Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/14

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GLASGOW GLASS and dumb, a university, and 175 churches and chapels. The last named are divided as fol- lows : Free church, 43 ; Established church, 40; United Presbyterian, 37; Roman Catholic, 12 ; Independent, 9 ; Baptist, 7 ; Episcopal, 5 ; Reformed Presbyterian, 4 ; other denomina- tions, 18. A bishopric was erected in .Glas- gow about 1115 ; in 1488 it was made an arch- bishopric. At present it is the seat of a bishop of the Scotch Episcopal church and of a Roman Catholic vicar apostolic. Five daily and 15 weekly newspapers are published. There is a botanic garden of 40 acres in the N. W. part of the city, which is open to the public in sum- mer. The cathedral, said to be the finest Gothic building in Scotland, overlooks the city from the northeast. It was built by David I. about 1133, but was burned in 1192; the present edifice was immediately begun, and was con- secrated in 1197, but was not finished until the present century. Its most celebrated features are the crypt and the profusion of brilliant stained glass. The university was chartered in 1443 by James II., but it had only a feeble existence until 1560, when Queen Mary be- stowed upon it half of the confiscated church property in the city ; this endowment has been greatly increased by additional grants from the corporation and the crown. It has a library of 105,000 volumes, founded in 1473, an ob- servatory, and numerous cabinets and collec- tions. The grounds include 22 acres, and the new buildings, finished in 1870, cost 370,000. The number of matriculated students averages 1,200. The university confers degrees in arts, law, medicine, and divinity. The principal public buildings are the royal exchange, the town hall, and Hutcheson's hospital. The city is supplied with water from Loch Katrine, by an aqueduct 26 m. long. Glasgow was erected into a burgh about 11 90, with the privilege of an annual fair. In 1556 it ranked eleventh among the towns of Scotland. It is now the fourth exporting city of Great Britain, and the second in wealth and population. Its immense growth, mainly within the present century, is due to its situation in the midst of a rich coal and iron district, and its seaport facilities. Large sums have been spent in clearing and deepen- ing the channel of the Clyde, including the re- moval of several islands, and it is now naviga- ble for vessels of 2,000 tons. The quays are 16,- 680 ft. in extent. In the 18th century Glasgow was the centre of the tobacco trade of Great Britain, and its merchants also dealt largely in the sugar and other products of the West In- dies. Later it entered extensively into brew- ing, dyeing, and calico printing, and finally into ship building (especially of iron ships), iron casting, and machine making, and the prepa- ration of chemicals. The St. Rollox chemical works, the largest in the world, N. of the ca- thedral, cover 16 acres, employ more than 1,000 men, and have a chimney 450 ft. high. A still taller chimney (460 ft.) is that of the artificial manure works. In 1871 the number of spindles was 2,000,000, consuming annually 125,000 bales of cotton, and supplying 27,000 power looms. There are large glass works and paper mills, and the turkey-red dyes produced here are famous. The value of exports in 1871 was 10,049,987, of which 2,223,221 were to the United States ; the value of imports was 6,577,575, of which 2,894,273 were from the United States. Glasgow is governed by a lord provost, 8 bailies, and 39 councillors, with the dean of guild from the merchants' and the deacon convener from the trades' house, and returns three members to the house of com- mons. The Romans had a station on the Clyde in the locality of the city, and Antoninus's wall commenced a few miles W. of it. Tradi- tion assigns the foundation of Glasgow to St. Kentigern, whom it makes its first bishop, about 560. In 1300 a battle between the Scots under Wallace and the English under Percy was fought in the High street, when Percy was defeated and slain. In 1350, '.80, and '81, Glas- gow was visited by the plague. About 1542 the regent Arran besieged the earl of Lennox in the bishop's castle, obtained it on promise of terms, and put the garrison to the sword. The same leaders subsequently fought a battle at the Butts in the E. part of the city, when the regent gained the victory and plundered it. In 1560 reformed superintendents superseded Catholic bishops. In 1638 the famous assembly of the Presbyterian church was held here, when episcopacy was abjured. For several years thereafter the city was a prey to both parties in the civil Avars. Fire, plague, plunder, and famine desolated the place. On June 4, 1690, a charter of William and Mary conferred on the townsmen the right of electing their own ma- gistrates. Glasgow was strongly dissatisfied with the union of Scotland and England, but in 1715 and again in 1745 sided with the house of Hanover and raised a force against the Stuarts, for which the pretender's army on the retreat from Derby levied contributions. On the breaking out of the American revolu- tionary war, Glasgow raised a regiment of 1,000 men, and fitted out 14 privateers. In 1820 the public peace was disturbed by radical political riots, and in 1848 by the chartists. GLASS (Sax. glees), in chemistry, any product of fusion having the peculiar lustre known as vitreous, hard and brittle, whether transparent or not; in common use, the transparent pro- duct derived from the fusion of silica with an alkali to which lime or a metallic oxide is add- ed. No material invented by man is to be compared with glass in the service it has ren- dered. To its aid, applied in a thousand dif- ferent forms, the sciences, particularly chemis- try and astronomy, are essentially indebted for their advancement; and its uses in common life render it no less important to the daily wants of mankind. The purity of its material causes the presence of foreign substances to bo instantly detected, and it is consequently the most cleanly substance, and especially suited