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I.

OLD AND NEW.

It is easy for a voyager familiar with history and alive to the ideal, when his eye first discovers the beacon on Cape Clear, Kinsale or Tusker, gleaming over the sea, to lose himself in the past of England, and, as he walks the deck alone, summon into the boundless void around him, shapes of yellow-haired colossal Britons, Roman soldiers clad in steel, Druids crowned with oak-leaves, the red-bearded Danish buccaneer, the venerable Bede, or Dunstan, Alfred and his harp, the dainty Norman, and proud Saxon, Father Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, Cromwell, the merry monarch, and other prominent figures of English history: and to intersperse the epochs they symbolize with the eloquent bards and fair ladies that illustrate each cycle; but when his foot touches the shore, all such ocean reveries fade away like the indistinct visions of the night; and the actual usurps the senses while it breaks the spell of retro

spective fancy. The days when Liverpool was not, and Genoa and Venice filled an equal space in the world's regard, vanish; and he treads the streets of that busy haven with no more consciousness of antiquity than New York or Leghorn inspire; and yet the transatlantic pilgrim naturally craves the hoary emblems of ages, whose chronicle he has pondered beside virgin forests; and would calm the restless spirit born of a new and progressive civilization, in the solemn air exhaled from the monuments of elder times; he needs to verify, by observation, what he only knows as abstract fact; he yearns for the mellow hue which age flings over the landscape; and his disappointment is keen when he sees, instead of hallowed vestiges, the identical freshness and activity beyond the deep, with which he has been familiar at home. Here and there he encounters in the domestic architecture, the ware, the shape of a vehicle, or the furniture of a room, traces of colonial objects yet discernible in primitive American towns settled by the English; and a church, with its cracked tablets and quaint inscriptions, bears testimony to a somewhat more venerable origin than the changeful aspect of his native place can boast; but, for the most part, a few local peculiarities in the mode of life, a different type in the journal, or a less gregarious habit in the people, are the only artificial features that attest his distance from the United States. One advan

tage, however, this scenic coincidence yields; it vastly increases the effect of contrast when he exchanges the modern city which first meets his gaze, for the ancient one, divided from it by only a few hours' travel; and seldom is the transit from new to old, and from the commonplace to the romantic, so rapid.

The neutral tint of the edifices in Liverpool, partly the result of cloudy skies, and in a great measure owing to the absence of red bricks and new paint, the substantial costume, robust look, and pedestrian hardihood of the women, and an air of conservative solidity in warehouse, hotel, and street, keep alive the idea of England, which the scenes on the quays and in the shops continually dissipate. The names too, which, with truly British pride, are attached to dock, highway, and inn, recalling warlike heroes, and mercantile princes, confirm the vague feeling in the traveller's breast, that he is "a stranger in the land." As I caught sight, now and then, of the pawnbroker's gilt balls-the escutcheon of the Medici-gratefully rose the noble image of their historian, who here won and lost a fortune in business, and yet found both the time and the intellectual energy to identify his name with the highest philanthropic enterprise, and elegant literature. I sought his grave behind the little chapel where he worshipped, and, standing by the mural slab which only records his name and age, I realized how a

true enthusiasm for letters, art, and humanity, lifts the memory of their disciple, like a star, far above the oblivious monotony of trade, into the serene firmament of posthumous renown.

Near the remains of Roscoe are those of that bold and conscientious religious inquirer, Blanco White, who breathed his last at the charming residence of one of his friends in the vicinity of Liverpool. I recalled the wide circuit of rites, creeds, and doctrine, which, with the artless wisdom of a child, he confesses to have experienced, and the profound sentiment of religion that animated his heart, under every form of technical belief; I remembered the beautiful sonnet, in which he compares the unconscious immortality of the soul to the stars hid by the radiant day, yet shining on for ever, and visible when the hour of darkness comes; and I felt how justly we forget the conventional distinctions of Christianity, in view of a character imbued with its essential spirit.

It is a singular fact, that the busy scenes, and palpable results of traffic, and the melancholy quietude of death, are the two points of reflective interest in Liverpool; her docks and her cemeteries, are the principal attractions. Nothing in her prosperous mart serves to remind us that the inhabitants petitioned Elizabeth for exemption from taxes on account of poverty-that Prince Rupert besieged the city in 1644, or that the monks once had a

monopoly of the Birkenhead ferry; but, looking through the iron railing down into St. James' cemetery, we see the monument of Huskisson, and a stone memorial erected by the sea-captains to their shipwrecked brother, surrounded by evergreens-and recognise the fact, that the wealth which has here found a nucleus, was derived from maritime and commercial enterprise. It is a remarkable coincidence, that the basis of Liverpool's importance was the slave-trade, and that by a natural reaction, her citizens were among the most efficient advocates of its legal prohibition.

The city has a pleasant rural vicinage, and a ride among the hedges and villas, besides cheering the eye in winter, with many a picturesque lodge embowered in holly and graceful hayricks planted on the greenest sward, and, in summer, alive with flowers, and musical with birds-warms the fancy with the view of Allerton Hall, the tasteful abode of Roscoe, and Wavertree so long the home of Mrs, Hemans. Well may a poet, however, despair of catching even a glimpse of his traveller's castle in the air, while at Liverpool. He treads the dank pavement of Lord street, and looks around on the panorama of stores, cotton, beer, and coal drays, policemen with glossy hats, flying cabs, sailors arrayed for a holyday, thrusting out their boots to be polished with a comical air of reckless self-importance; he winds his perilous track along the river-side, where

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