Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1856-05-31

thousand dollars each
Nearly eyery city and town in England, of any
considerable size, has its handsome botanical
garden of from five to Fifty acres. When will it
be so in the United States? We found that at
Manchester, to be large and beautiful one,
| kept in very fine order, and filed with rare and
choice plants from every cline.
The tall chimneys of the manufacturing estab-
lishments in Manchester are so numerous, that
they appear almost like a forest. and they are
continually sending forth huge columns ofdense
black smoke and it is so in all the manufactur-
ing towns. The atmosphere, in such places, is so
filed with smoke. that the sun never shines clear,
bnt has dull, red appearance.
Li0e'pOOIis large and busy city. The streets
are just about as uneven they are in Boston;
but are generally much wider and handsomer
than those of Boston. Many of the stores here
are large, and are fitted up in very elegant
style. They exceed those of London or Paris, for
| splendor of appearance, and make more show
than those of any city we have been in, unless
/ it may be those of Brussels, which are very
handsome.
! The pride ofLverpool is "St. Georges Hail."
magnificent granite building, covering two acres
| of ground. 1t is intended for courts, public
meetings &c. The Hall will seat five thousand
| people. Il is not yet quite finished, although it
is twelve years since it was commenced, and will
have cost one million five hundred thousand dol
| lars when completed In the basement is
small steam engine, which is used partly to ven
tilate the Hall by operating two huge bellows.
The famous Docks in Liverpool are gigantic
structures. built of ponderous blocks of stone,
also are all the rhaTyes. The tide here rises
twenty eight feet and it would be difficult to load
and unload ships, were it not for these Docks, in
which the water is kept at convenient hight by
means oil massive gates.
| While at Liverpool,we attended Horticultural
Exhibition, which was held at the Botanical Gar
| den. There was quite large attendance of visi-
tors, although it was somewhat rainy as usual,
aud the tickets of admission sold at the high
| price of sirty-taoo cents each The display of
flowers very large and beautiful, and alto
| gether handsomer than is ever seen at any exhi-
bition in America 1t would have been more
proper to have called it Floral, rather than a
! Horticultural, Exhibition, for the show of fruit
was exceedingly meagre, there not being wheel
barrow load in the whole of it. There was fair
display of vegetables, but the exhibition, taken
altogether, was pretty slim affair.
l am disappointed in the appearance and quail
ity of the fruit nave seen in England Indeed
they have butvery little good fruit here, grown in
the open air, what we in Massachusetts should
class as handsome, and good. The apples, par
tcularly, are mostly small and green-lookng,
and of insipid taste; owing without doubt, to the
sun being so much obscured by the long contin"
ued cloudy weather which frequently prevails
here, Thepears are little better than the apples
are, but do not equal ours, in color, size or quail
ity The varieties generally cultivated are very
limited; the Jargonelle being almost the only
early kind grown. Plums are tolerably plenty,
and pretty good. Cherries are not plenty, and
peaches will not ripen, unless grown under glass,
or trained on a wall land that is the way all the
best fruit is grown. Fruit is generally scarce,
\ and the common people seldom have much; the
raising of it being mostly confined to the culti-
vators for market and the weather. class 1t is
not common to handsome little place, with
the yard or garden stocked with every variety of
hardy fruit, as is everywhere to be met with in
New England. Neither do the fruit trees in
England generally have the clean and healthy
look that ours have; the humid atmosphere
covers them with tsoss5 syi, gives them rnouldy
and stunted appearance. But they beat us en-
tirely in their handsome forest and ornamental
trees, and the numerous large and elegant speci-
mems of them, so common in their lawns and in
the fields, are beautiful objects, which they eye
loves to dwell upon.
They have some excellent vegetables, especially
turnips, peas, and potatoes, which latter much
excel ours, and are very fine; but we miss our
green corn, tomatoes, squashes, melons, and
many other good things, which cannot be raised
in England, except in some few favored spots
They have a squash, similar to our Marrow vari-
ETY., but it rarely ripens except it is raised under
glass; it is cooked when in its green, half grown
state, and to Yankee, who is accustomed to a
better article, it is poor eating. We have seen
but very few berries of any kind in England,
excepting gooseberries, which ale very plenty and
good.
Chester, which is about fifteen miles westerly
fromLiyerpool,is very queer looking and ancient
city, which founded by the Romans more
than thousand years ago, and is almost the only
walled city in England. The wall, which is OF
brick, is about ten feet thick, and some twenty
feet high, and is about two miles in circuit 1t is
now used by the people as promenade, and from
itpleasant views of the surrounding country are
had. There are some very ancient buildings
here, and the Grows" as they are called, are
singular objects, to stranger in Chester These
Rows are kind of two-story sidewalk, raised
above the level of the street, at the hight of the
first story of house, and covered over head by
the third story; as if the front rooms of the sec-
ond story I'M series of houses were thrown open,
or rather taken away, in order to form the walk
The apartments of the lower front story, under
the raised sidewalk, are used for shops and yari-
Gus other purposes.
On our way to Hoiyheaa (where we embarked
for Dublin,) we twice walked through the famous
Tubular Bridge, built over the Menai Strait, and
which is regarded as one of the greatest achieve
ments in engineering skill and ingenuity, of
modern times. The tube is square, and not
round, as is generally supposed. 1t is about one
third of mile in length, one hundred feet high
from the water, and is wide enough for the two
railways which pass through it. 1t is without
piers, or support under it, and is made of plates
of thick iron, bolted together. TenthOusa',d tons
of iron were used in it, and the whole structure
cost about five million dollars,-much too large an
expenditure to return any dividends to the stock.
holders.
In the numerous We!ch villages, on the road,
we saw many of the peasant women, dressed in