Nature herself foresaw the era of picture when she made and placed this rock: there is every preparation for the artist's stealing a little piece from her treasures to hang on the walls of a room.

Here I saw the sword of "Wallace wight," shown by a son of the nineteenth century, who said that this hero lived about fifty years ago, and who did not know the height of this rock, in a cranny of which he lived, or at least ate and slept and "donned his clothes." From the top of the rock I saw sunset on the beautiful Clyde, animated that day by an endless procession of steamers, little skiffs, and boats.

In one of the former, the Cardiff Castle, we embarked as the last light of day was fading, and that evening found ourselves in Glasgow.
I understand there is an intellectual society of high merit in Glasgow, but we were there only a few hours, and did not see any one.
Certainly the place, as it may be judged of merely from the general aspect of the population and such objects as may be seen in the streets, more resembles an _Inferno_ than any other we have yet visited.

The people are more crowded together, and the stamp of squalid, stolid misery and degradation more obvious and appalling.
The English and Scotch do not take kindly to poverty, like those of sunnier climes; it makes them fierce or stupid, and, life presenting no other cheap pleasure, they take refuge in drinking.
I saw here in Glasgow persons, especially women, dressed in dirty, wretched tatters, worse than none, and with an expression of listless, unexpecting woe upon their faces, far more tragic than the inscription over the gate of Dante's _Inferno_.

To one species of misery suffered here to the last extent, I shall advert in speaking of London.
But from all these sorrowful tokens I by no means inferred the falsehood of the information, that here was to be found a circle rich in intellect and in aspiration.