Chapter VII: Part 7

These direct projects were partly the result of the imperfect manner in which, in consequence of opposition and from want of experience, the original main branch lines were executed, and partly in that plethora of money, which, in this thriving country, must be relieved from time to time by the bleeding of ingenious schemers. We are enjoying, in this year of 1851, the advantages derived from money spent, and lost to the spenders, in our own country instead of being sunk in Greek or Spanish bonds, South American mines, or the banks and public works of the United States.

At one period, in the height of the ten per cent. mania, a school of railway economists sprang up which advocated placing the construction and the profits of railways in the hands of government, and they supported their theories by ex post facto criticism on the blunders of railway companies,--on the astonishing dividends of Mr. George Hudson's lines,--and on the hard terms on which capitalists had agreed to execute French railways for the French government.

These ingenious reasons did not prevail. People were reminded that the steam boats, the public works, the "Woods and Forests" under government charge, were not managed with remarkable success or economy. The tempting dividends melted away, and projects for French railways, on the principle of the State taking profits and the speculators the risk, which had excited the admiration of Cato Morrisson, first hung fire and then exploded, so that rich districts of France which, on the system of "profits to private enterprise," would have enjoyed railway conveyance ten years ago, are still left to the mercy of the slow diligences and slower waggons to this hour.

To a commercial country like England, the waste of a few millions on railways badly planned, are of little importance compared with the national saving effected by the cheap conveyance of produce. The great importance of the direct line between Rugby, Macclesfield, and Manchester, is not that it saves an hour in the transit of an impatient traveller, but that it places in easy communication purely agricultural and thoroughly manufacturing communities, so as to render an interchange of produce easy. Shareholders sometimes suffer, but the public always gains. On the other hand, Parliament should take care that railway extension to blank districts is not prevented by conceding parallel lines to directors hunting for a dividend, by dividing instead of increasing the existing traffic.

When an alteration of the law settlement has released from parish bondage and vegetation those adscripti glebae agricultural labourers, the advantage of our network of railways will be still more felt.

* * * * *

STAFFORD TO SHREWSBURY.--The third line diverging from Stafford, counting the continuation of the London as a fourth, is the railway to Shrewsbury, passing through NEWPORT and WELLINGTON, where it joins the direct line from Wolverhampton, and affording, by a continuation which passes near Oswestry, Chirk, and Llangollen, {138} to Wrexham, Chester, and Birkenhead, another route to Liverpool, and, through Chester, the nearest way to Holyhead and Ireland.

* * * * *

NEWPORT.--The first station after leaving Stafford for Shrewsbury, and immediately after crossing into Shropshire, is a small market town and borough, with a corporation, which can be traced back to Henry III. The church, of the fifteenth century, with an interior of great beauty, has been frightfully disfigured by aisles built of bricks in a common builders' style of architecture.

This corporation offers an example which might be with advantage followed by greater men holding the same office; they have but a small income, and they apply it to keeping in order cisterns and conduits which supply the town with water.

There is a free grammar school founded by one William Adams in 1756, which has a library attached to the school and five scholarships. The best, of 80 pounds a year, to Christchurch, Oxford.

* * * * *

WELLINGTON stands at the base of the Wrekin, is the centre of the Shropshireman's toast and the chief town of the coal and iron district, and is the point where the line from Wolverhampton makes a junction, affording the nearest road from Birmingham to Shrewsbury. It was here that Charles I., on his march from Wellington to Shrewsbury, assembled his troops, and, in order to allay the growing disaffection among them, declared that he would "support the reformed religion, govern by law, uphold the privileges of parliament, and preserve the liberty of the subject."

From Wellington you may proceed by omnibus to Coalbrookdale, where the first iron bridge was built over the Severn, where the Darbys and Dickensons have carried on iron works for more than a century, where coal was first applied profitably to smelting iron, and where the fine iron castings of Berlin have been rivalled, and successful attempts have been made to introduce the principles of the fine arts into domestic manufactures. The firm are members of the Society of Friends. Fortunately their tenets do not prevent them from selling us coal-scuttles of beautiful design, although their wives and daughters are bound, according to the conservative principles of their sect, to wear bonnets of an unvarying and hideous coal-scuttle shape.

* * * * *

SHREWSBURY, 10 miles from Wellington, is, in more respects than one, an interesting town, situated partly on a precipitous peninsula formed by the swift clear waters of the Severn, united to the opposite side by bridges, in one of which the huge undershot waterwheels of a corn mill are for ever turning. A stranger without letters of introduction, condemned to spend a few hours here with nothing to do, may easily pass the time pleasantly in hunting out picturesque bits of river scenery, or even in chucking pebbles into the stream, instead of drinking sherry negus he does not want, or poking about the dull streets of a modern town, while all the respectable inhabitants are lost in wonder "who that strange man in the white hat is." The manufactures of Shrewsbury are not very important; thread, linen, and canvas, and iron-works in the neighbouring suburb of Coleham; a considerable and ancient trade is carried on in Welsh flannel and cloths from the neighbouring counties of Denbigh, Montgomery, and Merioneth, and markets and fairs are held for the benefit of the rich agricultural district around, in which, besides fine butter, cheese, poultry, and live stock, a large assemblage of the blooming, rosy, broad-built Shropshire lasses show the advantage of a mixture of Welsh and English blood.

But Shrewsbury is most famous for its school, its cakes, its ale, and the clock mentioned by Falstaff, for which on our last visit we found an ingenuous Frenchman industriously searching.

