Page:Letters from England.djvu/132

 mountains and mountains, glens and lakes, valleys of shadows, bursts of black waters, the earth which God kneaded from a hard material and handed over to man that upon it he might fight with his fellow-man; for there can be no tussling with rocks and gorseland.

And this short postscript deals with you, O Glasgow, city without beauty, city of noise and commerce, city of factories and wharves, harbour for wares of all kinds. What am I to say about you? Is there then any beauty in factories, docks and warehouses, cranes in the harbour, towers of steel-works, flocks of gasometers, clattering cartloads of goods, tall chimneys and thunderous steam-hammers, structures of girders and iron, buoys in the water and mountains of coal? I, miserable sinner, think and see that a these things are very beautiful and picturesque and monumental; but the life which is born from this is neither beautiful nor picturesque, but it is deserted by the breath of God, crude and