Letter XVIII.

Liverpool.--Manchester.

Manchester, England, May 30, 1845.

I suppose a smoother passage was never made across the Atlantic, than ours in the good ship Liverpool. For two-thirds of the way, we slid along over a placid sea, before the gentlest zephyrs that ever swept the ocean, and when at length the winds became contrary, they only impeded our progress, without making it unpleasant. The Liverpool is one of the strongest, safest, and steadiest of the packet-ships; her commander prudent, skillful, always on the watch, and as it almost seemed to me, in every part of the vessel at once; the passengers were good-tempered and quiet, like the sea on which we were sailing; and with all these advantages in our favor, I was not disposed to repine that we were a week longer in crossing the Atlantic, than some vessels which left New York nearly the same time.

It was matter of rejoicing to all of us, however, when we saw the Irish coast like a faint cloud upon the horizon, and still more were we delighted, when after beating about for several days in what is called the Chops of the Channel, we beheld the mountains of Wales. I could hardly believe that what I saw were actually mountain summits, so dimly were their outlines defined in the vapory atmosphere of this region, the nearer and lower steeps only being fully visible, and the higher and remoter ones half lost in the haze. It seemed to me as if I were looking at the reflection of mountains in a dull mirror, and I was ready to take out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe the dust and smoke from its surface. About thirty miles from Liverpool we took on board a pilot, whose fair complexion, unbronzed by the sun, was remarked by the ladies, and soon after a steamer arrived and took us in tow. At twelve o'clock in the night, the Liverpool by the aid of the high tide cleared the sand-bar at the mouth of the port, and was dragged into the dock, and the next morning when I awoke, I found myself in Liverpool in the midst of fog and rain.

"Liverpool," said one of its inhabitants to me, "is more like an American than an English city; it is new, bustling, and prosperous." I saw some evidences of this after I had got my baggage through the custom-house, which was attended with considerable delay, the officers prying very closely into the contents of certain packages which I was taking for friends of mine to their friends in England, cutting the packthread, breaking the seals, and tearing the wrappers without mercy. I saw the streets crowded with huge drays, carrying merchandise to and fro, and admired the solid construction of the docks, in which lay thousands of vessels from all parts of the globe. The walls of these docks are built of large blocks of red sandstone, with broad gateways opening to the river Mersey, and when the tide is at its height, which I believe is about thirty feet from low water, the gates are open, and vessels allowed to enter and depart. When the tide begins to retire, the gates are closed, and the water and the vessels locked in together. Along the river for miles, the banks are flanked with this massive masonry, which in some places I should judge to be nearly forty feet in height. Meantime the town is spreading into the interior; new streets are opened; in one field you may see the brickmakers occupied in their calling, and in the opposite one the bricklayers building rows of houses. New churches and new public buildings of various kinds are going up in these neighborhoods.

The streets which contain the shops have for the most part a gay and showy appearance; the buildings are generally of stucco, and show more of architectural decoration than in our cities. The greater part of the houses, however, are built of brick which has a rough surface, and soon acquires in this climate a dark color, giving a gloomy aspect to the streets. The public buildings, which are rather numerous, are of a drab-colored freestone, and those which have been built for forty or fifty years, the Town Hall, for example, and some of the churches, appear almost of a sooty hue. I went through the rooms of the Town Hall and was shown the statue of Canning, by Chantry, an impressive work as it seemed to me. One of the rooms contains a portrait of him by Lawrence, looking very much like a feeble old gentleman whom I remember as not long since an appraiser in the New York custom-house. We were shown a lofty saloon in which the Common Council of Liverpool enjoy their dinners, and very good dinners the woman who showed us the rooms assured us they were. But the spirit of corporation reform has broken in upon the old order of things, and those good dinners which a year or two since were eaten weekly, are now eaten but once a fortnight, and money is saved.

I strolled to the Zoological Gardens, a very pretty little place, where a few acres of uneven surface have been ornamented with plantations of flowering shrubs, many of which are now in full bloom, artificial ponds of water, rocks, and bridges, and picturesque buildings for the animals. Winding roads are made through the green turf, which is now sprinkled with daisies. It seems to be a favorite place of resort for the people of the town. They were amused by the tricks of an elephant, the performances of a band of music, which among other airs sang and played "Jim along Josey," and the feats of a young fellow who gave an illustration of the centrifugal force by descending a Montagne Russe in a little car, which by the help of a spiral curve in the railway, was made to turn a somerset in the middle of its passage, and brought him out at the end with his cap off, and his hair on end.

