Glasgow has seen great changes since this book was published eight years ago. A man who had lived here all his life till then might to-day be set down in many parts of the city without having an idea where he was. Besides the usual buildings and re-buildings of a busy place, and the great swathes that railways have cut through the town, the municipal operations have transformed whole quarters. Heirs of a long tradition of public spirit, the Town Council of our day have shown themselves worthy successors of those old Councillors who formed the Green, gave its ample width to Argyle Street, lined the river with an unbroken sweep of quays, and made of a small inland town a great seaport. (1) Bold to plan and cautious to carry out, without the waste and without the overcrowding of showy reckless Hausmannizing, getting much abuse and little thanks, they have already, when their work is but half done, set an example which others can more easily admire than copy. Old streets have grown straight wide and level, broad new thoroughfares have replaced twisting lanes, great open spaces where the children can play and the old folks can rest have lightened up the dull quarters of the poor, and dens of disease and crime have been swept away. All this has, of course, severed many a link with the past. We miss this old building that was famous in Glasgow story, and that one whose quaint outline familiar to us when we were boys; and when the Improvement programme is played out, little that dates beyond the nineteenth century will be left of the city of St. Mungo.
The five ancient monuments that still survive we may hope permanently to keep. The Crafts of Glasgow are not likely to be called again to arms to save the High Kirk : St Andrew's seems safe from the fate of the Blackfriars : and it will surely never come to this that the Briggate or the Tron or the Tolbooth Steeple stops the way and must be gone.
We can feel no such assurance as to any of the ancient buildings of the outskirts. The advancing town tramples down without pity whatever bars its way. Of the hundred old houses whose likeness and story this book perpetuates, ten are already gone (2) : others, with every shrub and tree cut away, stand like victims bared for the axe : and we know not how many more are doomed.
We may, however, feel pretty sure that what houses have to go will be fully replaced. The tide will still drive before it its sparkling belt of foam, and, as the centrifugal force grows stronger, the sombre city will set herself off with an ever richer fringe of villas, more of them, bigger and grander, gayer with lawn and shrub and flower.
But we shall have something to set against this. With the old houses we shall root out many an old association that clustered round them, and, like the old ivy, enriched the meagre outlines, and hid the rubble and the rough-cast. And there will be a more serious difference between the two. The old, it must always be remembered, were in the main the near-hand summer lodgings of men whose home was in Glasgow. The modern are in the main the homes, miles away, of men whom summer scatters still further a-field.
The difference is immense socially, and therefore politically : for habit and sentiment are strong forces in politics than law and reason. That unwritten law of deference to rank that underlay our old code rested itself on the old social conditions. Those whom people here used to own as their natural leaders were kent folk, who made no pretence to count them their equals, but who shared their feelings opinions and prejudices : who spent their lives within hearing of the Tolbooth chimes : who found in Glasgow, kirk and market, the centre of their interests in business and out of business. Every year the notables of our day grow more of strangers in the place that they live by : spend fewer hours in its smoke and din : outside their own little circle are more and more unknown even by face : till it has come to this that a man may be in the foremost rank on 'Change, may by all who know him be looked up to, and recognized as exceptionally fitted by talent knowledge and force of character for the highest post in the citizens' gift, and may yet be to the bulk of these so unknown that his candidature is resented as the intrusion of a stranger.
The life of the nation centres every year more and more in our towns. And in all our towns the same thing is going on as in Glasgow. The class that used to have the power, those who stand first commercially and socially, are drifting away from their fellow-citizens, and power is ebbing away from them : for the people will not follow leaders whom they do not see and know. The same thing in a measure is going on in the country as well. The great houses are empty or let to strangers oftener than they used to be, or, if their owners do still dwell among their own people, it is not in the old neighbourly way. And the result is the same. Everywhere the joints on which the body politic used to work, supple and strong, are being dislocated.
Some of us take all this lightly : does not the penny of income tax nowadays yield two millions? why croak? Some would even hail with delight the downfall of whatever opposeth or exalteth itself against the Gospel of Equality : if Aristocracy, burgher or territorial, be dying, let it die and let us dance on its grave! But throughout the length and breadth of the land integration is at work in many forms, and among all sorts and conditions of men : and this surely is a serious matter. The commonwealth stood solid and firm when its courses were bonded by mutual acquaintanceship and consideration, common habits and feeling and sympathies. For this kindly cement there is no substitute. Without it, the ancient and imposing edifice opposes to the shock of revolution nothing but the dead weight of its loose parts.
We live under an unlooked-for conservative reaction. Some seem to think this no temporary back-spann, but a change, for our time at least, in the temper of a people grown weary of movement. It may be so. But it is at least as likely that the strange ebb may be quickly followed by a great tidal wave, and that institutions that have never been suspected may then turn out to be like some of our seaside piers whose timbers below the water have been honey-combed through and through.
(1) The nucleus of the Green was included in James II.'s grant to Bishop Turnbull : but the Green as we have it, a noble park of over 100 acres, has been built up by a series of judicious purchases. Our main thoroughfare promised to have been as narrow as the Strand : houses projected into the Trongate, and the Westergate was a mere country lane : the Magistrates have managed gradually to push back the building line. The houses followed the Old Bridge on both banks to the water's edge : between the Bridge and the Green was a nest of riparian abominations, slaughter-houses and the like : by steadily keeping up the old policy the sweep of quays has just been extended without a break from the Green to the Point House. The story of the marvellous transformation of the Clyde need not be told.
(2) North Woodside and Campbellfield lived just long enough to have their likenesses taken in 1870. Since 1870, Annfield, Gilmorehill, Kelvinbank, Kelvinside, Meadow Park, Possill, Stobcross, and Whitehill have disappeared.
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