As for ancient Glasgow, I know not where to bid you look for it, unless it be in the Cathedral, and that is ancient indeed. The rest is very new, yet very grey and gloomy, for the immense commercial interests of Glasgow have not only compelled the extension of the city, but also the complete rebuilding of its centre, and have caused it to be rebuilt exclusively in stone. The chief streets are of stone, are paved with stone, and have remarkably tall buildings, and so with the side streets: the sole difference being that while the principal thoroughfares contain the shops, every side street leading out of them is a more or less dirty slum, where dirty little bare-legged, ragged-tailed boys and girls play in the road or spit out of windows on the passing stranger. I suppose the respectable people do their business in the city, and live outside it. There is no colour in Glasgow, which, when once you are out of the noise and bustle of the business streets, is thus a very depressing place; and I think the Scotsman’s praise, “Man, ye should live in Glesca’, there’s such gran’ faceelities for gettin’ oot o’t,” must have taken unconscious count of this. In one way, and one only, Glasgow resembles London. This is in the way in which the Clyde divides it, north and south. North, you have old Glasgow and its immediate extensions; south are the dependent districts of Hutchesontown, Laurieston, Gorbals, Govanhill, and a dozen others. [Sidenote: _SAINT KENTIGERN_] The Clyde and the neighbourhood of the Lanarkshire coalfield are the determining factors that have made Glasgow what it is, yet although its wealth and size are of modern growth, it is no parvenu, upstart place without a history. St. Kentigern, or St. Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, came here so early as A.D. 543, but early as he was, Glasgow was already here, in the guise of one hamlet on the Molendinar Burn, where the Cathedral now stands, and another nearer the Clyde. And here, with this mention of St. Kentigern, it is necessary for awhile to divert the stream of historical narrative into the interesting backwater of saintly biography, and thus learn the story of how the city came by its singular armorial bearings.