Everybody everywhere of course longs for the country, the sea-side, change of air and scene, at some period during the year.  Almost every man of the wealthier and more cultivated class in this country has a vacation, longer or shorter.  But there never was a city whence the annual migration to the sea-side is so universal or so protracted as it is from Glasgow.  By the month of March in each year, every house along the coast within forty miles of Glasgow is let for the season at a rent which we should say must be highly remunerative.  Many families go to the coast early in May, and every one is down the water by the first of June.  Most people now stay till the end of September.  The months of June and July form what is called ’the first season;’ August and September are ‘the second season.’  Until within the last few years, one of these ‘seasons’ was thought to furnish a Glasgow family with vigour and buoyancy sufficient to face the winter, but now almost all who can afford it stay at the sea-side during both.  And from the little we have seen of Glasgow, we do not wonder that such should be the case.  No doubt Glasgow is a fine city on the whole.  The Trongate is a noble street; the park on the banks of the Kelvin, laid out by Sir Joseph Paxton, furnishes some pleasant walks; the Sauchyhall-road is an agreeable promenade; Claremont, Crescent and Park Gardens consist of houses which would be of the first class even in Belgravia or Tyburnia; and from the West-end streets, there are prospects of valley and mountain which are worth going some distance to see.  But the atmosphere, though comparatively free from smoke, wants the exhilarating freshness of breezes just arrived from the Atlantic.  The sun does not set in such glory beyond Gilmore-hill, as behind the glowing granite of Goatfell; and the trunks of the trees round Glasgow are (if truth must be spoken) a good deal blacker than might be desired, while their leaves are somewhat shrivelled up by the chemical gales of St. Rollox.  No wonder, then, that the purest of pure air, the bluest of blue waves, the most picturesque of noble hills, the most purple of heather, the greenest of ivy, the thickest of oak-leaves, the most fragrant of roses and honeysuckle, should fairly smash poor old Glasgow during the summer months, and leave her not a leg to stand on.

The ladies and children of the multitudinous families that go down the water, remain there permanently, of course:  most of the men go up to business every morning and return to the sea-side every night.  This implies a journey of from sixty to eighty miles daily; but the rapidity and the cheapness of the communication, render the journey a comparatively easy one.  Still, it occupies three or four hours of the day; and many persons remain in town two or three nights weekly, smuggling themselves away in some little back parlour of their dismantled dwellings.  But let us accept our friend’s invitation to spend a few days at his place down the water, and gather up some particulars of the mode of life there.