[65] The following “letter of Guildry” embodied the local regulations which existed for the purpose of preventing “loss and skaith” to the burgesses and craftsmen of Glasgow by the intrusion of “strangers”:--“The Dean of Guild and his Council shall have full power to discharge, punish, and unlaw all persons, unfreemen, using the liberty of a freeman within the burgh, as they shall think fit, ay and while the said unfreemen be put off the town, and restrained, or else be made free with the town and their crafts; and sic like, to pursue, upon the judges competent, all persons dwelling within this burgh, and usurping the liberty thereof, obtain decrets against them, and cause the same to be put to speedy execution.” [Illustration: INNER QUADRANGLE, GLASGOW COLLEGE.] In the heart of old Glasgow city, not far from the cathedral of St. Mungo, which Knox with difficulty preserved from the fury of the Scotch iconoclasts, stands the venerable University, a curiously black and sombre building, more than 400 years old. Inside the entrance, on the right-hand side, is a stone staircase, guarded by fabulous beasts in stone. The buildings consist of several quadrangles; but there is not much regularity in their design, each part seeming to stand towards the other parts, in a state of independent crookedness and irregularity. There are turrets in the corners of the quadrangles,--turrets with peaked tops, like witches’ caps. In the inner quadrangle, entered from the left-hand side of the outer court, a workshop was found for our mechanician, in which he was securely established by the midsummer of 1757. The apartment appropriated to Watt by the professors is still to be seen in nearly the same rude state in which he left it. It is situated on the first floor of the range of building forming the north-west side of the inner quadrangle, immediately under the gallery of the Natural Philosophy class, with which it communicates. It is lighted by three windows, two of which open into the quadrangle, and the third, at the back, into the Professors’ court. There is a small closet in the corner of the room, where some students have cut their names in the plaster,--date “1713.” The access to the room used to be from the court by a spiral stone staircase; but that entrance is now closed. The apartment is only about twenty feet square; but it served Watt, as it has since served others, for high thinking and noble working.[66] [66] When we visited the room some years since, we found laid there the galvanic apparatus employed by Professor Thomson for perfecting the invention of his delicate process of signalling through the wires of the Atlantic Telegraph.