Aberdeen

“ To Aberdeen, accordingly, Edward went. He took a shop in the great gay thoroughfare of that cold northern city—Union Street—and prepared to receive the world at large, and to get the money for the longed-for books and the much-desired microscope. Now, Aberdeen is a big, busy, bustling town; it has plenty of amusements and recreations; it has two colleges and many learned men of its own; and the people did not care to come and see the working shoemaker's poor small collection. ”

“ Aberdeen’s popular name of the “Granite City” is justified by the fact that the bulk of the town is built of granite, but to appreciate its more poetical designation of the “Silver City by the Sea,” it should be seen after a heavy rainfall when its stately structures and countless houses gleam pure and white under the brilliant sunshine. The area of the city extends to 6602 acres, the burghs of Old Aberdeen and Woodside, and the district of Torry (for parliamentary purposes in the constituency of Kincardineshire) to the south of the Dee, having been incorporated in 1891. ”

“ There is no city in Scotland which seems to me to have more personality, a more distinct personality, than Aberdeen. It is plainly a self-sufficient city, and both in politics and in religion it thinks for itself, mindless if its thinking is not that of the rest of the kingdom. ”

“ These words were no sooner uttered, than Montrose’s men rushed forward at a quick pace and fell upon the enemy, sword in hand. The Covenanters were paralyzed by the suddenness and impetuosity of the attack, and, turning their backs, fled in the utmost trepidation and confusion, towards Aberdeen. The slaughter was tremendous, as the victors spared no man. The road leading from the field of battle to Aberdeen was strewed with the dead and the dying; the streets of Aberdeen were covered with the bodies, and stained with the blood of its inhabitants. ”

“ The water, still beautifully clear, moves placidly along amidst rich meadows; the near hills are low, with soft rounded summits. The dwellings of men give a cheerfulness to the scene. It is the very perfection of pastoral landscape. And then, at last, we come to Aberdeen and the sea. But on the wonders of that famous town I cannot here enter. Suffice it to say that our record of the Highland Dee is finished. ”

“ Aberdeen is a large, clean-looking town, with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants; wide, regular streets, fine edifices, and many statues, among which we are happy, for a change, not to find that of you know whom.
If Glasgow and Dundee are the principal centres of commercial activity in Scotland, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are the two great centres of learning. ”

“ CROM CASTLE
When I rejoined Marjory, we went up the high road and then turned off by a by-way which took us round innumerable slopes and mounds, so characteristic of this part of Aberdeen. The entire county, seen from high places, looks bare and open; but it has its hills and hollows in endless variety. From the cross road we turned up another and still another, till I lost my bearings entirely. ”

“ No university in wide Britain can be named with Aberdeen, in point of the wild romantic grandeur of its environs, if we include in these the upper courses of the two rivers which meet beside it and Byron Hall. Macintosh, as well as Beattie, have owned the inspiration which the scenery, still more than the scholastic training of the Northern Metropolis, breathed into their opening minds. ”

“ It is wonderful indeed that when once Edward had begun to attract anybody's attention at all, he and his exhibition should ever have been allowed to pass so unnoticed in a great, rich, learned city like Aberdeen. ”

“ We saw many evidences of the prosperity of Aberdeen; and while we lay in the harbour two or three steamers came in and out; one on its way to the islands of Orkney and Shetland, and others to Leith and the Thames. Our few hours at Aberdeen were among the most interesting we spent on shore during our voyage.
Sailing again in the afternoon, with a fine northerly breeze, we passed the neat town of Stonehaven, about fifteen miles to the south, and soon afterwards the grand ruins of Dunnottar Castle, a large square tower rising from amid the ruins of other buildings on the very edge of the cliff. ”

“ Aberdeen—Passage by Steamer—Edinburgh—Visit to the College—William and Ellen Craft.
I have visited few places where I found more warm friends than in Aberdeen. This is the Granite City of Scotland.
Aberdeen reminds one of Boston, especially in a walk down Union Street, which is said to be one of the finest promenades in Europe. ”

