The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-08-31 00:00:00

TRE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

REMINISCENCES OF A TOUR TO ENGLAND.
BY THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

(Rrom Hogg's Weekly Instructor.)

The first spot of English ground on which we touched
was the shore of Liverpool, and in the course of three
weeks' sojourn we managed to see much of it and its
neighbourhood, and to form certain tolerably distinct and
decided impressions about both. Coming from Scotland,
we were, of course, immediately struck with the points of
dissimilarity between Liverpool and our great Scottish
cities. Its vast windmills, carrying on their endless
mimic warfare with the air ; its tall black horses, with
long sweeping tails, reminding you of that described bi
John, whose rider had "a pair of balances in his hand, '
hurrying hearses along the street ; its funerals, attended
by women as well as men ; its spired churches, so visibly
and so ostentatiously " established ; " its boys, beggars,
raggamuffins, policemen, ;and porters—all speaking out
their glee, or wants, or wickedness, or coarse conceptions,
or brutal fun, in English, in an accent and language we
had been accustomed to associate with gentility and re-
finement—all contributed to throw a strange and foreign
air about the place. The. presence, too, of a great empo-
rium was proclaimed perpetually, in its warehouses and
stores, in its gigantic docks, in its teeming quays, in its
multitudinous vessels, and in the strangers, principally
from America, who crowd its streets, and make it, as even
its inhabitants say, a " half Yankee city." It might move
a Jonah or a Paul to see a city so wholly given to the
worship of Mammon—the "least erected spirit from heaven
that fell," and to whose honour this town is little else
than a mighty shrine,- for true, heartfelt, and unwearied
homage.
Liverpool, sooth to say, is little of a literary or intel-
lectual town. Antiquities it has few or none ; it derives
little grandeur from the past, little lustre from the genius
of the present, and the only future to which it distinctly
points is that of multiplied gain, and not of accelerated
spiritual progress. Still, as a hive of busy humanity, as
the link connecting us with that "vast old world beyond
the deep," and as the love and mistress of the hoary At-
lantic, it has around it far from a vulgar glory ; and if
earth, " which proudly wears the parthenon as the best
gem upon her zone," can hardly be called proud, she is
not entirely ashamed of this modern Tyre, this " mart of
nations," and haven of ships. We propose to conduct
our readers to some of the more prominent places we saw,
and then to some of the more remarkable persons whom
we met or heard in or about Liverpool.
We are bound first to say something of the Mechanics'
Institution. This institution is certainly one of the re-
deeming features in the city. It is under excellent
'management, and seems in a very flourishing- condition.
Its numerous schools are under the care of able teachers.
of both sexes. Dr. Hodgson, formerly editor of the Fife
Herald, and well known in Scotland as a lecturer on
phrenology, is the president of the institute. He still
frequently lectures on his favourite topic and others, and,
generally, his energy and zeal are the moving spring of
the establishment. He is- ably seconded by Mr. Thomas
Hogg, the secretary, who is also a Scbtchman. Lectures
are delivered in the Institution hall twice a-week, during
part of autumn, all winter, and on till the middle of sum-
mer. Of these we saw and heard enough to be satisfied,
in the first place, that they'd° not to any considerable de-
gree reach the class for which they are professedly de-
signed—they ere attended more by the middle classes than
by mechanics ; and, secondly, to confirm us in an opinion
we expressed long ago, that lecturing, as a source of in-
tellectual advantage, is mightily overrated, and that as a
medium of communication 'between the higher minds of
the age and the community, it is worthless, and ought
forthwith to be abandoned by these to the glib declaimers,
the impudent quacks, the needy literateurs, and—save
the mark !—the ladies who are driving in it so brisk and
profitable a trade.
We saw, besides, most of the usual sights of Liverpool.
Nelson's Monument struck us, as it does most people, as
the grossest piece of affectation in stone we had ever seen;
and affectation in sculpture, like affectation in the pulpit,
is particularly offensive. It insults the severe and naked
majesty of the art, and changes that pure and terrible
tool, the chisel, into the toy of an ambitious child. As
fitly almost conceive of the tongue of the lightning be-
coming a flatterer of greatness or the instrument of con-
ceited conception as the point of the chisel ! The Town-
hall is a splendid edifice, and our fancy fired as it conceived
the immense lustre suspended from its ceiling lighted up,
and pouring a richer day upon the guests who are favoured
at times to feast below it. In the Park we had a deli-
cious walk on one of the last evenings of May, and the
cool and silent water, the rich grassy fields, the stripes of
shrubbery and wood, the cheerful faces of the company,
composed a scene from which the red, rayless sun seemed
slowly and reluctantly to retire. Another very pleasant
night was passed :at the Zoological Gardens.t'eThese,
though not equal, it is said to the gardens in London, in-
terested us much, who had never seen any similar sight
before. We admired the sweet winding walks, did not
inquire too severely into the pretensions of the gaily
dressed throngs of ladies and gentlemen we met, paid due
devoirs to the wolves, bears, lions, leopards, eagles, owls,
which were doing their best for the amusement of
the company, and were particularly struck with the ele-
phant—the largest we have yet seen, and which amazed
us precisely as a Cockney is amazed at the first sight of
a mountain. It seemed some huge dream of nightmare
stalking across the view. We felt disposed to rub our
eyes and then go forward and test by touch its objective
reality, till lo ! the dream began to move and move to-
wards us,. and soon its crushing contact might have taught
us that it was no mere vision. And then he looked
like a half-animated mass, made not of the fiery dust,
whence the tiger and lion are taken, but of the dough of
nature ; his eye seemed scarce awake, and his principal
life concentrated in that "serpent between his eyes "
the restless trunk, which moved as if impatient of confine-
mentto such a lumpish frame. We were transported to
the days of Pyrrhus, and could easily figure the Roman
soldier trembling through his mail at the sight of the tall
towered• monster, as though an Apennine were in motion.
After asking its keeper if they kept a Pegasus in these
gardens, and being solemnly assured that they did not, we
proceeded to the great show of the night—the fireworks ;
and there certainly we• found a very pretty caricature of
Pandemonium, We stood, as it were, in the midst of a
whole world of tickled flame—of laughing gas, and wild
was the mirth of the exploding rockets, the dancing lights,
the showering, shivering sparkles, and fantastic and fairy
forms that seemed self-assumed by the tipsy element ;
and great the glee of the crowd, delighted to see the
object of their terror nodding and doing them courtesies,
and becoming so tame, tractable, and amusing, as to
brighten every eye, set off every fair face, convulse every
chest with laughing wonder, without singeing one hair or
burning one finger. And behind us, meanwhile, the
evening star and Jupiter were shining. Was it in mild
reproach at us for so admiring the aspiring cinders that
were flashing into everlasting darkness all around ? Be
patient, we thought, ye bright tremblers ; shine on in
your courses, and, like great poets momentarily eclipsed
by shallow rhymsters, say "we bide our time," Nor was
that time long to come. The lights speedily paled, the
mimic conflagration burned out, the palace of the king of
France sank like a dream, the last rocket came hissing
down, and then again, not un-noticed even by that frivo-
lous multitude, appeared, in their calm immortality, the
" street lamps of the city of God." And yet the thought
arose, are there not beings who, from their high vantage
ground, see in those stedfast seeming stars only a flight of
larger rockets, and in those heavens burning themselves
out, the true and only general conflagration already be-
gun ? Pondering this speculation, we returned, pensive
but much pleased, from that evening's entertainment.

