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No. I.

Cities.

No one's memory can give all that is seen or heard, and it is a good thing that it is so. A wealth of detail brings about that state of mind that is summed up in an old aphorism of "not seeing the wood for trees." When, after you have paid a visit to a place, a person asks you what impressed you, it is not expected that you will reply as if you examined what you saw with a microscope. It is the big things that exist in your memory—it is the general outlook to which the inquiry is addressed. It is what remains in your memory after the small details have been forgotten, that I call "impressions" or "recollections," and I purpose to jot down some of the things I saw.

However numerous the men and women may be we have seen, there are no two alike. It is said sometimes that a person has a double, but place the so-called double alongside the original and a difference to an observant person will be at once apparent. There are varieties in tiling as in persons; and if we examined common things like blades of grass or leaves of clovers, do we not see page 4 that each blade or each leaf has an individuality of its own? In visiting cities you see that no two are alike, and every one has something that seems to dominate it. I noticed this in every city I visited. The city that impressed me most was the greatest city in the world London; and apart from its great size, its variety, its millions of peoples, two things seemed to dominate it—St Paul's Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament—or the Church and the world. It has, of course, thousands of fine buildings, fine churches, houses that have a history, but these two buildings seemed to stand as its sentinels The new Catholic cathedral is a massive building, and there are the Royal Exchange, the Mansion House, Westminster Abbey, etc., but, after you have considered them all, the impression of London being dominated by St Paul's and the Houses of Parliament remains.

If you enter some of the leading buildings I think you will be most impressed with the British Museum; its vast library, its books, pamphlets, etc., and its treasures from all parts of the world. The building is only striking by its vastness. I cannot say I was so much impressed with the National Gallery. Many of the pictures are priceless, and when I stood before a painting of Holbein's, for which a fabulous sum had recently been given, I confess I thought the money could have been better spent in helping young artists. I would prefer to spend some hours in the Tate Gallery, among modern pictures, than amongst the famed pictures of the famous artists of long ago.

It is the boulevards of Paris that remain in your memory more than the buildings, though you may admire the beautiful Notre Dame, the Madeleine, and the great church on Montmartre. If you go to Glasgow, it is not the busy banks of the Clyde, and the well-built and fine stone houses of Glasgow's well-to-do citizens in the West End, not the endless traffic and business of the city, nor St. Mungo's Cathedral that you dwell upon. It is Glasgow's educational institutions that most impress yon. Perched on one of its hills, on the finest site in Glasgow, stands a noble pile of buildings. What are they? A page 5 church? No. It is the university, and when you ascend the hill, and pass through the building to its library, its museum, its pictures, its manuscripts, its professors' houses, etc., you are forced to the conclusion that the Glasgow people have placed education first. This impression will be intensified if you visit what was once the Andersonian University, and is now the Technical College of Glasgow and the West of Scotland. Here, indeed, io a noble building. It is not yet finished, but its cost up to the present has exceeded £400,000. It has 13 miles of corridors, and its floor-space is about eight acres. Within its walls eight thousand students are trained in the practical things of life. Docs a young Glaswegian wish to learn to bake bread? Here he will be scientifically taught, nothing is haphazard. So in dyeing, in printing, in drawing, in electrical engineering, etc. Not far from the University are the Art Gallery and the Botanic Gardens, both educational institutions, and both equal to any in large cities, even if Paris be compared with Glasgow.

There are public libraries also—the Mitchell and the Baillie. The latter is not large, but it is comfortable, well arranged, and a good place to study in. Glasgow is the foremost city in municipal organisation. It has city trams, city water, city baths, city washing-houses, etc., and it is not surprising that its public institutions are a credit to its people. It has more than one hospital—the Western Infirmary is up-to-date, and its maternity hospital is a large and magnificent building. Its municipal buildings can challenge comparison with any anywhere. It local governors, the provost, baillies—magistrates as they are called—and councillors are able, keen, well-informed men. I met many of them in the provost's room, and I saw no men anywhere more keen and more alive to the social problems of the day, and better informed as to all the attempted solutions, than the Glasgow magistrates. Happy is the city that has such men to control its civic affairs!

Manchester is an English Glasgow, a busy manufacturing centre, with keen business men controlling it. Its page 6 university looms large, and its art gallery is excellent. The Rylands Library is housed in a building just as fine as some of the old churches about which much enthusiasm is evoked. It looks like a church. It is a church filled with books. Its staircase is a fine specimen of architecture, and shows that the art of building is not a lost art. We can build better than our fathers built. The impression Manchester gives you is that you are amongst workers. The Municipal Technical College is a vast building, well managed, well arranged, and here you will find all the manufacturing processes, weaving, dyeing, printing, baking, etc., taught. It is hardly so large as Glasgow, but Glasgow has a later building—Manchester led the way.

