The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lancashire, by Leo H. (Leo Hartley) Grindon This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Lancashire Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes Author: Leo H. (Leo Hartley) Grindon Release Date: August 26, 2012 [eBook #40584] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANCASHIRE*** E-text prepared by sp1nd, Matthew Wheaton, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/cu31924028040032 LANCASHIRE HISTORICAL & DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY LEO H. GRINDON Lancashire EMIGRANTS AT LIVERPOOL LANCASHIRE BRIEF HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY LEO H. GRINDON AUTHOR OF 'THE MANCHESTER FLORA'; 'MANCHESTER BANKS AND BANKERS'; 'LIFE, ITS NATURE, VARIETIES, AND PHENOMENA'; ETC. WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS London SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED Essex Street, Strand 1892 PREFACE The following Chapters were written for the Portfolio of 1881, in which they appeared month by month. Only a limited space being allowed for them, though liberally enlarged whenever practicable, not one of the many subjects demanding notice could be dealt with at length. While reprinting, a few additional particulars have been introduced; but even with these, in many cases where there should be pages there is only a paragraph. Lancashire is not a county to be disposed of so briefly. The present work makes no pretension to be more than an index to the principal facts of interest which pertain to it, the details, in almost every instance, still awaiting the treatment they so well deserve. If I have succeeded in marking out the foundations for a superstructure to be raised some day by an abler hand, I shall be content. It is for every man to begin something, to the best of his power, that may be useful to his fellow-creatures, though it may not be permitted to him to enjoy the greater pleasure of completing it. Some of the commendations passed upon Lancashire may seem to come of the partiality of a man for his own county. It may be well for me to say that, although a resident in Manchester for forty years, my native place is Bristol. LEO GRINDON. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. Leading Characteristics of the County 1 II. Liverpool 26 III. The Cotton District and the Manufacture Of Cotton 66 IV. Manchester 99 V. Miscellaneous Industrial Occupations 134 VI. Peculiarities of Character, Dialect, and Pastimes 170 VII. The Inland Scenery south of Lancaster 194 VIII. The Seashore and the Lake District 227 IX. The Ancient Castles and Monastic Buildings 252 X. The Old Churches and the Old Halls 282 XI. The Old Halls (CONTINUED) 303 XII. The Natural History and the Fossils 334 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Emigrants at Liverpool By G. P. Jacomb Hood Frontispiece Shipping on the Mersey By A. Brunet-Debaines 27 American Wheat at Liverpool 31 Ran away to Sea 35 St. Nicholas Church, Liverpool By H. Toussaint 43 The Custom-house, Liverpool 51 St. George's Hall, Liverpool 57 The Exchange, Liverpool By R. Kent Thomas 61 Wigan 71 Warrington 75 The Dinner Hour 85 Pay-Day in a Cotton Mill By G. P. Jacomb Hood 89 In a Cotton Factory 95 Manchester Cathedral 107 St. Anne's Square, Manchester 112 Town Hall, Manchester By T. Riley 117 Deansgate, Manchester 123 In the Wire Works 148 Making Coke 151 Smelting 154 Glass-Blowing By G. P. Jacomb Hood 157 On the Bridgewater Canal By G. P. Jacomb Hood 161 On the Bridgewater Canal 165 Blackstone Edge 195 The Lake at Littleborough 199 Waterfall in Cliviger 203 In the Burnley Valley 211 The Ribble at Clitheroe 219 Coniston By David Law 241 Near the Copper Mines, Coniston 247 Lancaster By David Law 259 Clitheroe Castle 263 Furness Abbey 271 Furness Abbey By R. Kent Thomas 275 Darcy Lever, near Bolton 305 Speke Hall By T. Riley 309 Hale Hall 311 Hall in the Wood By R. Kent Thomas 315 Hoghton Tower 325 Stonyhurst By R. Kent Thomas 329 LANCASHIRE I LEADING CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTY Directly connected with the whole world, through the medium of its shipping and manufactures, Lancashire is commercially to Great Britain what the Forum was to ancient Rome—the centre from which roads led towards every principal province of the empire. Being nearer to the Atlantic, Liverpool commands a larger portion of our commerce with North America even than London: it is from the Mersey that the great westward steamers chiefly sail. The biographies of the distinguished men who had their birthplace in Lancashire, and lived there always, many of them living still, would fill a volume. A second would hardly suffice to tell of those who, though not natives, have identified themselves at various periods with Lancashire movements and occupations. No county has drawn into its population a larger number of individuals of the powerful classes, some taking up their permanent abode in it, others coming for temporary purposes. In cultivated circles in the large towns the veritable Lancashire men are always fewer in number than those born elsewhere, or whose fathers did not belong to Lancashire. No trifling item is it in the county annals that the immortal author of the Advancement of Learning represented, as member of Parliament, for four years (1588-1592) the town which in 1809 gave birth to William Ewart Gladstone, and which, during the boyhood of the latter, sent Canning to the House of Commons.