“There is nothing so certain as the unexpected.” Our first impression, after stepping upon the dry land of Europe, was that it was “limited.” Not that we had been obsessed by the spirit that dwelt in that reinforced Western Yankee, who, while on the island of Britain, was afraid to go to sleep o’ nights lest he might fall off! Yet in Glasgow the word “Limited” stared at us from every shop sign. We had not yet in America adopted the statute of financial limitations for trading firms, but the laws of the United Kingdom even then required that any one doing business with a limited capital or accountability, must state the fact on his shop sign or other public announcement. It was this frequent expression of commercial conditions, then a real novelty, that attracted our initial attention. It was the day before Scotland’s Sabbath, or, in local dialect, “Sunday First,” that we had our virgin view of Glasgow, and the excellent custom of a Saturday half-holiday was in vogue. This afforded us all the more ease in seeing the principal thoroughfares, which, with the crowd absent and the shops closed, made comfort, but gave to the lengthened areas a deserted look. We sauntered into St. George’s Square, where, in addition to the imposing buildings surrounding it, rises the lofty column on which stands the bronze effigy of Sir Walter Scott. How marvellously did this Wizard of the North delight millions, through many generations, with his poetical numbers and his weird romances! To-day, his name is a magnet that annually brings to Scotland thousands of tourists and millions of dollars. In the long run there are no more valuable assets to a country than its great men and its deathless literature. There were other statues visible at this time, but the larger number of those which to-day run the risk of being destroyed by bombs from the empyrean, in the new fashions prevalent in aerial warfare, were not then in existence. So it was to the cathedral that we hied, partly for the reason that this was to be the first of the many great sacred and historic edifices to be seen by us in the Old World, but chiefly because the hoary pile was almost the only one which survived the tumult and destruction of the Reformation. Largely by the “rascal multitude,” as Knox called the mob, but also in the then prevalent conviction that these structures, as then used, had survived their original purpose, and should be reduced to ruins, cathedrals, abbeys, and monasteries were levelled. For her size, no country excels Scotland in ruins.