Edinburgh is dominated by its history. Its castle, Holy rood, and Carlton Hill are its Trinity, though it has the finest hospital I saw. Every detail is attended to, and the hospital kitchen, with no smoke, no grime, no fires, but with hot water, gas, and electricity, is worth a visit to Edinburgh, even if you had nothing else to see. Its university is hid, though it has a fine hall, McEwan Hall, the gift of one of its citizens, open to view. Edinburgh has also one of the finest streets I saw in any city—if not the finest—namely Princes Street. It is unique, and its beauty grows on you so much that after a time you think that there is no other street in Edinburgh. There are many streets, however, that in other towns would be thought fine streets. If you go up to the castle, and walk round its ramparts and visit the noted places, you can fancy you hear what Aytoun's ballad describes, the news of Flodden. Then in Holyrood you tread historically holy ground, and no Scotchman visits either castle or palace without recalling the past of his country.

In Aberdeen it is Marischal College that dominates the city. It is a new and magnificent building, and you can see it from almost any part of Aberdeen. The granite city, as it is called, is a university city, and a thriving business centre as well. It has its ancient university, with its two colleges, and it has an improved harbour, manufactures, ship-building, and is a fishing centre, etc. It has fine parks, and a small winding river, and fine page 7 dwellings, with a hard look, through the material used. I had been in Aberdeen in 1863. I was there in the early morning, and I wished to know if there was any difference amongst its workers 46 years later. Then I saw workers going into spirit shops "for the morning," as it was called, before going to their work. I saw none of that in 1909. I was told the public-houses did not open till nine. One thing I saw that rather astonished me was the number of women and children going into baker's shops for fresh bread and rolls, and coming out carrying steaming bread for breakfast. Surely porridge is better than fresh bread! Is it that the trouble of cooking is got rid of, or is it that the taste for oatmeal has passed away? I doubt if the young Aberdonians will be as well served with fresh wheaten bread as with oatmeal porridge.

Aberdeen University has a fine library, and though I visited it in the recess, there were many readers in the library. The glory of the university has been its able teachers and its many distinguished students. Its people have always loyally supported its educational institutions, and its town council gave £30,000 for its new college buildings. As in Glasgow, so in Aberdeen, they made no fuss about Governors' residences and visits of the Sovereign. If the Sovereign comes he is loyally welcomed, but with practical Scotch people university education is ever more important than even Royal visits. Scotch universities flourish because the people have a passion for education, and no university will flourish anywhere if there is not the passion for culture. If we place social pleasures, balls, dances, etc., before university education, we will not become an educated people.

In Switzerland the cities are secondary to their surroundings. Lucerne is dominated by "Pilatus" and "Righi," Geneva by the distant "Mont Blanc," Lugano by its lake, and Pallanza by Lake Maggiore and the Borromean Isles—like green oases in its blue waters. On one of the islets I found New Zealand trees flourishing—the rimu, the cabbage tree, and many New Zealand shrubs; also some Australian eucalypti. In Switzerland, mountains and lakes count more than city buildings. In page 8 Geneva, the ancient university founded by Calvin flourishes. The cathedral of St. Peter, a fine Gothic building, is in the hands of the Presbyterians, and at service there you can understand why in Scotland the people used to sit at singing and stand at prayer. In St. Peter's that is the custom to-day, and it seems to me more reverential and more manly than sitting at prayer and standing at singing. The service in the cathedral was very fine, and the preacher was an eloquent broad churchman, so broad that I wonder what John Calvin would have said had he been present. A fine monument is being erected to the reformers by the Genevese, and John Knox has not been forgotten. There is a monument to Rousseau in his favourite dwelling-place, Geneva, and monuments of many kinds in and near the city, but the monument that will surely strike a stranger most is that erected in the suburb of Champel, in the Rue Michel Servet. It is a granite monument, and on one side there is the inscription in French of which the following is the translation: "Respectful and grateful sons of Calvin, our great reformer, condemning a mistake which was common in his age, but firmly adhering to liberty of conscience according to the Reformation and the Gospel, have erected this expiatory monument, the xxvii. October, MCMIII."' On the other side there appears in French this intimation: "On the 27th October, 1553, died at the stake in Champel, Michel Servet, of Villencuve D'Arragon, born 29th September, 1511." I wonder what other church has erected monuments to its victims of persecution. I came from the monument much impressed with the Geneva Calvinists and their courage and enlightenment.

In Brussels the two things that will impress the visitor is the square in which the Town Hall and other guild halls stand, and their quaint buildings, and the Grand Palace of Justice, The building in Brussels. It is one of the finest buildings I saw anywhere, but I had in my mind's eye, however, the Congo atrocities, and I could not understand how a people that could erect such palatial buildings for the administration of justice could have sanctioned the brutal horrors and atrocities in the Congo.