[1] In days to come England will point to Lancashire as the cradle also of the Stanleys, one generation after another, of Sir Robert Peel, John Bright, and Richard Cobden. The value to the country of the several men, the soundness of their legislative policy, the consistency of their lines of reasoning, is at this moment not the question. They are types of the vigorous constructive genius which has made England great and free, and so far they are types of the aboriginal Lancashire temper. Lancashire has been the birthplace also of a larger number of mechanical inventions, invaluable to the human race; and the scene of a larger number of the applications of science to great purposes, than any other fragment of the earth's surface of equal dimensions. It is in Lancashire that we find the principal portion of the early history of steam and steam-engines, the first railway of pretension to magnitude forming a part of it. The same county had already led the way in regard to the English Canal system—that mighty network of inland navigation of which the Manchester Ship Canal, now in process of construction, will, when complete, be the member wonderful above all others. No trivial undertaking can that be considered; no distrust can there be of one in regard to its promise for the future, which has the support of no fewer than 38,000 shareholders. Here, too, in Lancashire, we have the most interesting part of the early history of the use of gas for lighting purposes. In Lancashire, again, were laid the foundations of the whole of the stupendous industry represented in the cotton-manufacture, with calico-printing, and the allied arts of pattern design. The literary work of Lancashire has been abreast of the county industry and scientific life. Mr. Sutton's List of Lancashire Authors, published in 1876, since which time many others have come to the front, contains the names of nearly 1250, three-fourths of whom, he tells us, were born within the frontiers—men widely various, of necessity, in wit and aim, more various still in fertility, some never going beyond a pamphlet or an "article,"—useful, nevertheless, in their generation, and deserving a place in the honourable catalogue. Historians, antiquaries, poets, novelists, biographers, financiers, find a place in it, with scholars, critics, naturalists, divines. Every one acquainted with books knows that William Roscoe wrote in Liverpool. Bailey's Festus, one of the most remarkable poems of the age, was originally published in Manchester. The standard work upon British Bryology was produced in Warrington, and, like the life of Lorenzo de Medici, by a solicitor—the late William Wilson. Nowhere in the provinces have there been more conspicuous examples of exact and delicate philosophical and mathematical experiment and observation than such as in Manchester enabled Dalton to determine the profoundest law in chemistry; and Horrox, the young curate of Hoole, long before, to be the first of mankind to watch a transit of Venus, providing thereby for astronomers the means towards new departures of the highest moment. During the Franco-Prussian war, when communication with the interior of Paris was manageable only by the employment of carrier-pigeons and the use of micro-photography, it was again a Lancashire man who had to be thanked for the art of concentrating a page of newspaper to the size of a postage-stamp. Possibly there were two or three contemporaneous inventors, but the first to make micro-photography—after the spectroscope, the most exquisite combination of chemical and optical science yet introduced to the world—public and practical, was the late Mr. J. B. Dancer, of Manchester. Generous and substantial designs for promoting the education of the people, and their enjoyment,—habits also of thrift and of self- culture, are characteristic of Lancashire. Some have had their origin upon the middle social platform; others have sprung from the civilised among the rich.[2] The Co-operative system, with its varied capacities for rendering good service to the provident and careful, had its beginning in Rochdale. The first place to copy Dr. Birkbeck's Mechanics' Institution was Manchester, in which town the first provincial School of Medicine was founded, and which to-day holds the headquarters of the Victoria University. Manchester, again, was the first town in England to take advantage of the Free Libraries Act of 1850, opening on September 2d, 1852, with Liverpool in its immediate wake. The Chetham Free Library (Manchester) had already existed for 200 years, conferring benefits upon the community which it would be difficult to over-estimate. Other Lancashire towns—Darwen, Oldham, Southport, and Preston, for example, have latterly possessed themselves of capital libraries, so that, including the fine old collection at Warrington, the number of books now within reach of Lancashire readers, pro rata for the population, certainly has no parallel out of London. An excellent feature in the management of several of these libraries consists in the effort made to attain completeness in special departments. Rochdale aims at a complete collection of books relating to wool; Wigan desires to possess all that has been written about engineering; the Manchester library contains nearly eight hundred volumes having reference to cotton. In the last-named will also be found the nucleus of a collection which promises to be the finest in the country, of books illustrative of English dialects. The Manchester libraries collectively, or Free and Subscription taken together, are specially rich in botanical and horticultural works—many of them magnificently illustrated and running to several volumes—the sum of the titles amounting to considerably over a thousand. Liverpool, too, is well provided with books of this description, counting among them that splendid Lancashire work, Roscoe's Monandrian Plants, the drawings for which were chiefly made in the Liverpool Botanic Garden—the fourth founded in England, or first after Chelsea, Oxford, and Cambridge, and specially interesting in having been set on foot, in 1800, by Roscoe himself. The legitimate and healthful recreation of the multitude is in Lancashire, with the thoughtful, as constant an object as their intellectual succour. The public parks in the suburbs of many of the principal Lancashire towns, with their playgrounds and gymnasia, are unexcelled. Manchester has no fewer than five, including the recent noble gift of the "Whitworth." Salford has good reason to be proud of its "Peel Park." Blackburn, Preston, Oldham, Lancaster, Wigan, Southport, and Heywood have also done their best. In Lancashire have always been witnessed the most vigorous and persistent struggles made in this country for civil and political liberty and the amendment of unjust laws. Sometimes, unhappily, they have seemed to indicate