There was, indeed, a row of old portraits at
each end of the apartment,--for instance, Zachariah Boyd, who wrote the
rhyming version of the Bible, which is still kept, safe from any critical
eye, in the library of the University to which he presented this, besides
other more valuable benefactions,--for which they have placed his bust in
a niche in the principal quadrangle; also, John Knox makes one of the row
of portraits; and a dozen or two more of Scotch worthies, all very dark
and dingy. As to the picture of Mary of Scotland, it proved to be not
hers at all, but a picture of Queen Mary, the consort of William III.,
whose portrait, together with that of her sister, Queen Anne, hangs in
the same row. We told our guide this, but he seemed unwilling to accept
it as a fact. There is a museum belonging to the University; but this,
for some reason or other, could not be shown to us just at this time, and
there was little else to show. We just looked at the gardens, but,
though of large extent, they are so meagre and bare--so unlike that
lovely shade of the Oxford gardens--that we did not care to make further
acquaintance with them.
Then we went back to our hotel, and if there were not already more than
enough of description, both past and to come, I should describe George's
Square, on one side of which the hotel is situated. A tall column rises
in the grassy centre of it, lifting far into the upper air a fine statue
of Sir Walter Scott, which we saw to great advantage last night, relieved
against the sunset sky; and there are statues of Sir John Moore, a native
of Glasgow, and of James Watt, at corners of the square.
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