“ Its lonely unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of being at last among the men who held the outposts,—sentinels for the marching millions who were approaching from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aberdeen fade to a series of wavering, grotesque notches on the southern horizon line, while to the north an equally irregular and insubstantial line of shadows gradually took on weight and color until it became the village in which my father was at this very moment busy in founding his new home. ”

“ Aberdeen presented to the boy ample food for two of his propensities, those toward the enjoyment of nature and society. The country round, though not sublime, is beautiful. The sea is at hand, an ever grand and stirring object. The Dee comes winding from the mountains of the west through a vale of great loveliness; the Don, from the north, through scenes perhaps still more striking. There is an air of antiquity about the town, with its old churches, colleges, and towers, that is peculiarly pleasing, and the country has likewise a primitive look that wins at once on the spectator. ”

“ Aberdeen has the largest comb and granite-polishing works in the kingdom. There are also several large paper works. Aberdeen is at the junction of three railway lines and has steamer connections with Leith, Newcastle, Hull, and London. The trade of the port, which has an excellent harbor, has steadily increased. ”

“ Everything seems to have been planned byPg 163 the architect to produce the most pleasing effect, and careful note must have been taken of surroundings and location in fitting many of the public buildings into their niches. We saw few more imposing structures in Britain than the new postoffice at Aberdeen, and it was typical of the solidity and architectural magnificence of the Queen City of the North. But Aberdeen will be on the route of any tourist who goes to Northern Scotland, so I will not write of it here. It is a great motoring center, with finely built and well equipped garages. ”

“ Edward I of England in 1296 at the head of a large army paid these northern parts a visit. He entered the county by the road leading from Glenbervie to Durris, whence he proceeded to Aberdeen, exacting homage from [108] the burghers during his five days’ stay. From Aberdeen he went to Kintore and Fyvie and on to Speyside, returning by the Cabrach, Kildrummy, Kincardine O’Neil and the Cairn-o-Mounth. ”

“ Industry.—Owing to the variety and importance of its chief industries Aberdeen is one of the most prosperous cities in Scotland. Very durable grey granite has been quarried near Aberdeen for more than 300 years, and blocked and dressed paving “setts,” kerb and building stones, and monumental and other ornamental work of granite have long been exported from the district to all parts of the world. ”

“ It was under the dignified patronage and care of the121 late Bishop Patrick Forbes, that these men had grown up in Aberdeen, ‘a society more learned and accomplished than Scotland had hitherto known.’84 Connected with them in locality were other men of talents and accomplishment—Arthur Johnston, John Leech, and David Wedderburn, all writers of elegant Latin poetry—thus adding to the reputation which Aberdeen enjoyed as a seat of learning, that of a favourite seat of the Muses. ”

“ James Gregorie found that he could not settle down to a country life, and so to the regret of his patients he took a hurried farewell of them, and went back to that town from which his forbears had come—to the grey city ‘looking out on the cold North Sea.’
There is no place in the world to be compared with the old mother city of Aberdeen for the love in which her children hold her. Wherever they go she is still their home, and from between her guardian rivers she watches her sons as they go forth and is glad over their success. ”

“ The duke of Cumberland relieved Aberdeen at the end of February 1746, and in April the Young Pretender was a fugitive. Thereafter the people devoted themselves to agriculture, industry and commerce, which developed by leaps and bounds, and, along with equally remarkable progress in education, transformed the aspect of the shire and made the community as a whole one of the most prosperous in Scotland. ”

“ It is the focus of the trawling industry, and of the granite trade; while the agricultural interests of the county look to Aberdeen as their chief mart and distributing medium. Its secondary schools, its technical college, its agricultural college, its University, all help to swell its population by bringing strangers to reside within its boundaries. ”