disaffection; and enthusiasts, well-meaning but extremely unwise—so commonly the case with their class—have never failed to obtain plenty of support, often prejudicial to the very cause they sought to uphold. But the ways of the people, considered as a community, deducting the intemperate and the zealots, have always been patriotic, and there has never been lack of determination to uphold the throne. The modern Volunteer movement, as the late Sir James Picton once reminded us, may be fairly said to have originated in Liverpool; the First Lancashire Rifles, which claims to be the oldest Volunteer company, having been organised there in 1859. In any case the promptitude of the act showed the vitality of that fine old Lancashire disposition to defend the right, which at the commencement of the Civil Wars rendered the county so conspicuous for its loyalty. It was in Lancashire that the first blood was shed on behalf of Charles the First, and that the last effort, before Worcester, was made in favour of his son—this in the celebrated battle of Wigan Lane. It was the same loyalty which, in 1644, sustained Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, in the famous three months' defence of Lathom House, when besieged by Fairfax. Charlotte, a lady of French extraction, might quite excusably be supposed to have had less care for the king than an Englishwoman. But she was now the wife of a Lancashire man, and that was enough for her heart; she attuned herself to the Earl's own devotedness, became practically a Lancashire woman, and took equal shares with him in his unflinching fervour. The faithfulness to great trusts which always marks the noble wife, however humble her social position, however exalted her rank and title, with concurrent temptations to wrongdoing, doubtless lay at the foundation of Charlotte's personal heroism. But it was her pasturing, so to speak, in Lancashire, which brought it up to fruition. Of course, she owed much to the fidelity of her Lancashire garrison. Without it, her own brave spirit would not have sufficed. Lancashire men have always made good soldiers. Several were knighted "when the fight was done" at Poitiers and Agincourt. The Middleton archers distinguished themselves at Flodden. The gallant 47th—the "Lancashire Lads"—were at the Alma, and at Inkerman formed part of the "thin red line." There is equally good promise for the future, should occasion arise. At the great Windsor Review of the Volunteers in July 1881, when 50,000 were brought together, it was unanimously allowed by the military critics that, without the slightest disrespect to the many other fine regiments upon the ground, the most distinguished for steadiness, physique, and discipline, as well as the numerically strongest, was the 1st Manchester. So striking was the spectacle that the Queen inquired specially for the name of the corps which reflected so much honour upon its county. In the return published in the General Orders of the Army, February 1882, it is stated that the 2d Battalion of the South Lancashire had then attained the proud distinction of being its "best signalling corps." The efforts made in Lancashire to obtain changes for the better in the statute-book had remarkable illustration in the establishment of the Anti-Corn-Law League, the original idea of which was of much earlier date than is commonly supposed, having occupied men's minds, both in Manchester and Liverpool, as far back as the year 1825. The celebrated cry six years later for Reform in the representation was not heard more loudly even in Birmingham than in the metropolis of the cotton trade. The pioneers of every kind of religious movement have, like the leaders in civil and political reform, always found Lancashire responsive; and, as with practical scientific inventions, it is to this county that the most interesting part of the early history of non- conforming bodies very generally pertains. George Fox, the founder of the "Society of Friends," commenced his earnest work in the neighbourhood of Ulverston. "Denominations" of every kind have also in this county maintained themselves vigorously, and there are none which do not here still exist in their strength. The "Established Church," as elsewhere, holds the foremost place, and pursues, as always, the even tenour of its way. During the forty-three years that Manchester has been the centre of a diocese, there have been built within the bishopric (including certain rebuildings on a larger scale) not fewer than 300 new churches. The late tireless Bishop Fraser "confirmed" young people at the rate of 11,000 every year. The strength of the Wesleyans is declared by their contributions to the great Thanksgiving Fund, which amounted, on 15th November 1880, to nearly a quarter of the entire sum then subscribed, viz. to about £65,000 out of the £293,000. They possess a college at Didsbury; not far from which, at Withington, the Congregationalists likewise have one of their own. The long standing and the power of the Presbyterians is illustrated in their owning the oldest place of worship in Manchester next to the "Cathedral,"—the "chapel" in Cross Street,—a building which dates from the early part of the sixteenth century. The sympathy of Lancashire with the Church of Rome has been noted from time immemorial;—perhaps it would be more accurately said that there has been a stauncher allegiance here than in many other places to hereditary creed. The Catholic diocese of Salford (in which Manchester and several of the neighbouring towns are included) claimed in 1879 a seventh of the entire population.[3] Stonyhurst, near Clitheroe, is the seat of the chief provincial Jesuit college. Lastly, it is an interesting concurrent fact, that of the seventy Societies or congregations in England which profess the faith called the "New Jerusalem," Lancashire contains no fewer than twenty-four. The historical associations offered in many parts of Lancashire are by no means inferior to those of other counties. One of the most interesting of the old Roman roads crosses Blackstone Edge. Names of places near the south-west coast tell of the Scandinavian Vikings. In 1323 Robert Bruce and his army of Scots ravaged the northern districts and nearly destroyed Preston. The neighbourhood of that town witnessed the Stuart enterprise of 1715, and of Prince Charles Edward's march through the county in 1745 many memorials still exist. The ruins of two of the most renowned of the old English abbeys are also here—Whalley, with its long record of benevolence, and Furness, scarcely surpassed in manifold interest even by Fountains. One of the very few remaining examples of an ancient castle belongs to the famous old town from which John o' Gaunt received his title.