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 ofHenry 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art—the Holyhead mail road, perhaps the best piece of work of the kind in the world, and the railway, which has partly superseded both.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.
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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
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.
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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
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
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
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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
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
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.
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 Athenæum 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 Ægina 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 therococostyle 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 | 20,457Vessels | || |Dock Dues. - | £600 | £211,743| |Income of £20 | £1,115 | £139,152Corporation | || |Customs Dues £272 | £70,000 | £3,366,284
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 whichare nottime-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 forpetits 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.
The race-course is situated at some miles distant from the town; races take place three times a-year, two being flat races, and the third a steeple-chase. They are well supported and attended, although not by ladies so much as in the Midland and Northern Counties. The Liverpool races are chiefly matters of business, something like the Newmarket, with the addition of a mob. A large attendance comes from Manchester, where more betting is carried on than in any town out of London. Gambling of all kinds naturally follows in the wake of cotton speculation, which is gambling.
The crashes produced in Liverpool by thesacra fames auriare sometimes startling, and they come out in visible relief, because, in spite of its size, gossip flourishes as intensely as in a village. During one of the cotton manias a young gentleman, barely of age, in possession of an income of some two thousand a-year from land, and ready money to the extent of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, joined an ingenious penniless gentleman in speculating in cotton, and found himself in less than twelve months a bankrupt; thus sacrificing, without the least enjoyment, a fortune sufficient for the enjoyment of every rational pleasure, or for the support of the highest honours in the State.
Such instances are not uncommon, although on a less magnificent scale; indeed, it is well to be cautious in inquiring after a Liverpool merchant or broker after an absence of a few years; a very few years are sufficient to render the poor rich and the rich poor, an eighth of a penny in the pound of cotton will do it.
The Municipal Corporation of Liverpool is the wealthiest in England after London, and virtually richer than London, inasmuch as the expenses are trifling, the property is improving, and the Liverpool aldermen and common-councillors have no vested claims to costly entertainments.
The majority is in the hands of the Conservative party, the Liberal party having only enjoyed the sweets of power for a brief period after the passing of the Financial Reform Bill; but the principle of representation keeps down any inclination toward the inevitable jobberies of a close self-elected body, and pushes local legislators on, quite up to the mark of the public opinion of the locality they govern.
A stranger, who has no interest in party squabbles, must confess that the funds of this wealthy estate are on the whole fairly and wisely distributed.
The Irish population, amounting to many thousands of the poorest and most ignorant class, who find a refuge from the miseries of their own country in the first port from Dublin, and employment in the vast demand for unskilled labour caused by the perpetual movement in imports and exports, impose a heavy tax on the poor-rates and police-rates of this borough.
In the education of this part of the community, the Liberal Corporation made provision in the extensive Corporation schools, by adopting the Irish Government scheme of instruction, permitting the Roman Catholics to make use of their own translation of the Bible, and to absent themselves from the religious instruction of the orthodox.
On this question the municipal elections were fought. The general education party were eventually beaten. The Roman Catholics were withdrawn from the schools, and thrown entirely upon the priests or the streets for education, and great was the rejoicing among the party who carried a largewoodenBible as their standard.
But subsequent events have induced those who have given any attention to the state of the operative classes in Liverpool, of whatever politics, to doubt whether it would not have been better to have been busy, for the last fifteen years, in teaching those classes something, who, knowing nothing, supply very expensive customers to the Liverpool courts of law and jail.
Liverpool returns two members to the House of Commons.
The election contests were formerly wonderfully bitter and absurd, for on one occasion, just before the passing of the Reform Bill, nearly two hundred thousand pounds were spent by two parties, between whose politics there was scarcely a shade of difference.
William Roscoe represented Liverpool for a short time, but was rejected at a second election, in consequence of his opposition to the Slave Trade. He was the son of a publican, and rose from an office boy to be an attorney in large practice, and eventually a banker. He was ruined by the stopping of his bank, which, after being for many years under the taxing harrows of the old corrupt bankrupt system, paid twenty shillings in the pound. William Roscoe was a voluminous writer of political pamphlets and poetry, which are now quite forgotten; his literary reputation deservedly rests upon his lives of Lorenzo de Medici, published in 1796, and of Leo X; the former of which has recently been republished by Mr. Bohn, in his cheap series of reprints.
