The idea of Glasgow in the ordinary British mind is probably something like the following:--"Glasgow, believed by the natives to be the second city of the empire, is covered by a smoky canopy through which rain penetrates, but which is impervious to sunbeam. It is celebrated for every kind of industrial activity: it is fervent in business six days of the week, and spends the seventh in hearing sermon and drinking toddy. Its population consists of a great variety of classes. The 'operative,' quiet and orderly enough while plentifully supplied with provisions, becomes a Chartist when hungry, and extracts great satisfaction in listening to orators--mainly from the Emerald Isle--declaiming against a bloated aristocracy. The 'merchant prince,' known to all ends of the earth, and subject sometimes to strange vagaries; at one moment he is glittering away cheerily in the commercial heaven, the next he has disappeared, like the lost Pleiad, swallowed up of night for ever. The history of Glasgow may be summed up in one word--cotton; its deity, gold; its river, besung by poets, a sewer; its environs, dust and ashes; the _gamin_ of its wynds and closes less tinctured by education than a Bosjesman; a creature that has never heard a lark sing save perhaps in a cage outside a window in the sixth story, where a consumptive seamstress is rehearsing the 'Song of the Shirt,' 'the swallows with their sunny backs' omitted." Now this idea of Glasgow is entirely wrong. It contains many cultivated men and women. It is the seat of an ancient university. Its cathedral is the noblest in Scotland; and its statue of Sir John Moore the finest statue in the empire. It is not in itself an ugly city, and it has many historical associations. Few cities are surrounded by prettier scenery; and of late years it has produced two books--both authors dead now--one of which mirrors the old hospitable, social life of the place, while the other pleasantly sketches the interesting localities in its neighbourhood. Dr Strang, in his "Clubs of Glasgow," brings us in contact with the old jolly times; and Mr Macdonald, in his "Rambles round Glasgow," visits, stick in hand, every spot of interest to be found for miles around, knows every ruin and its legend, can tell where each unknown poet has lived and died, and has the martyrology of the district at his fingers' ends. So much for the books; and now a word or two concerning their authors. [Sidenote: Dr Strang.]