The royal free grammar school, endowed by Edward VI., was raised, by the educational talents of the late Dr. Butler, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to a very high position among our public schools; a position which has been fully maintained by the present master, Dr. Kennedy.

As for the cakes and ale, they must be tasted to be appreciated, but not at the same time.

In the history of England and Wales, Shrewsbury plays an important part.

It is supposed that the town was founded by the Britons of the kingdom of Powis, while they were yet struggling with the Saxons, or rather the Angles, for the midland counties, and, it is probable, was founded by them when they found Uttoxeter (the Uriconiam of the Romans), no longer tenable. On the conquest of the town by the Anglo-Saxons it received the name of Scrobbes- byrig; that is to say Scrub-burgh, or a town in a scrubby or bushy district, and, in the Saxon Chronicle, Scrobbesbyrig-scire is mentioned, now corrupted or polished into Shropshire. Ethelfleda, whose name we have so often had occasion to mention as the builder of castles and churches, founded the collegiate church of St. Alkmund; and Athelstan established a mint here. It is evident that the "Athelstan the Unready," mentioned in Ivanhoe, must have very much degenerated from the ancestor who established a mint for ready money.

According to Domesday-Book, Shrewsbury had, in Edward the Confessor's time, two hundred and fifty-two houses, with a resident burgess in each house, and five churches. It was included in the Earldom of Shrewsbury, granted by William the Conqueror to his kinsman, Roger de Montgomery, who erected a castle on the entrance of the peninsula on which the town now stands, pulling down fifty houses for that purpose. In the wars between Stephen and the Empress Maude, the Castle was taken and retaken; and in the reign of John the town was taken by the Welsh under Llewellyn the Great, who had joined the insurgent Barons in 1215; and again attacked and the suburbs burned by the Welsh in 1234. Shrewsbury was again taken by Simon de Montfort and his ally, Llewellyn, grandson of Llewellyn the Great, in 1266, the year before de Montfort fell on the field of Evesham. And here, in 1283, David, the last Prince of Wales, was tried, condemned, and executed as a traitor. Here, too, in 1397, in the reign of Richard II., a Parliament was held, at which the Earl of Hereford (afterwards Henry IV.) charged the Duke of Norfolk with treason. The charge was to have been decided by a trial of battle at Coventry. On the appointed morning, "Hereford came forth armed at all points, mounted on a white courser, barded with blue and green velvet, gorgeously embroidered with swans and antelopes of goldsmiths' work. The Duke of Norfolk rode a horse barded with crimson velvet, embroidered with lines of silver and mulberries."

At that time it took more days to travel from Shrewsbury to Coventry than it now does hours. The cloth of gold was as splendidly, perhaps more splendidly, embroidered than anything we can do now; but in the matter of shirts, shoes, stockings, and the clothing necessary for health and comfort, and of windows and chimneys, and matters necessary for air and shelter, mechanics and day labourers are better provided than the squires and pages of those great noblemen. Five years after, the Harry of Hereford having become Henry IV. of England, assembled an army at Shrewsbury to march against Owen Glendower, and the following year he fought the battle of Shrewsbury against Hotspur, and his ally the Douglas, which forms the subject of a scene in Shakspeare's play of Henry IV. At that battle Percy Hotspur marched from Stafford toward Shrewsbury, hoping to reach it before the King, and by being able to command the passage of the Severn to communicate with his ally Glendower; but Henry, who came from Lichfield, arrived there first, on the 19th July, 1403. The battle was fought the next day at Hateley Field, about three miles from the town.

In the Wars of the Roses Shrewsbury was Yorkist. In the great Civil War Charles I. came to Shrewsbury, there received liberal contributions, in money and plate, from the neighbouring gentry, and largely recruited his forces; and in the course of the war the town was taken and retaken more than once. Thus it will be seen that Shrewsbury is connected with many important events in English history.

The first Charter of incorporation extant is of Richard I.

Two members are returned to Parliament of opposite politics at present; but a few years ago it was the boast of the Salopians, that the twelve members returned by the different constituencies of the county were all of that class of politics which, for want of a better name, may be called "Sibthorpian."

Shrewsbury is a good starting point for an expedition into Wales, and we can strongly recommend the walk from Chirk, one of the stations on the line to Chester, over the hills by footpaths to Llangollen: from one point a view may be caught of the three great civilizers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A splendid viaduct, carrying the Shropshire Canal over a deep valley, in its day considered a triumph of engineering art--the Holyhead mail road, perhaps the best piece of work of the kind in the world, and the railway, which has partly superseded both. There is more than one pleasant spot on the bye-path we have suggested where a thoughtful pedestrian may sit down, and, smoking a cigar in the presence of a sweetly calm landscape of grassy valleys and round-topped hills, ponder over these things, not without advantage, to the sound of bells borne by lively Welsh sheep, whose mutton has been raised 2d. a pound in value by Stephenson's steam-engines.

But our road lies by the English rail this time, therefore we must return to Stafford.

* * * * *

STAFFORD TO CREWE.--On leaving Stafford for Crewe we pass on the right Ingestrie Park, the seat of the Earl of Talbot; the ruins of Chartley Castle, the property of Earl Ferrers, the defendant in the action brought by Miss Smith for breach of promise of marriage; and Sandon Park, the seat of the Earl of Harrowby, who for many years, before succeeding his father, represented Liverpool in the House of Commons as Lord Sandon.