[4] Parish churches of remote foundation, with sculptures and lettered monuments, supply the antiquary with pleasing variety. Old halls are numerous; and connected with these, with the abbeys, and other relics of the past, we find innumerable entertaining legends and traditions, often rendered so much the more attractive through preserving, in part, the county speech of the olden time, to be dealt with by and by. In the sports, manners, and customs which still linger where not superseded by modern ones, there is yet further curious material for observation, and the same may be said of the recreations of the staid and reflecting among the operative classes. It is in Lancashire that "science in humble life" has always had its most numerous and remarkable illustrations. Natural history, in particular, forms one of the established pastimes in the cotton districts and among the men who are connected with the daylight work of the collieries. Many of the working-men botanists are banded into societies or clubs, which often possess libraries, and were founded before any living can remember. Music, especially choral and part-singing, has been cultivated in Lancashire with a devotion equalled only perhaps in Yorkshire, and certainly nowhere excelled. Both the air and the words of the most popular Christmas hymn in use among Protestants, "Christians, awake!" were composed within the sound, or nearly so, of the Manchester old church bells. The verses were written by Dr. Byrom, of stenographic fame;[5] the music, which compares well with the "Adeste Fideles" itself,—the song of Christmas with other communions,—was the production of John Wainwright. On a lower level we find the far-famed Lancashire Hand-bell Ringers. The facilities provided in Lancashire for self-culture have already been spoken of. That private education and school discipline are effective may be assumed, perhaps, from the circumstance that in October 1880 the girl who at the Oxford Local Examinations stood highest in all England belonged to Liverpool. Not without significance either is it that the coveted distinction of "Senior Wrangler" was won by a Lancashire man on five occasions within the twenty years ending February 1881. Three of the victors went up from Liverpool, one from Manchester, and one from the Wigan grammar-school. Lancashire may well be proud of such a list as this; feeling added pleasure in knowing that the gold medal, with prize of ten guineas, offered by the Council of Trinity College, London, for the best essay on "Middle-class Education, its Influence on Commercial Pursuits," was won in 1880 by a Lancashire lady—Miss Agnes Amy Bulley, of the Manchester College for Women. The list of artists, chiefly painters, identified with the county appears from Mr. Nodal's researches to be not far short of a hundred, the earliest having been Hamlet Winstanley, of Warrington, where he died in 1756. Many of his productions, family portraits and views in the neighbourhood, are contained in the Knowsley collection. Two of these Lancashire artists—Joseph Farrington, R.A., and William Green—were among the first to disclose the beauties of the Lake District, by means of lithography or engraved views prepared from their drawings. Farrington's twenty views appeared in 1789. Green's series of sixty was issued from Ambleside in 1814. A very curious circumstance connected with art in its way, is that Focardi's well-known droll statuette, "The Dirty Boy," was produced in Lancashire! Focardi happened to be in Preston looking for employment. Waiting one morning for breakfast, and going downstairs to ascertain the cause of the delay, through a half-open door he descried the identical old woman and the identical dirty boy! Here at last was a subject for his chisel. He got £500 for the marble, and the purchasers acknowledge that it was the most profitable investment they ever made. The scenery presented in many portions of the county vies with the choicest to be found anywhere south of the Tweed. The artist turns with reluctance from the banks of the Lune and the Duddon. The largest and loveliest of the English lakes, supreme Windermere, belongs essentially to Lancashire: peaceful Coniston and lucid Esthwaite are entirely within the borders, and close by rise some of the loftiest of the English mountains. The top of "Coniston Old Man"—alt maen, or "the high rock"—is 2577 feet above the sea. The part which contains the lakes and mountains is detached, and properly belongs to the Lake District, emphatically so called, being reached from the south only by passing over the lowermost portion of Westmoreland, though accessible by a perilous way, when the tide is out, across the Morecambe sands. Still it is Lancashire, a circumstance often surprising to those who, very naturally, associate the idea of the "Lakes" with the homes of Southey and Wordsworth, with Ambleside, and Helvellyn, and Lodore. The geological character of this outlying piece being altogether different from that of the county in general, Lancashire presents a variety of surface entirely its own. At one extremity we have the cold, soft clay so useful to brickmakers; on reaching the Lakes we find the slate rocks of the very earliest ages. Much of the eastern edge of the county is skirted by the broad bare hills which constitute the central vertebræ of the "backbone of England," the imposing "Pennine range," which extends from Derbyshire to the Cheviots, and conceals the three longest of the English railway tunnels, one of which both begins and ends in Lancashire. The rock composing them is millstone-grit, with its