Of even more value than his literary productions, was the school, or party, which he founded in Liverpool, while he was still wealthy and influential, embracing all who had a taste for literature and art. At that period Liverpool was rising into wealth on a vigorous prosecution of the Slave Trade, of which its parliamentary representatives were the avowed supporters. At that time vulgar wealth was the only distinction, and low debauchery the almost only amusement of the principal merchants. Absurd as it may now seem, when all the well-to-do world profess to be educated and temperate, Roscoe and his friends rendered inestimable service by making elegant tastes and temperate habits respectable, and by raising up an opposition to the old Slave Trade party, whose paradise lay in turtle soup, port wine, and punch. He set an example to merchants of stocking a library as well as a cellar, which has been followed, until now it is considered a matter of course. William Roscoe died in 1831, at a very advanced age. He was a remarkably fine-looking man, with a grand aristocratic head.
In addition to Huskisson and George Canning, Liverpool once very nearly had the honour of sending to Parliament Henry Brougham, in days when the Chancellorship and the House of Lords could scarcely have been expected by that versatile genius, even in a dream.
At present Liverpool interests are well represented in the House of Commons. The borough has had the good sense to prefer a merchant townsman, Sir Thomas Birch, and the son of a merchant, and friend and co-minister of the late Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Cardwell, to a soldier, and the dreamy poetical son of a Protectionist duke. A place like Liverpool ought to find in its own body better men than young lords or old soldiers. But young Liverpool dearly loves a lord, of any politics; and a little polite attention from a duke will produce an unconscious effect even on the trade report of a broker of “fashion.”
Mr. William Brown, at the head of the greatest American house in the world, after Baring’s, represents South Lancashire, but on Manchester influence, scarcely with the consent of Liverpool. Mr. Brown, who is an Irishman by birth, has been entirely the architect of his own fortune, and began business—on a very limited scale indeed—within the memory of persons now living. The firm has now agents in every town of any importance in the United States, and is the means of keeping in active employment hundreds of traders in all our manufacturing districts. The relations with Birmingham and the hardware country are very close. Another Liverpool man of whom the Liverpool people are justly proud, is the best debater in the House of Commons, if he only knew his own mind, the Right Honourable William Gladstone, the son of Sir John Gladstone, Bart., of Fasque, N.B., formerly a Liverpool merchant. Sir John Gladstone is a Scotchman, and in conjunction with another gentleman, also the head of a first-rate Liverpool house, Mr. Sandbatch, went out to the West Indies (Demerara) as journeymen bakers, in the same way that Mr. Miles, the grandfather of the members for East Somerset and Bristol, and founder of the great Bristol banking house, went out to Barbadoes as a journeyman cooper. If we add to these instances that the first Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Brotherton (who himself told the House, in a debate on the Factory Time Bill, that he had commenced life as a factory operative), beside many others, too numerous to mention, it will be found that our House of Commons is not so far out of the reach of industrious merit as foreigners usually imagine.
In conclusion, we may note that Liverpool, which gave very cold and niggard support to the Great Exhibition (chiefly because the project was ill received by the ducal house which patronizes the fashionables of the town), sent a contribution which very completely represented its imports, specifying the scientific and commercial name of each article, country of production, and quantity imported.
This collection occupies a considerable space, but it will be found, on examination, that a few staples employ the greater part of the shipping inwards. Cotton occupies by far the largest place, the air is filled with floating motes of cotton all round the business quarters of the town; timber probably stands next in the tonnage it employs; West Indian produce is less important than it was formerly; a great trade is done with South America, in hides, both dry and salted; tobacco, both from the United States and Cuba, arrives in large quantities. There are several great snuff and cigar manufactories in Liverpool. The hemp and tallow trade is increasing, as is the foreign corn trade. The Mediterranean, and especially the Italian, trade, has been rendered more important by steam communication. The China trade has not increased as much as was expected.
When the Docks and Public Institutions have been examined, and the places of interest on the Cheshire shore visited, Liverpool presents nothing to detain the traveller who has no private claims on his attention.
It must be acknowledged that the general appearance of the town and of the people is more agreeable than that of Birmingham or Manchester, although Liverpool can claim none of the historical and antiquarian interest in which Bristol and Chester are rich. There are parts of the town devoted to low lodging houses, and accommodation for the poor Irish and emigrants, as bad as the worst parts of St. Giles’s or Spitalfields. Indeed, the mortality is greater than that of any other town in England.
Liverpool is a great port for emigration to the United States and Canada. On the line of packet ships the accommodation for those who can pay £5 and upwards is excellent; in the timber ships they are packed like herrings after being lodged like pigs. But what can be expected for the fare. At £2 the shipowners undertake to give a passage, and find two quarts of water and a pound of bread per day. The Government Emigration Agents are indefatigable in their efforts, municipal and Parliamentary regulations have been from time to time applied to the subject, nevertheless the frauds and cruelties inflicted on emigrants are frightful.
