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tish Chiefs," visited this and other scenes in the neighbourhood of Lanark sanctified by the name of Wallace.

About a quarter of a mile eastward from the town, the ruins of the very ancient church of Lanark are still to be seen, surrounded by the parish cemetery. It was here, at public worship, that the Scottish hero first saw his wife. The building, which has never been fine, having now been deserted for fifty years, is hurrying fast to decay.

The church-yard of Lanark contains the undistinguished grave of William Lithgow, the celebrated traveller of the reign of James VI,-a strange compound of good sense, fanaticism, impudence, and pedantry, to which this parish had the honour of giving birth. Lithgow travelled over a great part of Europe and Asia, and came home, not the better for having been "taken through hands," as he himself might have phrased it, by the Inquisitors at Malaga. He settled in his native parish, where till his death he was known, as he is now popularly remembered, by the name of Lugless Willie Lithgow. He left children and other relations, whose representatives are said still to exist in the place.*

Lanark has had the honour of giving birth to more than one man of note. The most distinguished was the late Lord Justice Clerk Braxfield. Many good scholars, moreover, have been produced at its school, which, for more than fifty years during the last century, was conducted by Mr Robert Thomson, brother-in-law to the author of the Seasons, a man of talents, of great assiduity and success in his profession. The wife of this gentleman, displaying an activity and spirit very different from her illustrious brother, is said to have been pe

In his "Travels," he describes Clydesdale as "the best-mixed country (quasi beef, we suppose,) for corns, meads, pasturage, woods, parks, orchards, castles, palaces, divers kinds of coal and earth-fewel, that our included Albion produceth, so that it may be justly termed the Paradise of Scotland."

342

FALLS OF CLYDE.

culiarly well qualified for her situation as matron of a large boarding-school.

In the neighbourhood of Lanark there are many hand. some seats, among which, Carstairs, the seat of Mr Monteith, seems to be considered the most splendid. But the most distinguished objects of interest in the vicinity of Lanark are unquestionably the celebrated Falls of the Clyde. Of these two are above and one below the town. The uppermost is Bonniton Linn, a cascade of about thirty feet. The next below is Corra Linn, where the water takes three distinct leaps, each apparently as high as that of Bonniton. Upon a rock above the Fall, on the southern brink of the river, stands a ruined castle, behind which is a middle-aged mansion, and behind which again there is a still more modern and splendid house. All these are embowered in the trees and shrubbery which add such grace to the whole of this wild scene. A pavilion, erected above a century ago, stands on the opposite bank of the stream, as a sort of station for observing the fall.

Above this series of cataracts, the river, as had been already observed, moves very slowly, like a victim reluctantly approaching the place of its fate; and, indeed, a sentimental traveller, for the first time drawing near to the scene, when he heard the sound of the falls and observed the spray rising through the trees, might be excused, in the excitation of the moment, for fancying that he was about to witness the execution or torture of some noble being, condemned to undeserved and degrading punishment. Immediately below the first fall, the course of the water becomes prodigiously rapid, as if it were anxious to hurry through the scene and be put out of pain. At one point in this part of its course, it struggles through a chasm of not more than four feet -the narrowest part of the Clyde-and where it can easily be stepped over; though, of course, when the river is in flood, this cannot be observed, as other features of the scene are in the same manner materially altered. Below the last fall, the river glides dejectedly away, with numberless spots of foam upon its surface,

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like a spent steed whose dark sides exhibit marks of late exertion as unequivocal as slowness of pace and dimness of eye.

The third fall of the Clyde occurs at Stanebyres, about two miles below the town of Lanark, and four from Corra Linn. It is characterised by the same features with that cascade, consisting in three falls.

The great power of water and the rapid descent of the river have caused these beautiful natural scenes to be deformed in a remarkable degree by artificial erections the most foreign imaginable to their character. Little more than half a mile below Corra Linn stands what is called the Village of New Lanark-a series of huge square buildings, connected with one or two streets of inferior magnitude, and stretching along the north bank of the river, which here rises so abruptly and so near the stream as only to allow room for two lines of edifices. The large buildings are cotton-mills, and the inferior streets contain the residences of the persons employed in them, amounting it is said to about two thousand. This is rather a singular community. No person is admitted into it except as connected with the manufactory; the very tradesmen who provide the necessaries of life being incorporated in the system.

This manufactory was first established, about forty years ago, by Mr David Dale, a man whose character is said to have been marked by almost Quixotic benevolence. It is now in the possession of a company which owns for its head Mr Robert Owen, so remarkable for his fantastic projects in regard to the domestic polity of mankind. As an exception from the present and unchangeable system of life by nature established, it is as tolerable as any other monster; and all strangers who happen to approach this part of the country, accordingly pay it the visit of curiosity. Industry with her thousand hands is here the predominant divinity; and her works and ways of working are such as may at least amuse, though certainly not permanently gratify, every person who inspects them.

The inhabitants of New Lanark are a peculiar peo

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