customary gray and weather-beaten crags and ferny ravines. Plenty of tell-tale gullies declare the vehemence of the winter storms that beat above, and in many of these the rush of water never ceases. Those who seek solitude, the romantic, and the picturesque, know these hills well; in parts, where there is moorland, the sportsman resorts to them for grouse. In various places the rise of the ground is very considerable, far greater than would be anticipated when first sallying forth from Manchester, though on clear days, looking northwards, when a view can be obtained, there is pleasant intimation of distant hills. Rivington Pike, not far from Bolton, is 1545 feet above the sea-level. Pendle, near Clitheroe, where the rock changes to limestone, is 1803. The millstone-grit reappears intermittently as far as Lancaster, but afterwards limestone becomes predominant, continuing nearly to the slate rocks. It is to the limestone that Grange, one of the prettiest places in this part of the country, owes much of its scenic charm as well as salubrity. Not only does it give the bold and ivied tors which usually indicate calcareous rock. Suiting many kinds of ornamental trees, especially those which retain their foliage throughout the year, we owe to it in no slight measure the innumerable shining evergreens which at Grange, even in mid-winter, constantly tempt one to exclaim with Virgil, when caressing his beloved Italy, "Hic ver assiduum!" The southernmost part of the county has for its surface-rock chiefly the upper new red sandstone, a formation not favourable to fine hill-scenery, though the long ridges for which it is distinguished, at all events in Lancashire and Cheshire, often give a decided character to the landscape. The highest point in the extreme south-west, or near Liverpool, occupied by Everton church, has an elevation of no more than 250 feet, or less than a tenth of that of "Coniston Old Man." Ashurst, between Wigan and Ormskirk, and Billinge, between Wigan and St. Helens, make amends, the beacon upon the latter being 633 feet above the sea. The prospects from the two last named are very fine. They are interesting to the topographer as having been first resorted to as fit spots for beacons and signal-fires when the Spanish Armada was expected, watchers upon the airy heights of Rivington, Pendle, and Brown Wardle, standing ready to transmit the news farther inland. It is interesting to recall to mind that the news of the sailing of the Armada in the memorable July of 1588 was brought to England by one of the old Liverpool mariners, the captain of a little vessel that traded with the Mediterranean and the coast of Africa. Very different is the western margin of this changeful county, the whole extent from the Mersey to Duddon Bridge being washed by the Irish Sea. But, although maritime, it has none of the prime factors of seaside scenery,—broken rocks and cliffs,—not, at least, until after passing Morecambe Bay. From Liverpool onwards there is only level sand, and, to the casual visitor, apparently never anything besides; for the tide, which is swift to go out, recedes very far, and seldom seems anxious to come in. Blackpool is exceptional. Here the roll of the water is often glorious, and the dimples in calm weather are such as would have satisfied old Æschylus. On the whole, however, the coast must be pronounced monotonous, and the country that borders on it uninteresting. But whatever may be wanting in the way of rocks and cliffs, the need is fully compensated by the exceeding beauty in parts of the sandhills, especially near Birkdale and St. Anne's, where for miles they have the semblance of a miniature mountain range. Intervening there are broad, green, peaty plateaux, which, becoming saturated after rain, allow of the growth of countless wild-flowers. Orchises of several sorts, the pearly grass of Parnassus, the pyrola that imitates the lily of the valley—all come to these wild sandhills to rejoice in the breath of the ocean, which, like that of the heavens, here "smells wooingly." Looking seawards, though it is seldom that we have tossing surge, there is further compensation very generally in the beauty of sunset—the old-fashioned but inestimable privilege of the western coast of our island— part of the "daily bread" of those who thank God consistently for His infinite bounty to man's soul as well as body, and which no people in the world command more perfectly than the inhabitants of the coast of Lancashire. Seated on those quiet sandhills, on a calm September evening, one may often contemplate on the trembling water a path of crimson light more beautiful than one of velvet laid down for the feet of a queen. At the northern extremity of the county, as near Ulverstone, there are rocky and turf-clad promontories; but even at Humphrey Head, owing to the flatness of the adjacent sands, there is seldom any considerable amount of surf. The most remarkable feature of the sea-margin of Lancashire consists in the number of its estuaries. The largest of these form the outlets of the Ribble and the Wyre, at the mouth of the last of which is the comparatively new port of Fleetwood. The estuary of the Mersey (the southern shore of which belongs to Cheshire) is peculiarly interesting, on account of the seemingly recent origin of most of the lower portion. Ptolemy, the Roman geographer, writing about a.d. 130, though he speaks of the Dee and the Ribble, makes no mention of the Mersey, which, had the river existed in its present form and width, he could hardly have overlooked.