Soon after passing Norton Bridge Station, about seven miles from Stafford, we come in sight of Swinnerton Hall, the seat of the ancient family of Fitz- Herbert. The first lord of the manor of Swinnerton received this name at the hands of the Norman Conqueror. One of the farms of the present proprietor of Swinnerton Hall is held by a Liverpool merchant, who has carried out modern agricultural improvements, especially in stock feeding, with great success; having availed himself of the facilities of the railroad and his commercial knowledge, to import from Liverpool various kinds of nutritive pulse and grain.

Near the Whitmore Station the railway winds for two miles through an excavation in solid stone, enclosed by intermediate slopes of turf, ending, as it were in an arch, which, spanning the road, forms a sort of frame to a wild region that stretches on beyond.

[VIEW NEAR WHITMORE: ill19.jpg]

Without anything very important to induce a halt by the way, the train runs into Crewe.

Crewe is a wonderful place; sixteen years ago, the quietest of country- villages, now intersected in every direction with iron roads pointing from it to almost every point of the compass.

A story is extant, with what foundation of truth we know not, of a gentleman who purchased a small farm here, as a safe investment and occasional retreat from the bustle of Manchester, and eventually realized from it, when a railway station was erected, more hundreds than he had paid pounds. At any rate, if it is not true, it might have been.

At present, besides the line formerly called the Grand Junction, until its amalgamation with the London and Birmingham, there is a line from Crewe to Chester and Birkenhead; another to Manchester direct, by Macclesfield, formerly known as the Manchester and Birmingham--both are now merged in the London and North Western; and lastly, a short cross branch of fifteen miles, forming a union with Burslem on the North Staffordshire.

In addition to the bustle created by the arrival and departure of innumerable trains at Crewe, the London and North Western Company have a large establishment for building and repairing the locomotives and other machinery in use on their lines north of Birmingham. This establishment is under the charge of Mr. Trevethick, C.E., a son of the Trevethick who, in 1802, in conjunction with Vivian, took out the first patent for a locomotive engine, which they executed the following year. {144}

The railway village of Crewe is on the same plan as that of Wolverton, but situated in much prettier scenery; and includes a church, infant, boys' and girls' schools, a Library and Literary Institution, held in the Town-hall, where a fine room is occasionally well filled by popular lectures, and balls in the winter.

On one occasion, about three years ago, the name of a gentleman looking over the works in company with a foreman was recognized as that of a writer on a popular subject, and he was requested by a deputation of the men to deliver a lecture the same evening in the Town-hall. He consented; and a written notice, stuck up in the workshops at one o'clock, assembled at six o'clock upwards of six hundred of the mechanics and their wives and families, forming a most attentive and intelligent audience.

This establishment was considerably reduced during the depression in railway property, and several of the mechanics emigrated to the United States. One of these, a Chartist politician, a Methodist preacher, and a coach-spring maker, with a little taste for sporting, expressed himself, in a letter which found its way into the "Emigrant's Journal," well pleased with the people, the laws, and the institutions amongst which he had transplanted himself; but when he came to speak of the railroads, he considered them "not fit to carry hogs to market." So much for a man criticising his own trade.

We must not pause to describe as we could wish, in detail, the arrangements of this interesting village; for we have heavy work before us, and must press on.

Parties passing, who have leisure to stay a day, will find very fair accommodation at the inn overlooking the station, and often, about one o'clock, a fine hot joint of grass-fed beef of magnificent dimensions. In winter, this hotel is one of the quarters of gentlemen going to meet the Cheshire hounds, a first-rate pack, with a country which, if not first-rate, is far from second-rate, including certain parts of grass country which may be fairly compared to Leicestershire and Northamptonshire.

Crewe Hall, one of the "Meets," is the seat of Lord Crewe, the grandson of the beautiful Mrs. Crewe, so celebrated for her wit and Buff and Blue politics, in the time of Charles James Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire, the Westminster Election, and "All The Talents of the last century."

The Hall is picturesquely situated on a rising ground, well wooded, near a small lake, and contains, among other pictures, portraits of Fox, "Coke of Norfolk," and several other political friends with whom the first Lord Crewe was closely associated. The hounds meet there occasionally, when a "find" is sure, and a gallop through the park a thing to be remembered.

* * * * *

NANTWICH, about five miles from Crewe, is one of the towns which supplies Cheshire's salt exports, Middlewich and Northwich being the other two. In all, rich brine springs are found, but the celebrated mines of rock-salt are found at Northwich only. It is vulgarly imagined that the word wich has something to do with salt, these three towns being often described as the "Wiches." This is an error; and wich is merely an Anglo-Saxon corruption of the Roman word vicus, as in Harwich. The salt-works of Nantwich are mentioned in "Domesday Book." The town was more than once besieged during the great civil wars, lastly by Lord Byron, unsuccessfully, with an army chiefly Irish, which was compelled to raise the siege and defeated by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Sir William Brereton.

Among the antiquities remaining is a cross Church, in a mixture of styles, partly early English and partly decorated English, and a several curious old houses of black timber and plaster.

The trade of this place has derived much advantage from the junction of the Chester, Ellesmere, and Liverpool and Birmingham canals, close by.

At the Nantwich yearly fairs, samples of the famous Cheshire cheese made in the neighbourhood, of the best brands, may be found. Major-General Harrison, one of the Regicides who was put to death on the Restoration of Charles II., was a native of Nantwich, and Milton's widow, who was born in the neighbourhood, died there in 1726.

Just before reaching the Hartford Bridge Station, on the way to Chester, we pass Vale Royal Abbey, the seat of the Cholmondeley family, pronounced Chumleigh, whose head was created in 1821 Lord Delamere.

