“Linlithgow for wells, Glasgow for bells.” So rhymes
the old couplet. The bell has long been associated with the arms of
the city, the motto “Let Glasgow Flourish, by the preaching of the
Word being, it is said, derived from a pious aspiration inscribed on
the bell of the Tron Church. The sound of the church-going bell is
weekly wafted across the great city from many a tall spire on
Sundays, when the great workshop wheels cease to run, and the
thousand engines stop for a while their weekly efforts, and the
toiling workers, whether by hand or brain, may find rest for the
body and elevation of the soul, undisturbed by the feverish bustle
of the busy week through which they have passed. Glasgow is a city
of churches, from the noble old Cathedral with its long-drawn aisles
along which the organ peals, and its gray walls illumined here and
there by beams of light through the stained-glass windows, to the
humble meeting-house of earnest that there was a point in the ridge
between Loch Katrine and the valley of Loch Ard where a tunnel could
be driven through the hill. That was, he thought, the great original
discovery which showed the Loch Katrine Water Works to be a
practicable scheme.”
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