[6] No mention is made of it either in the Antonine Itinerary; and as stumps of old oaks of considerable magnitude, which had evidently grown in situ, were not very long ago distinguishable on the northern margin when the tide was out, near where the Liverpool people used to bathe, the conclusion is quite legitimate that the level of the bed of the estuary must in the Celtic times, at the part where the ferry steamers go, have been much higher, and the stream proportionately narrow, perhaps a mere brook, with salt-marshes right and left. "Liverpool" was originally the name, simply and purely, of the estuary, indicating, in its derivation, not a town, or a village, but simply water. How far upwards the brook, with its swamp or morass, extended, it is not possible to tell, though probably there was always a sheet of water near the present Runcorn. Depression of the shore, with plenty of old tree-stumps, certifying an extinct forest, is plainly observable a few miles distant on the Cheshire coast, just below New Brighton. In several parts of Lancashire, especially in the extreme south-east, the surface is occupied by wet and dreary wastes, composed of peat, and locally called "mosses." That they have been formed since the commencement of the Christian era there can be little doubt, abundance of remains of the branches of trees being found near the clay floor upon which the peat has gradually arisen. The most noted of these desolate flats is that one called Chat, or St. Chad's Moss, the scene of the special difficulty in the construction of the original Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Nothing can exceed the dismalness of the mosses during nine or ten months of the year. Absolutely level, stretching for several miles, treeless, and with a covering only of brown and wiry scrub, Nature seems expiring in them. June kindly brings a change. Everything has its festival some time. For a short period they are strewed with the summer snow of the cotton-sedge,—the "cana" of Ossian, "Her bosom was whiter than the down of cana"; and again, in September, they are amethyst- tinted for two or three weeks with the bloom of the heather. During the last quarter of a century the extent of these mosses has been much reduced, by draining and cultivation at the margins, and in course of time they will probably disappear. Forests were once a feature of a good part of Lancashire. Long subsequently to the time of the Conquest, much of the county was still covered with trees. The celebrated "Carta de Foresta," or "Forest Charter," under which the clearing of the ground of England for farming purposes first became general and continuous, was granted only in the reign of Henry III., a.d. 1224, or contemporaneously with the uprise of Salisbury Cathedral, a date thus rendered easy of remembrance. Here and there the trees were allowed to remain; and among these reserved portions of the original Lancashire "wild wood" it is interesting to find West Derby, the "western home of wild animals," thus named because so valuable as a hunting-ground.[7] No forest, in the current sense of the word, has survived in Lancashire to the present day. Even single trees of patriarchal age are almost unknown. Agriculture, when commenced, proceeded vigorously, chiefly, however, in regard to meadow and pasture; cornfields have never been either numerous or extensive, except in the district beyond Preston called the Fylde—an immense breadth of alluvial drift, grateful in almost all parts for good farming. II LIVERPOOL The situation of this great city is in some respects one of the most enviable in the country. Stretching along the upper bank of an unrivalled estuary, 1200 yards across where narrowest, and the river current of which flows westwards, it is near enough to the sea to be called a maritime town, yet sufficiently far inland never to suffer any of the discomforts of the open coast. Upon the opposite side of the water the ground rises gently. Birkenhead, the energetic new Liverpool of the last fifty years, covers the nearer slopes; in the distance there are towers and spires, with glimpses of trees, and even of windmills that tell of wheat not far away. Liverpool itself is pleasantly undulated. Walking through the busy streets there is constant sense of rise and fall. An ascent that can be called toilsome is never met with; nor, except concurrently with the docks, and in some of the remoter parts of the town, is there any long continuity of flatness. SHIPPING ON THE MERSEY Compared with the other two principal English seaports, London and Bristol, the superiority of position is incontestable. A town situated upon the edge of an estuary must needs have quite exceptional advantages. London is indebted for its wealth and grandeur more to its having been the metropolis for a thousand years than to the service directly rendered by the Thames; and as for Bristol, the wonder is that with a stream like the Avon it should still count with the trio, and retain its ancient title of Queen of the West. Away from the water-side, Liverpool loses. There are no green downs and "shadowy woods" reached in half-an-hour from the inmost of the city, such as give character to Clifton; nor, upon the whole, can the scenery of the neighbourhood be said to present any but the very mildest and simplest features. Only in the district which includes Mossley, Allerton, Toxteth, and Otterspool, is there any approach to the picturesque. Hereabouts we find meadows and rural lanes; and a few miles up the stream, the Cheshire hills begin to show plainly. Yet not far from the Prince's Park there is a little ravine that aforetime, when farther away from the borough boundaries, and when the name was given, would seem to have been another Kelvin Grove,— "Where the rose, in all its pride, Paints the hollow dingle side, And the midnight fairies glide, Bonnie lassie, O!' Fairyland, tram-cars, and the hard facts of a great city, present few points of contact—Liverpool contrives to unite them in "Exchange to Dingle, 3d. inside." Among the dainty little poems left us by Roscoe, who was quick to recognise natural beauty, there is one upon the disappearance of the brooklet which, descending from springs now dried up, once babbled down this pretty dell with its tribute to the river. To the stranger approaching Liverpool by railway, these inviting bits of the adjacent country are, unfortunately, not visible. But let him not murmur. When, after passing through the town, he steps upon the Landing-stage and looks out upon the heaving water, with its countless craft, endless in variety, and representing every nation that possesses ships, he is compensated. The whole world does not present anything in its way more abounding with life. A third of a mile in length, broad enough for the