[VALE ROYAL VIADUCT: ill20.jpg]

The Abbey lies in a valley sheltered by old trees, the remains of a great forest; wood-covered hills rise behind it, closing in the vale; below runs the Weaver, "that famous flood," whose praises were sung by Michael Drayton in his Polyolbion. In this instance, as in many others, the "monks of old" showed their taste in choosing one of the most beautiful and fertile sites in the county for their residence. The Cheshire prophet, Nixon, lived as ploughboy with the Cholmondeley family, according to tradition, for which we no more answer than for his prophecies, doubts having recently been thrown on both. A breed of white cattle with red ears are preserved at Vale Royal, in memory of the preservation of part of the family by a white cow when in hiding during the Civil Wars.

But we have not space to enter into the details of this, or the historical reminiscences connected with the ruins of Beeston Castle, which also falls in our way to Chester; for we must get on to Liverpool and leave for the present Cheshire, with its cheesemaking pastures, ancient mansions, and more ancient families, as well as its coal mines and cotton mills, to visit the twin capitals of Liverpool and Manchester, which are at once the objects of the contempt and sources of the rent of the Cheshire territorial aristocracy.

The antiquarian and historical student may linger long in Cheshire, which abounds in interesting architectural remains of several centuries, particularly of the black and white timbered mansions, and is studded with the sites of famous stories.

[EXCAVATION AT HARTFORD: ill21.jpg]

We shall pass Hartford Station without notice, and shall not pause to visit Northwich and the celebrated Marston Salt Pits, although well worth visiting, for which purpose a cricketer's suit of flannel will be found the best costume, and a few good Bengal lights an assistance in viewing the wonders of the salt caves. On across the long Dutton viaduct, spanning the Weaver navigation, we drive until, crossing the Mersey and Irwell canal and the river Mersey, we quit Cheshire and enter Lancashire, to run into the Warrington Station.

[THE DUTTON VIADUCT: ill23.jpg]

* * * * *

WARRINGTON may be dismissed in a very few words. It is situated in the ugliest part of Lancashire, in a flat district, among coal mines, on the banks of a very unpicturesque river, surrounded by a population in character much resembling that described in the "Black Country" of Staffordshire, and Worcestershire, and Shropshire. It was one of the earliest seats of manufacture in Lancashire, and has the advantage of coal close at hand, with canal and river navigation and railways to Chester through Runcorn (nineteen miles), to Crewe, to Liverpool, to Manchester, and thereby to all quarters in the north of England.

[THE WARRINGTON VIADUCT: ill22.jpg]

Coarse linens and checks, then sailcloth, were its first manufactures; at present, cotton spinning, power-loom weaving, the manufacture of glass, machinery, and millwork, pins, nails, tools, spades, soap, hats, and gunpowder, and many other trades, are carried on here. The markets for live stock of the district and from Ireland are important, and market gardening is carried on to a considerable amount in the neighbourhood of the town. The Mersey is navigable up to Warrington at spring tides for vessels, "flats," of from seventy to one hundred tons. A salmon and smelt fishery, which formerly existed, has disappeared from the waters by so many manufactories.

Warrington, under the Reform Act, returns one member to Parliament. Its ale is celebrated: it formerly returned an M.P. The inhabitants enjoy the benefit of three endowed schools, one of them richly endowed. Howard's work on Prisons was first printed at Warrington.

[WARRINGTON: ill24.jpg]

On leaving Warrington, a few minutes bring us to Newton junction, upon the old Manchester and Liverpool Railway, where George Stephenson established the economy of steam locomotive conveyance twenty-one years ago.

In half an hour we are rolling down the Edgehill Tunnel into Liverpool.

LIVERPOOL.

When you land on the platform, if you can afford it, go to the Adelphi Hotel, where the accommodation is first-rate, but the charges about the same as in Bond Street or St. James's Street, London.

There are others to suit all purses, and plenty of dining-houses on the London system, so that it is not absolutely necessary to submit to the dear and often indifferent dinners which are the rule in the coffee-rooms of most English hotels.

Liverpool has no antiquities of any mark; the public buildings and works worth seeing are few but important, although a page might be filled with the names of Institutions of various kinds.

By far the most interesting, original, and important, are those connected with the commerce of the town. That is to say, the docks and the gigantic arrangements at the railways for goods' traffic. St. George's Hall, a splendid building in the Corinthian style, containing the Law Courts and a hall for public meetings, as a sort of supplement to the Town-hall, meets the view immediately on leaving the railway station. The Mechanics' Institution in Mount Street, one of the finest establishments of the kind in the kingdom, provides an excellent education for the young, and for adults, at a very cheap rate.

A Collegiate Institution, opened in 1843, for affording a first-class education on the plan of the Durham and Marlborough Colleges, at a less expense than at Oxford or Cambridge, is to be found at Everton in a handsome Elizabethan building.

The Town-hall, with its auxiliary buildings, encloses the Exchange on three sides. The vestibule contains a statue of George Canning by Chantrey: in the centre of the Exchange stands a monument to Nelson, which we cannot admire. On the occasion of an invitation to dinner from the Mayor, or of a grand ball, it is worth while to penetrate beyond the vestibule, otherwise the walk through tolerably handsome rooms is scarcely worth the trouble, although it costs nothing.

The immense News-rooms of the Exchange, under one of the Arcades, are open to every respectable stranger introduced,--we may almost say without introduction. There are several other News-rooms with libraries attached. The Lyceum in Bold Street, and the Athenaeum in Church Street, which was founded by purchases from the library of William Roscoe, contain a number of valuable works of reference.