An attempt was made some short time since to have an Emigrant’s Home as a sort of Model Barrack, erected in one of the New Docks, so as to form a counterpoise to the frauds of emigration lodging-house keepers, but local jealousies defeated a plan which would have been equally advantageous to the town and the emigrants.
The state of poverty and crime in Liverpool, fed as it is by the overflowings of many districts, is an important subject, which has excited the anxious attention of several enlightened residents, among others of the late Police Magistrate, Mr. Edward Rushton, who died suddenly without being able to bring his plans to maturity.
In conclusion we may say of Liverpool, that it is a town which has a great and increasing population, a wealthy Corporation, a thriving trade, yet less of the materials of a metropolis than many other towns of less commercial importance.
For further temporary information, a traveller may advantageously consult the Liverpool papers, of which there is one for every day in the week—that is to say, anAlbion, aTimes, aMail, aStandard, aMercury, aJournal, aChronicle—of all shades of politics, of large size, conducted with great ability, and affording, in addition to the news and politics of the day, a great deal of general information, in the shape of extracts from popular works and original articles.
If we would learn why the opinions of inhabitants of towns prevail over the opinions of landowners and agriculturists, we have only to compare the active intelligence of the two as exhibited by such journals as are to be found in Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham with those supported by the rural community. A single sect expends more on the support of the press than all the farmers and farmers’ friends united, who are more numerous, more wealthy, not wanting in intelligence in their own pursuits, but quite without cohesion or combination.
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LIVERPOOL TO MANCHESTER.—There are two ways from Liverpool to Manchester, one by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, through Bolton, which has a station behind the Exchange, and one by the old route, through Newton. The line by the new one has Bolton upon its course, and renders the Aintree Racecourse half as near Manchester as Liverpool.
For choice take a Tuesday or Saturday, and travel up by the early Cotton Brokers’ Express to Manchester, so as to see one more phase of the English commercial character. The Brokers are a jovial set and hospitable, as keen as Yankees and as industrious. There is a marked difference between them and the Spinners, but they are of no particular country. Liverpool, like Manchester, although not to the same degree, is colonised by strangers. Both Irishmen and Scotchmen are to be found among the most respectable and successful, and a considerable number of Americans are settled there as merchants and shipping agents; indeed it is half American in its character.
In this year of 1851, to describe the Liverpool and Manchester Railway would be absurd; acres of print, in all civilized languages, and yards of picture-illustration, have been devoted to it. At Newton Station you see below you a race-course of great antiquity, and what was once a huge hotel, built to supply a room large enough for the Mother Partingtons of Lancashire to meet and prepare their mops for sweeping back the Atlantic tide of public opinion. There they met, and dined and drank and shouted, and unanimously agreed that it was foolish legislation which transferred the right of representation from the village of Newton to the great city of Manchester; after which they went home, and wisely submitted to the summons which found its speaking-trumpets at Manchester. Fortunately for this country, a minority knows how to submit to a majority, and the Conservative Hall, by a sort of accidental satire on its original uses, has been turned into a printing office.
A little farther on is Chat-Moss, a quaking bog, which the opponents of the first railway proved, to the satisfaction of many intelligent persons, to be an impassable obstacle to the construction of any solid road. We fly across it now reading or writing, scarcely taking the trouble to look out of the window. But if we do, we may see reclamation and cultivation, in the shape of root-crops and plantations, extending over the wet waste.
William Roscoe was one of the first to attempt to reclaim this Moss; and it is worthy of note, that it was among the literary and scientific friends of Roscoe that George Stephenson’s idea of a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester, through Chat-Moss, found its warmest supporters, at a time when support was much needed; for the shares were hawked, and even distributed among friends who were guaranteed against loss, in order to make up a fitting parliamentary subscription to what has proved one of the most successful speculations in public works, of this century.
As we roll into Manchester, and mark by what successive invasions the city has been half-surrounded by railways, it is amusing to remember the fears which landowners expressed in 1829, and really felt, lest the new flaming and smoking carriage-apparatus should damage the value of property which has been more than doubled in value by the new invention.