On the bright and burning after—noon of a holiday in
the town, in company with a gentleman, to whose un-
ceasing attention and kindness we owed much of the plea-
sure we derived in Liverpool, we sailed up the river to
Eastham. This is a favourite resort of the Liverpoolians
on holidays. We liked the scene for its intensely English
character. There was, close to the shore, an elegant inn ;
all its windows open, and all its rooms crowded with
pleasant parties. Beside it were tea-gardens, looking so
temptingly cool amid the heat of the day, and all flutter-
ing
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it we met numerous donkey parties in high glee, whose
merry shouts of laughter might have made old Giant
Despair smile, even when his fits were on him. Eastham
we found a very fair specimen of the southern village.
We entered a little house in it, and had a tolerable tea for
not above twice what it was worth. We then leaped the
dyke of the churchyard, and delighted ourselves with peer-
ing into the windows of the church—a plain old edifice—
with examining a large yew-tree literally mouldering be-
fore our eyes, and with studying the march of intellect
and the state of " British Literature " in the epitaphs on
the tombstones.

Another day we drove to the village of Hale, a village
which lies to the east of Liverpool. On our way we
halted at Wavertree, once the abode of Mrs. Hemans.
Having all along had a deep interest in this beautiful
writer, and having so recently written on her merits, we
could not choose but stop and see the spot where she had
spent two or three years of her life. The house stands at
the west end, somewhat apart from the village, and is
marked and shaded by some large trees. A decent-look-
ing elderly Englishwoman gave us a very cordial recep-
tion. She showed us the room where Mrs. Hemans was
wont to write her poetry. It has now become a snug
kitchen, and, had time and tide permitted, we should
have liked to have verified our conviction that the steaks
now produced in 'it were quite as good in their way as the
songs had been. The spot is quiet and cool, but hardly
retired enough for the purposes of a poetess. The hoarse
sough of the city is too audible. To this place Mrs. He-
mans was allured by her intimacy with the family of
Henry Park, Esq., then resident at Wavertree Lodge, and
Mrs. Laurence, of Wavertree Hall. Here she wrote the
" Songs of the Affections." She left it in the spring of
1831 for Dublin, whence she was never destined to returu.
It is much visited, we are told, by Americans, who vent
on Mrs. Hemans a peculiar portion of their cheap entusy-
'msg. We ourselves " felt, or deemed we felt, no com-
mon glow," as we fancied the form of the dove-like
poetess standing before the window, through which an
afternoon sun, split by the trees into a thousand glorious
fragments, was streaming in ; or hurried, on the soft warm
wind of her gentle afflatus, into the inner ak)artments to
record the thoughts and feelings which tnose intense
atoms of brightness: awakened in her mind.

On Tuesday, Alexander Hume, a child three years and
a-half old, living in Bayhorse-lane, was burned to death
in the absence of the parents.
The importations in the last week include belzf, pork,
hams, middles, and lard, from London and Liverpool,
hitherto staple articles of export frora Limerick.—Lime-
rick Chronicle.