return at six or half-past six o’clock.  As for the occupations of the day, there are boating and yachting, wandering along the beach, lying on the heather looking at Arran through the sun-mist, lounging into the reading-room, dipping into any portion of The Times except the leading articles, turning over the magazines, and generally enjoying the blessing of rest.  Fishing is in high favour, especially among the ladies.  Hooks baited with muscles are sunk to the ground by leaden weights (the fishers are in a boat), and abundance of whitings are caught when the weather is favourable.  We confess we don’t think the employment ladylike.  Sticking the muscles upon the hooks is no work for fair fingers; neither is the pulling the captured fish off the hooks.  And, even in the pleasantest company, we cannot see anything very desirable in sitting in a boat, all the floor of which is covered by unhappy whitings and codlings flapping about in their last agony.  Many young ladies row with great vigour and adroitness.  And as we walk along the shore in the fading twilight, we often hear, from boats invisible in the gathering shadows, music mellowed by the distance into something very soft and sweet.  The lords of the creation have come back by the late boats; and we meet Pater-familias enjoying his evening walk, surrounded by his children, shouting with delight at having their governor among them once more.  No wonder that, after a day amid the hard matter-of-fact of business life, he should like to hasten away to the quiet fireside and the loving hearts by the sea.

Few are the hard-wrought men who cannot snatch an entire day from business sometimes:  and then there is a pic-nic.  Glasgow folk have even more, we believe, than the average share of stiff dinner parties when in town:  we never saw people who seemed so completely to enjoy the freshness and absence of formality which characterize the well-assorted entertainment al fresco.  We were at one or two of these; and we cannot describe the universal gaiety and light-heartedness, extending to grave Presbyterian divines and learned Glasgow professors; the blue sea and the smiling sky; the rocky promontory where our feast was spread; its abundance and variety; the champagne which flowed like water; the joviality and cleverness of many of the men; the frankness and pretty faces of all of the women. [Footnote:  We do not think, from what we hare seen, that Glasgow is rich in beauties; though pretty faces are very common.  Times are improved, however, since the days of the lady who said, on being asked if there were many beauties in Glasgow, ‘Oh no; very few; there are only three of us.’] We had a pleasant yachting excursion one day; and the delight of a new sensation was well exemplified in the intense enjoyment of dinner in the cramped little cabin where one could hardly turn, And great was the sight when our host, with irrepressible pride, produced his preserved meats and vegetables, as for an Arctic voyage, although a messenger sent in the boat which was towing behind could have procured them fresh in ten minutes.