Manchester is the greatest manufactory in the world. The cradle and metropolis of a trade which employs a million and a half of souls, beside the sailors, the merchants, the planters and the slaves, who grow or carry or buy the raw material, it is the second city in the empire, and perhaps, considered in relation to the commercial influence of Great Britain, scarcely second. Blot out the capital, the credit, the living enterprise, the manufacturing power of Manchester, and we have lost a century of commercial progress. Manchester is essentially a place of work and action, carried on by men recruited from every district where a mental grenadier of the Manchester standard is to be found. Suffolk and Devonshire, Norfolk and Cornwall send their quota, as well as the neighbouring manufacturing schools of Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. Scotchmen in great numbers, and some Irishmen, chiefly from the north, are also at home there. We are speaking now not of operatives, but of those who rise to be manufacturers or merchants. The Americans are rather constant visitors than permanent residents; but the Germans are sufficiently numerous to be able to form a society of their own, the most agreeable in Manchester; and the commerce of Greece is represented by a great number of houses, which are increasing in number and importance.
Then Manchester, although only an inland canal port, trades largely and directly, through Liverpool chiefly, to the most parts of the world, consuming one-tenth of the whole imports of that town. The correspondence of a first-class house for one morning would alone be a lesson in geography.
Then again, the ceaseless enterprise and enormous powers of manufacture are supported by a constantly-improving mechanical ingenuity, which seems to those unaccustomed to such works nothing less than miraculous: as, for instance, some of the inventions of Mr. Whitworth and of Mr. Roberts.
But all this is hidden from the eye of a stranger; and Manchester is a dark and dingy ledger, closely clasped, unless he comes prepared to open a good account, or armed with letters of introduction of a more than ordinarily pressing nature. The gentleman who was all smiles while accepting your civilities, and energetically amusing himself on a tour of pleasure, has scarcely time to look up from his desk to greet you when enthroned in his counting-house. The fact is, that these Manchester men rise early, work hard, dine at one o’clock, work again, and go home, some distance out of town, to work or to sleep,—so they have no time for unprofitable hospitality or civility.
We do not say this by way of idle reproach to the people of Manchester, who follow their vocation, and do work of which we as Englishmen have reason to be proud, but partly by way of warning to travellers who, armed with the sort of letters that have proved passports to everything best worth seeing throughout the rest of Europe, may expect to pass an agreeable day or two in the cotton metropolis; and partly by way of hint to politicians who, very fond of inveighing against the cold shade of aristocracy, would find something worth imitating in the almost universal courtesy of modern nobility, which is quite consistent with the extremest liberality of abstract opinions.
Dr. Dalton, the celebrated natural philosopher, for many years a resident in Manchester, has proved that Manchester is not so damp and rainy a place as is generally imagined; that the mean annual fall of rain is less than that of Lancaster, Kendal, and Dumfries. Nevertheless, it is better to expect rain, for although the day at Liverpool, Halifax, or Sheffield may have been brilliantly fine, the probability is that you will find the train, as it approaches the city, gradually slipping into a heavy shower or a Scotch mist.
The walk from any of the stations is very disheartening; tall warehouses, dingy brick houses, a ceaseless roar of carts and waggons in the main streets, and a population of which all the better dressed march at double quick time, with care-brent brows, and if pausing, only to exchange gruff monosyllables and short words.
At one o’clock the factory hands are dismissed, and the masters proceed to dinner on horseback and in all sorts of vehicles at a thundering pace. The working-class population will be found less unhealthy and better looking than would be expected. The costume of the women, a cap and a short sleeved jacket fitting the waist, called a Lancashire bedgown, is decidedly picturesque. For a quarter of an hour some streets are almost impassable, and the movement gives the idea of a population deserting a city. An hour’s silence follows, after which the tide flows again: the footpaths are filled with the “hands;” and the “heads,” with very red faces, furiously drive their hundred guinea nags back to business. Now this is one of the sights of Manchester.
Again, Tuesday is the business day at the Exchange, in St. Ann’s Square. The room is one of the finest in the kingdom; the faces and the scene generally afford much curious matter for the study of the artist and physiognomist. Compare it with the groups of well dressed dawdlers at Leamington, Cheltenham, Bath, with the very different style of acute intellect displayed at a meeting of the Institute of Civil Engineers, or with the merchants of Liverpool, part of whom also attend Manchester.
The personal appearance of the Manchester manufacturers and their customers, as seen on ’Change, fully justifies the old saw, “Liverpool gentlemen, Manchester men, Rochdale fellows (fellies), and Wigan chaps.”
In Liverpool all are equal,—merchant deals with merchant; in Manchester the millowner is an autocrat, restrained by customs of the trade and occasional strikes, and he carries his rough ways into private life.
But facts show that, with all its plate and varnish, Liverpool is as inferior to Manchester in an intellectual, as it is superior in an external point of view.
In politics Manchester leads, and Liverpool and Lancashire unwillingly follow,—in the education of the operative and middle classes,—in literary, scientific, and musical associations,—in sanitary measures,—in the formation of public parks and pleasure grounds, Manchester displays an incontestable superiority; being more rapid, more energetic, and more liberal than her more fashionable neighbours.