The Royal Institution of Science and Literature, founded by William Roscoe in 1814, by the subscription of shareholders, contains a museum of natural history of considerable value, some curious pictures, a set of casts from the AEgina and Phigaleian marbles, and a collection of philosophical instruments, with a laboratory and a theatre in which lectures are occasionally delivered. This Institution is not flourishing. It was lately offered to the Corporation as a free gift by the proprietors, on condition that the museum, etc., were to be open free to the town. The offer was declined by a small majority.

There are several cemeteries, one of which has been ingeniously arranged in an exhausted stone quarry, and contains a marble statue of Huskisson, by Gibson, commemorating the facts of his having represented Liverpool in several Parliaments, and been killed on the 15th Sept., 1830, by a locomotive, at the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway. On the last occasion of his election for Liverpool, in conjunction with the late General Gascoigne, without opposition, the windows of Huskisson's friends were smashed by the High Tory mob which accompanied Gascoigne's chairing procession. Such are the changes of time. Where could a High Tory mob be found now, or who now differs with the mild liberalism of Huskisson?

A Workhouse on a very extensive scale, capable of affording indoor relief to 1800; a Blind Asylum, celebrated for the singing of the inmates, two Infirmaries, are far from completing the list of public institutions of a town with nearly 400,000 inhabitants; but, in the greater number, resemble all other institutions of the same kind, and, for the rest, a local guide may be consulted.

The best part of the town may be seen in a walk from St. Lukes' Church at the top of Bold Street, a short distance from the Adelphi Hotel, through Church Street, Lord Street, crossing Castle Street, down to St. George's Pier. By this line the best and the busiest streets of Liverpool will be seen, with shops nearly equal to the finest in London, and with customers in fine ladies, who are quite as pretty, and much more finely dressed, than the residents of that paradise of provincial belles, Belgravia. Indeed both sexes in this town are remarkable for their good looks and fashionable costume, forming a strong contrast to the more busy inhabitants of Manchester.

In Bold Street is the Palatine, a miniature copy of the Clubs of Pall Mall: at the doors and windows may be seen, in the intervals of business, a number of young gentlemen trying very hard to look as if they had nothing to do but dress fine and amuse themselves. But so far from being the idle fellows they would be thought, the majority are hardworking merchants and pains-taking attornies, who bet a little, play a little, dote upon a lord, and fancy that by being excessively supercilious in the rococo style of that poor heathen bankrupt Brummel, they are performing to perfection the character of men of fashion. This, the normal state of young Liverpool, at a certain period the butterfly becomes a grub, a money grub, and abandoning brilliant cravats, primrose gloves, and tight shiny boots, subsides into the respectable heavy father of genteel comedy, becomes a churchwarden, a patron of charities, a capitalist, and a highly respectable member of society. The Manchester man is abrupt, because his whole soul is in the money-making business of the day; the Liverpool gentleman's icy manners are part of his costume. The "cordial dodge," which has superseded Brummel's listless style in the really fashionable world, not having yet found its way down by the express train to the great mart of cotton-wool.

'Change hours, which are twice a-day, morning and afternoon, afford a series of picturesque groups quite different to those of any other town, which should be kept in mind when visiting Manchester.

But perhaps the pleasantest thing in Liverpool is a promenade on one of the piers, or rather quays (for they run along and do not project into the river) when the tide is coming in, the wind fair for the Mersey, and fleets of merchantmen are driving up with full-bellied sails to take their anchorage ground before going into dock. An examination of the Docks, with the curious Dock arrangements of the Railway Companies, and the Sailor's Home, of which Prince Albert laid the first stone in 1846, will take a day. The Cheshire side of the Mersey forms a suburb of Liverpool, to which steamers are plying every ten minutes from the villages of Rock Ferry, Tranmere, Birkenhead, Monk's Ferry, Seacombe, Liskeard, Egremont, and New Brighton. The best idea of the extent of the Liverpool Docks may be obtained from the Seacombe Hotel, an old-fashioned tavern, with a bowling green, where turtle soup, cold punch, and claret are to be had of good quality at moderate charges.

In fine weather a seat after dinner at the window of this tavern is not a bad place for considering the origin, rise, progress, and prospects of the commerce of Liverpool. There is the river, with its rapidly-flowing muddy waters before you, ploughed in all directions by boats, by ships, by steamers, by river barges and flats; on the opposite side five miles of Docks, wherein rise forest after forest of masts, fluttering, if it be a gala day, with the flags of every nation--Russian, Sardinian, Greek, Turkish, French, Austrian, but chiefly, after our own, with the stripes and stars of the Great Republic.

No better text for such a contemplation can be found than the following inscription, copied from the model, contributed by Liverpool to the Great Exhibition of Industry:--

PROGRESS OF THE COMMERCE OF LIVERPOOL.
Under Queen Elizabeth, | Queen Anne, | Queen Victoria,
A.D.1570. | A.D.1710. | A.D.1850.
| |
Population. 800 | 8,168 | About 400,000
| |
Tonnage {151} 268 | 12,636 | 3,336,337
| |
Number of 15 | 334 | 20,457
Vessels | |
| |
Dock Dues. - | 600 | 211,743 pounds
| |
Income of 20 | 1,115 | 139,152 pounds
Corporation | |
| |
Customs Dues 272 | 70,000 | 3,366,284 pounds

This extraordinary progress, of which we have far from seen the limits, has been founded and supported by a position which every commercial change, every new invention relating to sea-borne coasting trade, or inland conveyance, has strengthened.