parade of troops, imperceptibly adjusting itself to every condition of the tide, the Liverpool Landing-stage, regarded simply as a work of constructive art, is a wonderful sight. It is the scene of the daily movement of many thousands of human beings, some departing, others just arrived; and, above all there is the many-hued outlook right and left. AMERICAN WHEAT AT LIVERPOOL Thoroughly to appreciate the nobleness, the capacities, and the use made of this magnificent river, a couple of little voyages should be undertaken: one towards the entrance, where the tall white shaft of the lighthouse comes in view; the other, ascending the stream as far as Rock Ferry. By this means the extent of the docks and the magnitude of the neighbouring warehouses may in some degree be estimated. Up the river and down, from the middle portion of the Landing-stage, without reckoning Birkenhead, the line of sea-wall measures more than six miles. The water area of the docks approaches 270 acres; the length of surrounding quay-margin is nearly twenty miles. The double voyage gives opportunity also for observation of the many majestic vessels which are either moving or at anchor in mid-channel. Merchantmen predominate, but in addition there are almost invariably two or three of the superb steamers which have their proper home upon the Atlantic, and in a few hours will be away. The great Companies whose names are so familiar— the Cunard, the Allan, the White Star, the Inman, and five or six others—despatch between them no fewer than ten of these splendid vessels every week, and fortnightly two extra, the same number arriving at similar intervals. Columbus's largest ship was about ninety tons; the steamers spoken of are mostly from 2000 to 5000 tons; a few are of 8000 or 9000 tons. Besides these, there are the South Americans, the steamers to the East and West Indies, China, Japan, and the West Coast of Africa, the weight varying from 1500 to 4000 tons, more than fifty of these mighty vessels going out every month, and as many coming in. The total number of ships and steamers actually in the docks, Birkenhead included, on the 6th of December 1880 was 438. A fairly fine day, a sunshiny one if possible, should be selected for these little voyages, not merely because of its pleasantness, but in order to observe the astonishing distance to which the river-life extends. Like every other town in our island, Liverpool knows full well what is meant by fog and rain. "Some days must be dark and dreary." At times it is scarcely possible for the ferry-boats to find their way across, and not a sound is to be heard except to convey warning or alarm. But the gloomy hours, fortunately, do not come often. The local meteorologists acknowledge an excellent average of cheerful weather,—the prevailing kind along the whole extent of the lower Lancashire coast, the hills being too distant to arrest the passage of the clouds,—and the man who misses his boat two or three times running must indeed be unlucky. Happily, these uncertainties and vexations of the bygones, actual and possible, have now been neutralised, say since 20th January 1886, by the construction of the Cheshire Lines tunnel under the river. RAN AWAY TO SEA Nothing, on a fine day, can be more exhilarating than three or four hours upon the Mersey. Liverpool, go where we may, is, in the better parts, a place emphatically of exhilarations. The activity of the river-life is prefigured in the jauntiness of the movement in the streets; the display in the shop-windows, at all events where one has to make way for the current of well-dressed ladies which at noon adds in no slight measure to the various gaiety of the scene, is a constant stimulus to the fancy—felt so much the more if one's railway ticket for the day has been purchased in homely Stockport, or dull Bury, or unadorned Middleton, or even in thronged Manchester. Still it is upon the water that the impression is most animating. High up the river, generally near the Rock Ferry pier, a guardship is stationed—usually an ironclad. Beyond this we come upon four old men-of-war used as training-ships. The Conway, a naval school for young officers, accommodates 150, including many of good birth, who pay £50 a-year apiece. The Indefatigable gives gratuitous teaching to the sons of sailors, orphans, and other homeless boys. The Akbar and the Clarence are Reformatory schools, the first for misbehaving Protestant lads, the other for Catholics. The good work done by these Reformatories is immense. During the three years 1876 to 1878, the number passed out of the two vessels was 1890, and of these no fewer than 1420 had been converted into capital young seamen.[8] Who will write us a book upon the immeasurable minor privileges of life, the things we are apt to pass by and take no note of, because "common"? Sailing upon this glorious river, how beautiful overhead the gleam, against the azure, of the sea-gulls! Liverpool is just near enough to the saltwater for them to come as daily visitants, just far enough for them to be never so many as to spoil the sweet charm of the unexpected: for the moment they make one forget even the ships. Man's most precious and enduring possessions are the loveliness and the significance of nature. Were all things valued as they deserve, perhaps these cheery sea-birds would have their due. The Liverpool docks are more remarkable than those even of London. Some of the famed receptacles fed from the Thames are more capacious, and the number of vessels they contain when full is proportionately greater than is possible in the largest of the Liverpool. But in London there are not so many, nor is there so great a variety of cargo seen upon the quays, nor is the quantity of certain imports so vast. In the single month of October 1880 Liverpool imported from North America of apples alone no fewer than 167,400 barrels. Most of the docks are devoted to particular classes of ships or steamers, or to special branches of trade. The King's Dock is the chief scene of the reception of tobacco, the quantity of which brought into Liverpool is second only to the London import; while the Brunswick is chiefly devoted to the