeryble brothers pledging one
another in pint stoups--containing four English pints, we
[Illustration: GARELOCHHEAD, DUMBARTONSHIRE]
learn--of “foaming usquebaugh,” also in a drink called “whisky,” with
strong beer, “mum,” and “twopenny” flavoured with a _petit verre_ of
gin. A Scottish breakfast, it appears, is a slighter meal, consisting of
“tea, butter, and sandwiches.” This good cheer is so engrossing that
only after a few days they recall the fact of there being some ruins on
Iona, which are then visited and described at much length, with all due
enthusiasm on the part of the author. Dr. Johnson declares the man
little to be envied whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of
Iona. That man is soulless Aristobulus, who excites our heroine’s
indignation by the cold-blooded manner in which he would peep and
geologise among so sacred monuments, hammering off a piece of a cross to
examine it as a mineral specimen. Worse, just as she was about to see
the green ray, this unlucky spoil-sport lets off a gun, scaring up a
cloud of gulls to obscure the for once bright sunset.
Miss Campbell is determined at any cost to shake off such a hateful
suitor. She hears of another island called Staffa, from which a still
opener view can be had. Nothing will hinder that in the frequented port
of Iona a “Cowes-built” yacht is waiting to be hired. The obedient
uncles charter her forthwith, engage a brass-bound captain and a crew of
six men, provision her suitably, and sail off for Staffa, which, as the
author explains, is at no great distance. Aristobulus, with his hammer
and spectacles, is left behind, henceforth dropping out of the story.
Our heroine, having had the geological marvels of Staffa explained to
her, is so delighted that she proposes to buy the island. Their yacht
blown away before a storm, the passengers encamp in a cave and go
through perilous adventures, for the scenery of which the guide-book
comes in useful. Oliver Sinclair, whose life Helena had been the means
of saving at his first appearance on the scene, now in turn rescues her
in most romantic style; and the young pair are so taken up with each
other that they almost forget all about the green ray in search of which
those long-suffering uncles have been dragged so far. At last comes one
clear glorious sunset, lighting up a panorama of sea line that could not
but have excited admiration even in “the most prosaic merchant
(_negotiant_) of the Canongate.” As the sun disappears, all the party
behold the long-sought wonder, all but the hero and heroine, who are too
intent on the rays lit in each other’s eyes by a “light that never was
on sea or land.” After this, there is nothing left but “Bless you, my
children,” and a sumptuous marriage in “St. George’s Church, Glasgow,”
transported for the occasion, apparently, from Hanover Square. All
which, if one skip the guide-book passages, makes a very striking
account of Scottish manners and customs, but prompts some doubt of the
author’s accuracy when he comes to deal with such more remote regions as
the moon or the bottom of the sea.
It seems a rule with French writers to be careless about the local
colour of their foreign scenes. Well known is the haughty answer of
Victor Hugo to the Englishman who ventured to remonstrate with him on
his Lords “Tom Jim Jack,” and other ornaments of British aristocracy. He
at least spared Scotland,--or was it he who translated the Firth of
Forth by _le premier du quatrième_, as another _traducteur_ elevated “a
stickit minister” into _un prêtre assassiné_? If it be true that Dumas’
chief “ghost” was by origin a Scotsman named Mackay, that voluminous
romancer was ill-served in the wild work made for him of British
topography. D’Artagnan, landing at Dover, found our posts “pretty well
served,” so well, indeed, that starting at 2.30 P.M. he rode to London
in four hours, then on to Windsor, followed the king to a hunting-ground
two or three leagues beyond, and galloped back to Buckingham House, all
before nightfall, a feat that beats Dick Turpin and John Gilpin. When
Charles I. exclaimed “_Remember!_” with his dying breath, he was of
course addressing that _preux chevalier_ Athos, hidden below the
scaffold; and what Athos should remember was how the king had stowed a
million of money in two barrels under the vaults of the Abbey of
Newcastle. In due time Athos goes to turn up this deposit, then from
Monk’s camp at Coldstream on the Tweed, he and the General stroll over
to Newcastle in the course of half an hour or so. Athos of course comes
off successful in this midnight quest, but not so Monk, who, as M. Dumas
first informed us, was kidnapped by D’Artagnan in the midst of his army
and carried off in a fishing boat from Coldstream to Holland, to be laid
bound before his lawful king, brought back after all in time to prevent
Athos from exterminating a company of Scottish soldiers in defence of
his million. The whole series of those Three Musketeers’ adventures
contains many such curious side lights on the history of our country. In
a comic opera, of course, one need not read up for examinations; yet
Scribe’s _Dame Blanche_, bearing to the _Monastery_ and _Guy Mannering_
much the same relation as Thackeray’s _Rebecca and Rowena_ to
_Ivanhoe_, should not have opened with a rustic Scots couple hard up for
a godfather to their child, nor ended with the sale of an estate that
carried with it a peerage and a seat in Parliament.