The discovery of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, and improvements in the art of navigation, destroyed the commercial importance of Venice, and extinguished a line of river ports from Antwerp to Cologne. In our own country, the Cinque Ports, Harwich, Great Grimsby, and other havens, fell into decay when navigators no longer cared to hurry into the first harbour on coming within sight of land. But Liverpool, situated on the banks of a river which, until buoyed and improved at a vast expense, was a very inferior port for safety and convenience, has profited by the changes which have rendered the American the most important of our foreign customers, and Ireland as easily reached as Runcorn in a sailing flat.

The rise of the cotton manufacture has been as beneficial to Liverpool as to those districts where the yarn is spun and woven. The canal system has fed, not rivalled or "tapped," the trade of the Mersey. The steamboats on which the seafaring population of Liverpool at first looked with dislike and dismay, have created for their town--first, a valuable coasting trade, independent of wind or tide, which with sailing vessels on such a coast and with such a river could never have existed; and next, a transatlantic commerce, which, through Liverpool, renders New York nearer to Manchester than Dublin was five and twenty years ago; while, at the same time, the opposite coast of Cheshire has been transformed into a suburb, to which omnibus-steamers ply every five minutes. And yet little more than five and twenty years ago there was only one river steamer on the Mersey, and that a flat bottomed cattle boat, with one wheel in the centre.

Bristol took the lead in establishing transatlantic steamers; but Liverpool, backed by Manchester, transplanted to her own waters the new trade, and even the steamers that proved the problem.

Railways (the only great idea in this generation that Liverpool has ventured to originate and execute) have not, as was promised, transferred any part of the Liverpool trade to Manchester; but, on the contrary, largely increased and strengthened their connection with the cotton metropolis. An hour now takes the cotton broker to his manufacturing customers twice a week, who formerly rose at five o'clock in the morning to travel by coach in four hours to Manchester, and returned wearied at midnight.

The Electric Telegraph, the next great invention of this commercial age was not less beneficial to this port by facilitating the rapid interchange of communication with the manufacturing districts, and settling the work of days in a few hours. A hundred miles apart merchants can now converse, question, propose, and bargain.

By all these improvements uncertainties have been reduced to certainties, and capital has been more than doubled in value. On the expected day, well calculated beforehand, the steamer arrives from America; with the rapidity of lightning the news she brings is transmitted to Manchester, to Birmingham, to Sheffield, to London, to Glasgow; a return message charters a ship, and a single day is enough to bring down the manufactured freight. Thus news can be received and transmitted, a cargo of raw material landed, manufactured goods brought down by rail from the interior of England, and put on board a vessel and despatched, in less time than it occupied a few years ago to send a letter to Manchester and get an answer.

And under all these changes, while commerce grows and grows, the porters and the brokers, the warehousemen and the merchants, are able to take toll on the consumption of England.

Even the old dangerous roadstead, and far-falling tides of the Mersey, proved an advantage to Liverpool; by driving the inhabitants to commence the construction of Docks before any other port in the kingdom, and thus obtain a certain name and position in the mercantile world, from having set an example which cities provided with more safe and convenient natural harbours were unwilling to follow.

The first Dock ever constructed in England is now the site of the Liverpool Custom House; a large building erected at a period when our architects considered themselves bound to lodge all public institutions in Grecian temples.

This Dock was constructed in 1708, and twelve others have since been added, occupying the shore from north to south for several miles, including one which will accommodate steamers of the largest class. These Docks are far from perfect in their landing arrangements. Cargo is discharged in all but one, into open sheds. The damage and losses by pilferage of certain descriptions of goods are enormous. Attempts have been repeatedly made to establish warehouses round the docks into which goods might be discharged without the risk or expense of intermediate cartage. But the influence of parties possessed of warehouse property is too great to allow the execution of so advantageous a reform. Whigs and Radicals are, in this instance, as determined conservators of abuses which are not time-honoured as any Member for Lincoln City or Oxford University.

In 1764 more than half the African slave trade was carried on by Liverpool merchants. The canal system commenced by the Duke of Bridgewater next gave Liverpool an improved inland communication. After Arkwright's manufactures stimulated the trade of America, cotton imports into Liverpool soon began to rival the sugar and tobacco imports into Bristol. The Irish trade was rising at the same time, and the comparatively short distance between the midland counties, where Irish livestock was chiefly consumed, soon brought the Irish traders to Liverpool. The progress of steam navigation presently gave new openings to the coasting trade of Liverpool. In 1826 the admirable canal system, which united Liverpool with the coal and manufacturing districts in the kingdom, was found insufficient to accommodate the existing traffic, and the railroad was the result. By the railroad system Liverpool has been brought within an hour of Manchester, two hours of Leeds, and four hours of London; and into equally easy, cheap, and certain communication with every part of England and Scotland; while fully retaining all the advantages of being the halfway house between the woollen districts, the iron districts, and the cotton districts, and America--the intermediate broker between New Orleans, Charleston, New York, and Manchester.

Six-sevenths of all the woollen imported into England comes through Liverpool, besides a large trade in sugar, tobacco, tea, rice, hemp, and every kind of Irish produce.

Thus Liverpool is in a position to take toll on the general consumption of the kingdom; and this toll in the shape of dock dues, added to the increase in the value of landed property, occupied by warehouses, shops, and private residences, has enabled the municipal corporation to bestow on the inhabitants fine buildings, and greatly improve the originally narrow streets. Liverpool has no manufactures of any special importance. Few ships are built there in comparison with the demands of the trade, in consequence of the docks having taken up most of the space formerly occupied by the building-yards. The repairs of ships are executed in public graving docks, chiefly by workmen of a humble standing, called pitchpot masters,--a curious system, whether advantageous or not to all parties, is a matter of dispute.