“ A large part of the population earn their living by this industry, and Aberdeen granite, like Aberdeen beef and Aberdeen fish, is a well-known product and travels far. Paper and wool are also manufactured but only on a moderate scale.
There is only one other general feature of the county that deserves mention and that is its attractiveness as a health resort. The banks of the Dee, more especially in its upper regions, is a much frequented holiday haunt; and every summer and autumn Braemar, Ballater and Aboyne are crowded with visitors from all parts of the country. ”

“ The Aberdonians, as is known, pride themselves on a hard-headedness answering to their native granite. The legend goes that an Englishman once attempted to defraud these far northerners, but the charge against him was scornfully dismissed by an Aberdeen bailie: “The man must be daft!” By the rest of Scotland, Aberdeen is looked on as concentrating its qualities of pawkiness, canniness, and thrawnness; the Edinburgh man cracks upon it the same sort of jokes as the Cockney upon Scotland in general. ”

“ Many generations back there had been an Aberdeen in the family, and since then the peculiarities of that particular strain had been modified to an amazing degree by a series of mésalliances. In fact, all that remained of the Aberdeen were a pair of bandy legs and a wistful, pseudo-innocent eye. ”

“ Telford's principal harbour works in Scotland, however, were those of Aberdeen and Dundee, which, next to Leith (the port of Edinburgh) , formed the principal havens along the east coast. The neighbourhood of Aberdeen was originally so wild and barren that Telford expressed his surprise that any class of men should ever have settled there. An immense shoulder of the Grampian mountains extends down to the sea-coast, where it terminates in a bold, rude promontory. The country on either side of the Dee, which flows past the town, was originally covered with innumerable granite blocks ”

“ Always Scotland, unlike Gaul, has been divided into four parts. Places of pilgrimage were Scone, Dundee, Paisley, Melrose. Places for the quartering of Montrose were Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Stirling. And now four places are rivals; in trade somewhat, but Glasgow leads in beauty, but Edinburgh, after all, is unique in dignity, but Aberdeen is un [Pg 228] bending; in the picturesque there remains Inverness.
The city deserves its honours. (William Black has painted it in "Wild Eelin.") It has a life of its own. ”

“ Aberdeen was a model landlord. By draining the land, by planting millions of trees and by erecting numerous buildings, he greatly improved the condition of his Aberdeenshire estates, and studied continually the welfare of his dependants. A bust of him by Matthew Noble is in Westminster Abbey, and his portrait was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. He wrote An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture (London, 1822) , and the Correspondence of the Earl of Aberdeen has been printed privately under the direction of his son, Lord Stanmore. ”

“ Aberdeen (124) , the fourth city in Scotland, on the E. coast, between the mouths of the Dee and Don; built of grey granite, with many fine public edifices, a flourishing university, a large trade, and thriving manufactures. Old Aberdeen, on the Don, now incorporated in the municipality, is the seat of a cathedral church, and of King's College, founded in 1404, united with the university in the new town.
Aberdeen, Earl of, a shrewd English statesman, Prime Minister of England during the Crimean war (1784-1860) .—Grandson of the preceding, Gov.-Gen. of Canada; b. ”

“ The Duke owned it was very handsome conduct on the part of Clarendon, as it is indeed on the part of Aberdeen, after all that Lord John did in breaking up his Government; but Aberdeen is a gentleman and a patriot, sincerely attached to the Queen, and to the best interests of the country, and while he has retired altogether from public life and the turmoil of politics, he is anxious still to exercise the great moral influence which [Pg 182] he possesses to advance the public interests according to the dictates of his judgement and his conscience. ”

“ He ought by all means to be allowed to find time to publish a volume on The Apostle Paul in Rome. Dr. Gray is another of the many good gifts of Scotland to the world, and, like Dr. Alexander Whyte, of Edinburgh, and other eminent Scotchmen, is an Aberdeen man. They are some of the Aberdonians who almost tempt us at times to agree with the Aberdeen man of whom our good Scotch physician in Rome told me the other day, who said, "Tak' awa' Aberdeen and sax miles around it, and what would you have left?" ”