Perhaps, after all, Scottish writers may be trusted for a more faithful
picture of their own country; and one would commend the reader rather to
Sarah Tytler’s _St. Mungo’s City_ as a truthful and taking tale of
Glasgow life, including a trip on the Clyde under characteristic
circumstances. Only this trip is not one to be suggested to strangers,
since it is an incident of Glasgow Fair, that concentrated week of more
than Bank Holiday-making, when the great city of the West disperses
itself to its waterside resorts so recklessly that in the familiar rainy
weather churches as well as police stations may have to be thrown open
to thousands of roofless and hundreds of senseless guests. Let the Sir
Charles Grandisons of the south, and the Miss Ophelias of the States mix
themselves rather with the Trades Holidays’ bustle of Edinburgh, or the
12th August distraction of Perth station.
“The steamer (as our author describes this popular excursion),
fluttering with flags from stem to stern, was pushing down the
river on the sunny yet showery summer day, preceded and followed by
many similar vessels, through the labyrinth of shipping from every
part of the world--past wharves and warehouses deserted by
toilers--past the yards, well known to ship-builders, with skeleton
ships on the stocks, where the sheds were forsaken and the din
mute. Down and down the living freight went, till green pastures
and ripening cornfields began to smile under the very
[Illustration: GLEN SANNOX, ISLE OF ARRAN]
frown of the hills rising in the distance. Here was the
heart-shaped rock of Dumbarton, with the castle where Wallace had
lain a prisoner. There were the crowded roofs of Greenock,
clustered under its own storm-cloud, hanging over the city
churchyard where Highland Mary was laid to rest. Yonder ran the
Tail of the Bank, by which fleets have ridden at anchor, where
Colin’s solitary ship was seen through the morning mists by the
sharp eyes of the loving gude-wife, so fain to tell that her man
was ‘come to town.’ This was the entrance to the loch by whose
shore the race of Macallum More slept soundly. Across the river the
warning white finger of the Cloch Lighthouse bade belated crafts
beware. Roseneath was fair as when Jeanie Deans landed under the
guardianship of the Duke’s man. At Toward Point the tenderest of
Highland tragedies lingered with the memory of the old clan Lamont.
At last the twin islands of Bute and Arran came full in sight, and
Goatfell rose, brown and grey and russet--not purple as
yet--unrivalled from the sea, and held up a rugged face to the
fleecy clouds.”
Reversing this route, and shortening it by train from Greenock, we come
to St. Mungo’s City, by Liverpool’s leave, the second in Britain, yet
none of your mushroom Chicagos, but a good old Lanark borough that has
spread itself far over two counties, since the days when its Broomielaw
harboured a few small craft, and its Fair was confined to the Green, on
which the Earl of Moray encamped before crushing Queen Mary’s cause in
half an hour, at the battle of Langside, its field now within the
extended municipal bounds. In her time Glasgow was already known as the
Market of the West, showing the rudiments of a varied fabrication in its
plaiding, and in such a “Glasgow buckler” as the adventurous Queen would
fain have carried when she wished she were a man to “lie all night in
the fields,” and swagger mail-clad along the crown of the causeway.
Max O’Rell and other moderns have said very unkind things of Glasgow;
but all the early travellers extol the prettiness, pleasantness, and
cleanness of this city on a once limpid river, qualities not so apparent
nowadays. Along with too many most squalid slums, Glasgow has fine
features in her ancient Cathedral, in her lofty Necropolis, in her
picturesque Trongate, in her noble University Buildings elevated above
the West End Park, and in her central square with its forest of
illustrious effigies, “an open-air Madame Tussaud’s.” But these
monuments are not so remarkable as the wealth and manifold industry of
which signs abound on every hand, drowning the rustic charms noted by
Defoe and Burt. In the Commonwealth days Richard Franck had dubbed
Glasgow the “non-such of Scotland”--“famous and flourishing”--on whose
“beautiful palaces” and warehouses “stuft with merchandise” he
expatiates in his conceited style. Even the crabbed Matthew Bramble was
“in raptures with Glasgow.” Pennant twice calls this “the best built of
any second-rate city I ever saw,” and tells how Glasgow had been
“tantalised with its river,” soon to be deepened into such a highway of
traffic.
