From this point, on to the very outskirts of Glasgow, the great industrial districts of Lanark display their activities before the traveller in no uncertain manner. Passing Blackwood, the centre of the colliery district is reached at Larkhall, and miners, going to and from work, are the chief wayfarers. The coal of the Lanarkshire pits is of an inferior kind, and by no means well-suited for domestic use, burning dull, and apt to fly in explosive red-hot embers on to carpets and hearth-rugs. But it is not a gassy coal, and the miners are able to go to their work with naked lights. Hence the little oil-lamp which, strung to his cap, is the mark of every Lanark coal-getter. [Illustration: HAMILTON PALACE.] Hamilton, the capital of all this district, is a very considerable town, and an odd mixture of ducal dignity and striving industrialism. It stands at the gates of the Duke of Hamilton’s great park, and jostles that dignified place in a way that would make the hermit Dukes of Bedford faint with horror. But the Dukes of Hamilton, who are Douglases, and of much more distinguished lineage than the Russells, do not seem greatly to suffer from this contact with the world: although, to be sure, the magnificent Alexander, tenth Duke, found the old streets of the town so close to his residence that the colliers and the weavers of the place could easily observe his domestic affairs. This was too much, not merely for a Duke: even so comparatively grovelling a thing as an ordinary squire would have refused to put up with it: and so the too-neighbourly street, and even the old Tolbooth, were purchased. The Tolbooth stands, even now, in the park, and the front walls of the otherwise demolished houses, with doors and windows filled up, form an odd boundary-wall. [Sidenote: _THE MAGNIFICENT DUKE_] The tenth Duke was magnificent indeed. He knew what was due to his strawberry-leaves, and, being a man of immense wealth, saw that he got his due accordingly. A great deal is possible to a man with eighteen titles and five residences, and millions of money to properly support them. He added expensively to the Palace in 1828 and not only beautified it and filled it with wonderful collections of art and literature, but expended £130,000 on a grand mausoleum, so that he might be adequately housed in death. He even imported the black marble sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian monarch; who, however, appears to have been of shorter stature than the princely Duke Alexander, for the thing was a misfit, and when at length his Grace was gathered to his fathers, his body had to be doubled up, in a very derogatory way. The immense collections in Hamilton Palace were at length sold in 1882, by an extravagant and impecunious successor of Duke Alexander, and realised £400,000 at auction.