A list of a few of the institutions and public establishments will show this.
The Royal Institution in Mosley Street occupies a large building, established for the encouragement of the Fine Arts by exhibitions of paintings and sculptures, and the delivery of lectures.
The Philosophical Society was established in 1781, and has numbered among its members Dr. Dalton, Dr. Henry, and Dr. Percival, and has had its Transactions translated into French and German.
The Natural History Society has filled a museum in Peter Street with objects of natural history, and opens it during holiday seasons to the public at a nominal charge, when thousands of visitors, chiefly operatives, attend.
The Mechanics’ Institution, founded in 1824, after surviving many difficulties, has become one of the most flourishing and useful institutions of the kind in the kingdom. Its chief activity is displayed in the education of the operative members in the class-rooms. The library is large, well selected, and in constant requisition. In one department the School of Design is carried on, and could not be conducted in a more appropriate building.
This School of Design, supported by the Government for the purpose of promoting design as applied to the staple manufactures, and diffusing a general feeling for art amongst the manufacturing community, was formerly accommodated within the walls of the Royal Institution as a tenant, paying a rent, strangely enough, for the use of a building which had ostensibly been erected for promoting art and science!
It was not until 1836, that, on the recommendation of a Committee of the House of Commons, active steps were taken to establish in England that class of artistic instruction applied to manufactures which had been cultivated in France ever since the time that the great Colbert was the minister of Louis XIV.
At Manchester, some of the leading men connected with the calico-printing trade and looms of art, established a School of Design within the Royal Institution, where two rooms were lent rent-free; but, as soon as Government apportioned a part of a special grant to the Manchester School, the Committee, who were also as nearly as possible the Council of the Royal Institution, with that appetite for public money which seems incident to men of all nations, all classes, and all politics, voted £100 out of the £250 per annum for rent. This school did nothing of a practical nature, and consequently did not progress in public estimation. The master was a clever artist, but not up, perhaps he would have said notdown, to his work. A School of Design at Manchester is meant, not to breed artists in high art, but to have art applied to the trades of the city. The master was changed, and, at the request of the local committee, the Council of the School of Design at Somerset House sent down, in 1845, Mr. George Wallis, who had shown his qualifications as an assistant at Somerset House and as master of the Spitalfields school. At that time the Manchester school had been in existence five years, and had done nothing toward its original object. In two years from the time of Mr. Wallis taking the charge, the funds of the school were flourishing; the interest taken in it by the public was great, and nearly half the Institution was occupied by the pupils, while the applications for admission were more numerous than could be accommodated. Under this management the public, who care little for abstract art, were taught the close connexion between the instruction of the School of Design and their private pursuits.
Thisis what is wanted in all our towns. It is not enough to teach boys and girls,—the manufacturers and purchasers need to be taught by the eye, if not by the hand.
According to part of Mr. Wallis’s plan, an exhibition was held of the drawings executed by the pupils for the annual prizes, which had a great influence in laying the foundation for the efforts made by Manchester at the Great Exhibition of Industry in Hyde Park.
While matters were proceeding so satisfactorily, the Somerset House authorities (who have since been tried and condemned by a Committee of the House of Commons), proceeded to earn their salaries by giving instructions which could not be carried out without destroying all the good that had been done. The Manchester Committee and Mr. Wallis protested against thisred tapishinterference. It was persisted in; Mr. Wallis{172}resigned, to the great regret of his pupils and manufacturing friends in the managing council.
The result was that the undertaking dwindled away rapidly to less than its original insignificance,—the students fell off, and a deficit of debt replaced the previously flourishing funds. Out of evil comes good. The case of Manchester enabled Mr. Milner Gibson, M.P. for Manchester, to get his Committee and overhaul the Schools of Design throughout the kingdom.
Certain changes were effected. The school, no longer able to pay the high rent required by the Royal Institution, was removed to its present site in Brown Street, placed under the management of Mr. Hammersley, who had previously been a successful teacher at Nottingham, and freed from the meddling of incompetent authorities. And now pupils anxiously crowd to receive instruction, and annually display practical evidence of the advantages they are enjoying.
The Manchester Mechanics’ Institution was one of the pioneers in the movement which led to the Great Exhibition. In 1831, was held its first Polytechnic Exhibition for the purpose of showing the connexion between natural productions, science, and manufactures. Subsequent Exhibitions were carried out with great effect as a means of instruction and education, and with such success as to pay off a heavy debt which had previously cramped the usefulness of the Institution.