ships bringing timber. The magnificent Langton and Alexandra Docks, opened in September 1881, are reserved for the ocean steamers, which previously had to lie at anchor in the channel, considerably to the disadvantage of all concerned, but which now enjoy all the privileges of the smallest craft. At intervals along the quays there are huge cranes for lifting; and very interesting is it to note the care taken that their strength, though herculean, shall not be overtaxed, every crane being marked according to its power, "Not to lift more than two tons," or whatever other weight it is adapted to. Like old Bristol, Liverpool holds her docks in her arms. In London, as an entertaining German traveller told his countrymen some fifty years ago, a merchant, when he wants to despatch an order to his ship in the docks, "must often send his clerk down by the railroad; in Liverpool he may almost make himself heard in the docks out of his counting-house."[9] This comes mainly of the town and the docks having grown up together. The "dockmen" are well worth notice. None of the loading and unloading of the ships is done by the sailors. As soon as the vessel is safely "berthed," the consignees contract with an intermediate operator called a stevedore,[10] who engages as many men as he requires, paying them 4s. 6d. per day, and for half-days and quarter-days in proportion. Nowhere do we see a better illustration than is supplied in Liverpool of the primitive Judean market-places, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" "Because no man hath hired us." Work enough for all there never is: a circumstance not surprising when we consider that the total number of day-labourers in Liverpool is estimated at 30,000. The non-employed, who are believed to be always about one-half, or 15,000, congregate near the water; a favourite place of assembly appears to be the pavement adjoining the Baths. The dockmen correspond to the male adults among the operatives in the cotton-mill districts, with the great distinction that they are employed and paid by time, and that they are not helped by the girls and women of their families, who in the factories are quite as useful and important as the rougher sex. They correspond also to the "pitmen" of collieries, and to journeymen labourers in general. Most of them are Irish—as many, it is said, as nine-tenths of the 30,000—and as usual with that race of people, they have their homes near together. These are chiefly in the district including Scotland Road, where a very different scene awaits the tourist. Faction-fights are the established recreation; the men engage in the streets, the women hurl missiles from the roofs of the houses. Liverpool has a profoundly mournful as well as a brilliant side: Canon Kingsley once said that the handsomest set of men he had ever beheld at one view was the group assembled within the quadrangle of the Liverpool Exchange: the Income-tax assessment of Liverpool amounts to nearly sixteen millions sterling: the people claim to be "Evangelical" beyond compare; and that they have intellectual power none will dispute:—behind the scenes the fact remains that nowhere in our island is there deeper destitution and profounder spiritual darkness.[11] When the famished and ignorant have to be dealt with, it is better to begin with supply of good food than with aëriform benedictions. Lady Hope (née Miss Elizabeth R. Cotton) has shown that among the genuine levers of civilisation there are none more substantial than good warm coffee and cocoa. Liverpool, fully understanding this, is giving to the philanthropic all over England a lesson which, if discreetly taken up, cannot fail to tell immensely on the morals, as well as the physical needs, of the poor and destitute. All along the line of the docks there are "cocoa-shops," some of them upon wheels, metallic tickets, called "cocoa-pennies," giving access. Liverpool is a town of comparatively modern date, being far younger than Warrington, Preston, Lancaster, and many another which commercially it has superseded. The name does not occur in Domesday Book, compiled a.d. 1086, nor till the time of King John does even the river seem to have been much used. English commerce during the era of the Crusades did not extend beyond continental Europe, the communications with which were confined to London, Bristol, and a few inconsiderable places on the southern coasts. Passengers to Ireland went chiefly by way of the Dee, and upon the Mersey there were only a few fishing-boats. At the commencement of the thirteenth century came a change. The advantages of the Mersey as a harbour were perceived, and the fishing village upon the northern shore asked for a charter, which in 1207 was granted. Liverpool, as a borough, is thus now in its 685th year. That this great and opulent city should virtually have begun life just at the period indicated is a circumstance of no mean interest, since the reign of John, up till the time of the barons' gathering at Runnymede, was utterly bare of historical incident, and the condition of the country in general was poor and depressed. Cœur de Lion, the popular idol, though scarcely ever seen at home, was dead. John, the basest monarch who ever sat upon the throne of England, had himself extinguished every spark of loyal sentiment by his cruel murder of Prince Arthur. Art was nearly passive, and literature, except in the person of Layamon, had no existence. Such was the age, overcast and silent, in which the foundations of Liverpool were laid: contemplating the times, and all that has come of the event, one cannot but think of acorn-planting in winter, and recall the image in Faust,— "Ein Theil der Finsterniss die sich das Licht gebar." (Part of the darkness which brought forth Light!) ST. NICHOLAS CHURCH, LIVERPOOL The growth of the new borough was for a long period very slow. In 1272, the year of the accession of Edward I., Liverpool consisted of only 168 houses, occupied (computing on the usual basis) by about 840 people; and even a century later, when Edward III. appealed to the nation to support him in his attack upon France, though Bristol supplied twenty-four vessels and 800 m...