By the middle of the eighteenth century Glasgow had not 20,000
inhabitants, but she began to make her fortune fast while the rest of
Scotland rather sullenly prepared to exchange thistly patriotism for
more profitable crops. Rum and tobacco were the foundation of a
prosperity that came to be checked by the American Revolution; then the
long-headed worthies of the Saltmarket took up cotton, and cotton was
weighed down by iron, and iron was set afloat as well as wood; and a
host of other trades sprang up, among them that Turkey-red dyeing that
is for Glasgow what its purple was for Tyre.
On Glasgow Green, we are told, James Watt thought of the steam condenser
that was the great practical step towards starting such
merry-go-roundabouts here at Fair time, and so many wheels on which the
progress of the world has spun with such acceleration “down the ringing
grooves of change.” If the first model of a steamship was made in
Edinburgh, the first passenger paddle-boat that plied in Britain was
that between Greenock and Glasgow in 1812. Glasgow, not quite so large
as Edinburgh in James Watt’s lifetime, had then begun to give the
capital the go-by, even before she became environed by a wilderness of
“pits and blast furnaces that honeycomb and blacken the earth, and burn
with a red glare throughout the night for many a mile around,” where
another writer describes daylight showing “patches of sour-looking grass
surrounded by damp stone walls; gaunt buildings soot-begrimed and
gloomy; and an ever-increasing blue-grey mist pierced by tall chimneys.”
St. Kentigern, whose _petit nom_ was Mungo, could hardly now identify
the site of his hermitage among noisy Clyde ship-yards and busy streets,
noted by jealous neighbours as too familiar with
The merchant rain that carries on
Rich commerce ’twixt the earth and sun.
The relations between the two chief cities of Scotland have been a
little stiff since Glasgow rose so high in the world, as how should a
laird of old pedigree, crippled by forfeitures and mortgages, not look
askance from his castellated turrets on the spick and span buildings of
an upstart millionaire neighbour, the one standing on his name and
title, the other on his shrewdness, honesty, and strict attention to
business rather than the graces of life. One suspects Sarah Tytler to be
no west-countrywoman, from her kindly hits at Glasgow cotton lords and
iron lords, with more money than they always knew what to do with, a
generation ago; yet she loudly extols their generosity and public
spirit; and in our time Bailie Jarvie’s successors have distinguished
themselves, like their rivals at Manchester and Liverpool, by a liberal
patronage of art, proof of which may be seen in the new Corporation
Gallery that is a legacy of the last Exhibition. Edinburgh wits are not
so scornful now towards Glasgow cits, as in the days when Kit
North--himself a Paisley body--joked his coarsest at the expense of the
“Glasgow Gander,” and Aytoun told scandalous tales of the Glenmutchkin
Railway and the Dreepdaily Burghs.
In spirit and sentiment, the two cities have not always seen eye to eye.
Auld Reekie often showed herself a bit of a Tory, the ladies of the
family having even a tenderness for Jacobitism and philabegry, since Rob
Roy lived not so close to their gates, and they knew the Dougal Cratur
only as a red-nosed porter or town-guard of bygone days: thus the Red
Indian, beneath whose war-paint the western settler could see no good
unless mark for a bullet, might be hailed as a noble savage in Boston or
New York. But Glasgow has always been
[Illustration: LOCH TRIOCHATAN, ENTRANCE TO GLENCOE, ARGYLLSHIRE]
Whig, with grey homespun for its own wear rather than the tartans it
manufactured in the way of business. It would have as little dealing as
might be with the Pretender, an unwelcome guest who took it on his way
back to the Highlands, and forced the citizens to rig out his ragged
army with coats, shirts, and bonnets. In the troubled days of early
Radicalism, again, the city of the west seethed with sedition, almost
breaking out into revolt.
Glasgow was also markedly Presbyterian from an early date, and its
monuments may well be crowned by one to John Knox. Its Cathedral is said
to have been defended by pious craftsmen against an iconoclast mob; but
in this reformed fane, under Charles I., met the Covenanting Assembly
whose denunciation of prelates counts as the second Reformation. Even in
the days when they dealt in rum, the Glasgow folk were noted as sober
and douce, their morals, indeed, being pushed to austerity. Episcopal
ministers and other bad characters were driven out of St. Mungo’s
bounds, when its licensed preachers became chosen from the “High flying”
party of the Church. Theatrical performances were here held in horror
after these had ceased to be banned in the capital. And as for the
Sabbath-keeping that was the sacrament of old Presbyterianism, hear what
Mr. H. G. Graham, in his instructive _Social Life of Scotland in the
Eighteenth Century_, has to record of Glasgow:--
“To secure proper observance of the Sabbath, compurgators, or
‘bumbailies,’ patrolled the streets and wynds on Saturday night to
see that by ten o’clock all folk were quietly at home; and if
incautious sounds betokening untimely revelry issued from behind a
door, or a stream of light from chinks of a window-shutter
betrayed a jovial company within, they entered and broke up the
party which dared to be happy so near the Lord’s own day. On
Sabbath, as in other towns, the seizers or elders, in their turn,
perambulated the streets during divine service, and visited the
Green in the evening, haling all ‘vaguers’ to kirk or session. The
profound stillness of the Sabbath was preternatural, except when
the multitudinous tramp of heavy shoes came from a vast voiceless
throng of churchgoers. In these streets of which the patrols ‘made
a solitude and called it peace,’ at all other hours no persons
passed, no sound was heard, no dog dared bark. In the mirk Sabbath
nights no lamp was lit, because all but profane persons were
engaged in solemn exercises at home. During the day the
window-shutters were, in strict households, just opened enough to
let inmates see to walk about the room, or to read the Bible by
sitting close to the window-panes.”
