asking, “Pray, sir, have you seen Brentford?” Boswell, who took a pride in Glasgow himself, calling it “a beautiful city,” afterwards expostulated with the doctor for this rough interruption:  “Now, sir,” said he, “was not that rude?” The full rudeness is only apparent when we remember that Brentford was in that day a byword for dreariness and dirt—­Thomson in the Castle of Indolence calls it “a town of mud.”  When Johnson visited Glasgow, however, he joined the troop of its admirers himself, and Boswell took the opportunity to put him then in mind of his question to Smith, and whisper to him, “Don’t you feel some remorse?”

But Glasgow had already begun its transition from the small provincial to the great commercial capital, and was therefore at a stage of development of special value to the philosophical observer.  Though still only a quiet but picturesque old place, nestling about the Cathedral and the College and two fine but sleepy streets, in which carriers built their haystacks out before their door, it was carrying on a trade which was even then cosmopolitan.  The ships of Glasgow were in all the waters of the world, and its merchants had won the lead in at least one important branch of commerce, the West India tobacco trade, and were founding fresh industries every year with the greatest possible enterprise.  The prosperity of Glasgow is a fruit of the Union which first opened the colonial markets to Scotch merchandise, and enabled the merchants of the Clyde to profit by the advantages of their natural situation for trading with the American plantations.  Before the middle of the century the Clyde had become the chief European emporium for American tobacco, which foreign countries were not then allowed to import directly, and three-fourths of the tobacco was immediately on arrival transhipped by the Glasgow merchants for the seaports of the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the North Sea.

As they widened their connections abroad, they naturally developed their industries at home.  They founded the Smithfield ironworks, and imported iron from Russia and Sweden to make hoes and spades for the negroes of Maryland.  They founded the Glasgow tannery in 1742, which Pennant thought an amazing sight, and where they employed 300 men making saddles and shoes for the plantations.  They opened the Pollokshaws linen print-field in 1742, copper and tin works in 1747, the Delffield pottery in 1748.  They began to manufacture carpets and crape in 1759, silk in 1759, and leather gloves in 1763.  They opened the first Glasgow bank—­the Ship—­in 1750, and the second—­the Arms—­in 1752.  They first began to improve the navigation of the Clyde by the Act of 1759; they built a dry dock at their harbour of Port Glasgow in 1762; while in 1768 they deepened the Clyde up to the city, and began (for this also was mainly their work) the canal to the Forth for their trade with the Baltic.  It was obvious, therefore, that this was a period