It was
market-day in Carlisle, and the principal streets were much thronged with
human life and business on that account; and in as busy a street as any
stands a marble statue, in robes of antique state, fitter for a niche in
Westminster Abbey than for the thronged street of a town. It is a statue
of the Earl of Lonsdale, Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland, who died about
twenty years ago.
[Here follows the record of the visits to the "Haunts of Burns," already
published in Our Old Home.--ED.]
GLASGOW.
July 1st.--Immediately after our arrival yesterday, we went out and
inquired our way to the cathedral, which we reached through a good deal
of Scotch dirt, and a rabble of Scotch people of all sexes and ages. The
women of Scotland have a faculty of looking exceedingly ugly as they grow
old. The cathedral I have already noticed in the record of my former
visit to Scotland. I did it no justice then, nor shall do it any better
justice now; but it is a fine old church, although it makes a colder and
severer impression than most of the Gothic architecture which I have
elsewhere seen. I do not know why this should be so; for portions of it
are wonderfully rich, and everywhere there are arches opening beyond
arches, and clustered pillars and groined roofs, and vistas, lengthening
along the aisles. The person who shows it is an elderly man of jolly
aspect and demeanor; he is enthusiastic about the edifice, and makes it
the thought and object of his life; and being such a merry sort of man,
always saying something mirthfully, and yet, in all his thoughts, words,
and actions, having reference to this solemn cathedral, he has the effect
of one of the corbels or gargoyles,--those ludicrous, strange sculptures
which the Gothic architects appended to their arches.
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