The New York Times, August 7, 1868:
SCOTLAND.A Trip to Edinburgh--Grand Dinner with the Lord Provost.
From Our Own Correspondent.
Edinburgh, Saturday, July 25, 1868.
All these years that I have been in England I had been no further north than Manchester or Liverpool. It was a mistake, no doubt, but it is rectified at last, and here I am in this grand northern capital, beyond comparison the finest, most picturesque, most imposing town in the United Kingdom.
No description can do justice to its natural features. Bold, craggy mountains, wide glens, lovely valleys, castles, palaces, temples, architecture of a thousand years, the most romantic and thrilling historical associations, are all clustered in Edinburgh.
The history, romance and poetry of Scotland all centre here. Here on this great rock stands the castle where Queen Mary was imprisoned, and gave birth to James VI. of Scotland, and I. of England. Down there, sleeping in the calm valley, is the Palace of Holyrood, where Rizzio was murdered. I do not propose to say much about them. Read the Scottish Chiefs and the Waverly Novels.
The reason, probably, why I did not come sooner to Scotland, was that I never before got a formal invitation. Sitting alone in my room the other day, in the Capital of British Bohemia--Leicester-square--I received an invitation by post to dine with the Right Honorable the Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
The thermometer was in the nineties. The beautiful verdure of England was very brown. Here was an invitation to the hills and lakes and running streams, and the green valleys of Scotland, to see this wonderful city, the Athens of the North, and to dine with the Lord Provost and the literary and scientific nobilities of the Scottish Capital. Need I say that I very promptly accepted the invitation?
The Right Honorable the Lord Provost, you may remember, is William Chambers, of the publishing house of W. & R. Chambers. The dinner, given at the Douglas Hotel, St. Andrew-square, on Thursday, July 23, was to celebrate the completion of Chambers' Encyclopaedia.
Nearly one hundred of us Encyclopaedists and our admiring friends assembled at the appointed hour, and were received by the Lord Provost and Mr. Robert Chambers, Jr. Dr. Robert Chambers not being able to be present. Among those present whose names are familiar to Americans were Sir James G. Simpson, Bart., Sir Wm. Johnston, Mr. Emanuel Deutsch, of the British Museum, and author of the Talmud articles in the Quarterly, Dr. Findlater, editor of the Encyclopaedia, Prof. Tait, and more than I can give the names of without running into a catalogue.
It was a constellation of celebrities from the British Isles... On my right was Dr. W.A.F. Browne, humorist, psychologist and Commissioner in Lunacy; on my left was Mr. Caruthers, botanist, of the British Museum, with whom I discussed the Darwinian theory...
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The New York Times, August 21, 1868:
SCOTTISH SCENES.Glasgow and its Suburbs-- Summary of City Sights--The Scottish Dialect.
From Our Own Correspondent.
Malvern, England, Saturday, August 8, 1868.
My last left me at Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland, and the third in the United Kingdom. It is a great and beautiful city, with a population of nearly half a million. Like all Scotland, it is built of a cold gray stone. There are no bricks, except for factory chimneys, and of these Glasgow has a multitude, and some of the tallest in the world. One is more than four hundred feet high, a slender, beautiful shaft like a needle, shooting up into the sky, but how such leverage can resist the tempest passes my comprehension.
All gray stone--stone walls divide the fields; villages and cities, cottages and castles, are all stone. Over all loom the gray mountains of primitive or metamorphic rock, and the silver lakes and rushing rivers rest upon or run over beds of gray rock. And there are wild and beautiful rocky glens; and the débris of all this rock gives a sweet soil, healthful, and, over a large surface, very fertile. I entirely sympathize with the Sotch in their love of country, and also in their desire to get away from it.
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