The environs of Liverpool are particularly ugly, remarkably flat, and deficient in wood and water. There are scarcely any rides or drives of any kind. The best suburb, called Toxteth Park, although no park at all, lies on the southern side of the town, parallel with the Mersey. In this direction the wealthiest merchants have erected their residences, some of great size and magnificence, surrounded by pleasure-grounds and fancy farms, presenting very favourable instances of the rural tastes of our countrymen in every rank of life. But there is nothing in the environs of Liverpool to make a special ride necessary, unless a stranger possesses a passport to one of the mansions or cottages of gentility to be found on each side of the macadamized road behind rich plantations, where hospitality is distributed with splendour, and not without taste.

The north shore of the Mersey consists of flat sands, bounded on the land side by barren sand hills, where, driven by necessity, and tempted by a price something lower than land usually bears near Liverpool, some persons have courageously built houses and reclaimed gardens. On this shore are the two watering-place villages of Waterloo and Crosby, less populous, but as pleasant as Margate, with salt river instead of salt sea bathing, in shade and plenty of dust. The hard flat sands, when the tide is down, afford room for pleasant gallops.

The best settlement on the opposite shore, called New Brighton, has the same character, but enjoys a share of the open Irish sea, with its keen breezes. It must be bracing, healthy, dreary, and dull.

* * * * *

BIRKENHEAD is a great town, which has risen as rapidly as an American city, and with the same fits and starts. Magical prosperity is succeeded by a general insolvency among builders and land speculators; after a few years of fallow another start takes place, and so on--speculation follows speculation. Birkenhead has had about four of these high tides of prosperous speculations, in which millions sterling have been gained and lost. At each ebb a certain number of the George Hudsons of the place are swamped, but the town always gains a square, a street, a park, a church, a market-place, a bit of railway, or a bit of a dock. The fortunes of the men perish, but the town lives and thrives. Thus piece by piece the raw materials of a large thriving community are provided, and now Birkenhead is as well furnished with means for accommodating a large population as any place in England, and has been laid out on so good a plan that it will be one of the healthiest as well as one of the neatest modern towns. It has also the tools of commerce in a splendid free dock, not executed so wisely as it would have been if Mr. Rendel, the original engineer, (the first man of the day as a marine engineer), had not been overruled by the penny-wise pound-foolish people, but still a very fine dock. Warehouses much better planned than anything in Liverpool; railways giving communication with the manufacturing districts; in fact, all the tools of commerce--gas, water, a park, and sanitary regulations, have not been neglected.

Some people think Birkenhead will be the rival of Liverpool, we think not: it will be a dependency or suburb of the greater capital. "Where the carcase is, there the eagles will be gathered together." Birkenhead is too near to be a rival; shipping must eventually come to Birkenhead, but the business will still continue to be done in Liverpool or Manchester, where are vested interests and established capital.

An hour or two will be enough to see everything worth seeing at Birkenhead. To those who enjoy the sight of the river and shipping, it is not a bad plan to stop at one of the hotels there, as boats cross every five minutes, landing at a splendid iron pontoon, or floating stage, on the Liverpool side, of large dimensions, constructed with great skill by Mr. W. Cubitt, C.E., to avoid the nuisance of landing carriages at all times, and passengers at low tides in boats.

At Liskeard, a ferry on the Cheshire side, Mr. Harold Littledale--a member of one of the first firms in Liverpool--has established a model dairy farm, perhaps one of the finest establishments of the kind in the kingdom.

All the buildings and arrangements have been executed from the plans and directions of Mr. William Torr, the well known scientific farmer and short- horn breeder, of Aylsby Manor, Lincolnshire. No expense has been spared in obtaining the best possible workmanship and implements, but there has been no waste in foolish experiments; and, consequently, there is all the difference between the farm of a rich man who spends money profusely, in order to teach himself farming, and a farm like that at Liskeard, where a rich man had said to an agriculturist, at once scientific and practical, "Spare no expense, and make me the best thing that money can make."

The buildings, including a residence, cottages, and gardens, occupy about four acres, and the farm consists of 350 acres of strong clay land, which has been thoroughly drained and profusely manured, with the object of getting from it the largest possible crops. Fifty tons of turnips have been obtained from an acre.

Eighty cows are kept in the shippons, ranged in rows, facing the paths by which they are all fed at the head. They are fed on turnips, mangels, or potatoes, with cut chaff of hay and straw, everything suitable being cut and steamed, in the winter--on green clover, Italian ray-grass, and a little linseed-cake, in the summer. They are curry-combed twice a day, and the dung is removed constantly as it falls. The ventilation and the drainage has been better managed than in most houses, so that the shippons have always a sweet atmosphere and even temperature. The fittings, fastenings, and arrangements of the windows, hanging from little railways, and sliding instead of closing on hinges, are all ingenious, and worth examination. Mr. Littledale makes use of a moveable wooden railway, carted over by a donkey in a light waggon, to draw root crops from a field of heavy land.

The churn in use in the dairy makes eighty pounds of butter at a time, and is worked by the steam-engine also used for cutting and steaming the food of the cows. The milk and cream produced at this dairy is sold by retail, unadulterated, and is in great demand. A brief account of this farm appeared in the "Farmer's Magazine" of May, 1848, with a ground plan; but several improvements have been made since that time. To parties who take an interest in agricultural improvement, a visit to Liskeard Farm will be both interesting and profitable.