Times have changed in Glasgow, for here Sunday trams came to be suffered
before they desecrated Edinburgh. A certain _vieille roche_ minister of
Arran, not yet forgotten, who used to startle strange worshippers by
addressing them, “O ye towrists and eemissaries of the deevil!” was
also, if all tales be true, in the way of warning his flock that they
grew wicked as Glasgow folk, and almost as bad as them of Edinburgh--the
superlative profligacy of London being no doubt taken for granted. But
some such moralist seems to have met his match in two Glasgow urchins
whom he rebukefully catechised: “Whaur will laddies gang that play
themselves on the Sabbath?” With real or assumed innocence one of the
boys answered, “Tae the Green!” Then, on the stern corrector more fully
explaining the drift of that question, he heard the lad exclaim, “Rin
awa,’ Jock; we mauna listen to the bad man sweirin’!”--an attitude now
largely taken towards extreme Sabbatarians, even in Glasgow.
The more liberal spirit of contemporary Glasgow is largely due to its
popular minister of half a century ago, Norman Macleod, who infected the
Scottish Church with much of his own heartiness and width of mind. Many
good stories are told of him, such as, a generation earlier,
crystallised rather round the eminent personality of Dr. Chalmers, also
a Glasgow minister. One, which Macleod used to tell of himself, seems an
essence of the national character as developed under modern influences.
This burly West Highlander, along with a reverend brother of feebler
physique, having taken boat among the Hebrides, they were caught in such
a storm that one of the boatmen proposed the ministers should pray; but
“Na, na,” said another; “let the little ane pray, but the big ane maun
tak’ an oar!” He has also told with much gusto how, in the early days of
his ministry, he was put to the test of orthodoxy by a deaf old woman,
who, adjusting her ear-trumpet, screamed at him, “Gang ower the
fundamentals!” Another story, not so likely to be quite true, but
representing a very human side of his nature, refers to a notorious
Glasgow murderer, who capped a cold-blooded crime by treating himself to
the services of this approved divine on the scaffold. It is said that
the ghostly counsellor was so sickened by the man’s cant, that on his
last words, “Good-bye, Doctor: we shall meet again in the next world!”
Macleod could not refrain from ejaculating, perhaps in the less emphatic
Greek, “God forbid!”
_Good Words_, the popular magazine founded by Dr. Norman Macleod, made
a powerful solvent of Presbyterian severity, introducing into family
life stories for Sunday reading, along with broader views that called
forth loud protests from more orthodox theologians. Another such
influence was the novels of Dr. George MacDonald, in which he tossed and
gored Calvinism with much acceptance, when formal statements of his
doctrine would have been recognised as having _foenum in cornu_. The
“Kailyard” Muse so much in vogue of late quite openly flirts with the
carnal man, cuts up the Shorter Catechism to make curl-papers for more
“up to date” sentiments, and grinds down the forefathers’ faith for
picturesque local colour. This generation hardly yet recognises a turn
of the tide that floats such fiction into popularity. The plain fact is,
which some do not love to hear stated, that the Churches of Scotland are
passing into a transition state of unstable compounds, that would have
horrified their old doctors. The absolute has thawed into the relative,
and some of the once so solid landmarks of faith are already evaporating
out of a fluid state into a very gaseous one. It is hard for hereditary
believers to measure their drift from cast-off moorings; but the many
Scotsmen living out of Scotland see, as a stranger does not, how the
currents are setting. And even to an outsider who takes any interest in
theology, it must appear that the logical turn formerly devoted to
dogmatising on the darkest mysteries is now exercised rather in
explaining away the standards and confessions once held so sacred, still
nominally in honour, but no more consistent with actual belief than the
foregoing mixed metaphors are with each other.
[Illustration: GLEN ROSA, ISLE OF ARRAN]