We believe that Mr. Torr also farms another estate, which he purchased, in conjunction with friends, from Sir William Stanley, at Eastham, near Hooton (a pleasant voyage of an hour up the river), and cultivates after the North Lincolnshire style, in such a manner as to set an example to the Cheshire farmers--not a little needed. The country about Eastham is the prettiest part of the Mersey.

While on the subject of agricultural improvements, we may mention that Mr. Robert Neilson, another mercantile notability, holds a farm, under Lord Stanley, at a short railroad ride from Liverpool, which we have not yet had an opportunity of examining, but understand that it is a very remarkable instance of good farming, and consequently heavy crops, in a county (Lancashire) where slovenly farming is quite the rule, and well worth a visit from competent judges, whom as we are also informed Mr. Neilson is happy to receive.

If, as seems not improbable, it should become the fashion among our merchant princes to seek health and relaxation by applying capital and commercial principles to land, good farming will spread, by force of vaccination, over the country, and plain tenant-farmers will apply, cheaply and economically, the fruits of experience, purchased dearly, although not too dearly, by merchant farmers. A successful man may as well--nay, much better--sink money for a small return in such a wholesome and useful pursuit as agriculture, than in emulating the landed aristocracy, who laugh quietly at such efforts, or hoarding and speculating to add to what is already more than enough.

If a visit be paid to Mr. Neilson's farm, it would be very desirable to obtain, if possible, permission to view the Earl of Derby's collection of rare birds and animals, one of the finest in the world. But permission is rarely granted to strangers who have not some scientific claim to the favour. Lord Derby has agents collecting for him in every part of the world, and has been very successful in rearing many birds from tropical and semi-tropical countries in confinement, which have baffled the efforts of zoological societies. The aviaries are arranged on a large scale, with shrubs growing in and water flowing through them. In fine weather some beautiful parrots, macaws, and other birds of a tame kind, are permitted to fly about the grounds. There is something very novel and striking in beholding brilliant macaws and cockatoos swinging on a lofty green-leaved bough, and then, at the call of the keeper, darting down to be fed where stately Indian and African cranes and clumsy emus are stalking about.

The late Earl was celebrated as a cockfighter, and the possessor of one of the finest breeds of game fowls in the kingdom. A few only are now kept up at Knowsley, as presents to the noble owner's friends. Knowsley lies near Prescott, about seven miles from Liverpool. The family are descended from the Lord Stanley who was created Earl of Derby by the Earl of Lancaster and Derby, afterwards Henry IV., for services rendered at the battle of Bosworth Field. An ancestress, Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, is celebrated for her defence of Latham House against the Parliamentary forces in the Great Civil War, and is one of the heroines of Sir Walter Scott's novel of "Peveril of the Peak." {159}

Liverpool is particularly well placed as a starting point for excursions, in consequence of the number of railways with which it is connected, and the number of steamboats which frequent its port, where a whole dock is especially devoted to vessels of that class.

By crossing over to Birkenhead, Chester may be reached, and thence the quietest route to Ireland, by Britannia Bridge and Holyhead; or a journey through North Wales may be commenced. By the East Lancashire, starting from the Station behind the Exchange, a direct line is opened through Ormskirk to Preston, the lakes of Cumberland, and to Scotland by the west coast line.

From the same station a circuitous route through Wigan and Bolton, on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, opens a second road to Manchester, and affords a complete communication with the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

On the roads to London it is not now necessary to treat.

The steam accommodation from Liverpool has always been excellent, far superior to that afforded in the Thames. No such wretched slow-sailing tubs are to be found as those which plied between London and Boulogne and Calais, until railway competition introduced a little improvement. The interior fittings and feeding on board Liverpool boats are generally superior. The proprietors have taken the Scotch and Americans as models, and not the stingy people of the Thames.

It is very odd that while the French and Scotch can contrive to give a delicious breakfast or dinner on shipboard, while the Germans on the Rhine are positively luxurious, and while we know that a steam-boiler offers every convenience for petits plats, the real old English steam-boats of the General Steam Navigation Company never vary from huge joints and skinny chickens, with vegetables plain boiled.

We remember, some years ago, embarking on a splendid French steamer, afterwards run down and sunk in the Channel, to go to Havre, and returning by Boulogne to London. In the French vessel it was almost impossible to keep from eating,--soups, cutlets, plump fowls, all excellent and not dear. On board the English boat it was necessary to be very hungry, in order to attack the solid, untempting joints of roast and boiled.

This is a travelling age, and both hotel keepers and steam-boat owners will find profit in allowing the spirit of free trade and interchange to extend to the kitchen. Our public cooks are always spoiling the best meat and vegetables in Europe.

More than twenty lines of steamers ply from Liverpool to the various ports of Ireland; the Isle of Man, which is a favourite watering-place for the Lancashire and Cheshire people; Glasgow and other parts of Scotland, Whitehaven and Carlisle, Bangor, Caernarvon, and other ports of Wales, beside the deep-sea steamers to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston; to Constantinople, Malta, and Smyrna; and to Gibraltar, Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia (for Rome), Naples, Messina, and Palermo; so that an indifferent traveller has ample choice, which is sometimes very convenient for a man who wants to go somewhere and does not care where.

The amusements of Liverpool include two theatres, an amphitheatre for horsemanship, and several sets of subscription concerts, for the use of which a fine hall has been erected.