One of the most remarkable places in Liverpool, is St. James's Cemetery. In the midst of the populous and bustling city, is a chasm among the black rocks, with a narrow green level at the bottom. It is overlooked by a little chapel. You enter it by an arched passage cut through the living rock, which brings you by a steep descent to the narrow level of which I have spoken, where you find yourself among graves set with flowers and half concealed by shrubbery, while along the rocky sides of the hollow in which you stand, you see tombs or blank arches for tombs which are yet to be excavated. We found the thickets within and around this valley of the dead, musical with innumerable birds, which build here undisturbed. Among the monuments is one erected to Huskisson, a mausoleum with a glass door through which you see his statue from the chisel of Gibson. On returning by the passage through the rock, we found preparations making for a funeral service in the chapel, which we entered. Four men came staggering in under the weight of a huge coffin, accompanied by a clergyman of imposing stature, white hair, and florid complexion. Four other coffins were soon after brought in and placed in the church, attended by another clergyman of less pre-possessing appearance, who, to my disappointment, read the service. He did it in the most detestable manner, with much grimace, and with the addition of a supernumerary syllable after almost every word ending with a consonant. The clerk delivered the responses in such a mumbling tone, and with so much of the Lancashire dialect, as to be almost unintelligible. The other clergyman looked, I thought, as if, like myself, he was sorry to hear the beautiful funeral service of his church so profaned.

In a drive which we took into the country, we had occasion to admire the much talked of verdure and ornamental cultivation of England. Green hedges, rich fields of grass sprinkled with flowers, beautiful residences, were on every side, and the wheels of our carriage rolled over the smoothest roads in the world. The lawns before the houses are kept smoothly shaven, and carefully leveled by the roller. At one of these English houses, to which I was admitted by the hospitality of its opulent owner, I admired the variety of shrubs in full flower, which here grow in the open air, rhododendrons of various species, flushed with bloom, azaleas of different hues, one of which I recognized as American, and others of various families and names. In a neighboring field stood a plot of rye-grass two feet in height, notwithstanding the season was yet so early; and a part of it had been already mown for the food of cattle. Yet the people here complain of their climate. "You must get thick shoes and wrap yourself in flannel," said one of them to me. "The English climate makes us subject to frequent and severe colds, and here in Lancashire you have the worst climate of England, perpetually damp, with strong and chilly winds."

It is true that I have found the climate miserably chilly since I landed, but I am told the season is a late one. The apple-trees are just in bloom, though there are but few of them to be seen, and the blossoms of the hawthorn are only just beginning to open. The foliage of some of the trees, rich as it is, bears the appearance in some places of having felt the late frosts, and certain kinds of trees are not yet in leaf.

Among the ornaments of Liverpool is the new park called Prince's Park, which a wealthy individual, Mr. Robert Yates, has purchased and laid out with a view of making it a place for private residences. It has a pretty little lake, plantations of trees and shrubs which have just began to strike root, pleasant nooks and hollows, eminences which command extensive views, and the whole is traversed with roads which are never allowed to proceed from place to place in a straight line. The trees are too newly planted to allow me to call the place beautiful, but within a few years it will be eminently so.

I have followed the usual practice of travellers in visiting the ancient town of Chester, one of the old walled towns of England, distant about fifteen miles from Liverpool--rambled through the long galleries open to the street, above the ground-story of the houses, entered its crumbling old churches of red freestone, one of which is the church of St. John, of Norman architecture, with round arches and low massive pillars, and looked at the grotesque old carvings representing events in Scripture history which ornament some of the houses in Watergate-street. The walls are said to have been erected as early as the time of William the Conqueror, and here and there are towers rising above them. They are still kept in repair and afford a walk from which you enjoy a prospect of the surrounding country; but no ancient monument is allowed to stand in the way of modern improvements as they are called, and I found workmen at one corner tumbling down the stones and digging up the foundation to let in a railway. The river Dee winds pleasantly at the foot of the city walls. I was amused by an instance of the English fondness for hedges which I saw here. In a large green field a hawthorn hedge was planted, all along the city wall, as if merely for the purpose of hiding the hewn stone with a screen of verdure.

Yesterday we took the railway for Manchester. The arrangements for railway travelling in this country are much more perfect than with us. The cars of the first class are fitted up in the most sumptuous manner, cushioned at the back and sides, with a resting-place for your elbows, so that you sit in what is equivalent to the most luxurious armchair. Some of the cars intended for night travelling are so contrived that the seat can be turned into a kind of bed. The arrangement of springs and other contrivances to prevent shocks, and to secure an equable motion, are admirable and perfectly effectual. In one hour we had passed over the thirty-one miles which separate Manchester from Liverpool; shooting rapidly over Chat Moss, a black blot in the green landscape, overgrown with heath, which, at this season of the year, has an almost sooty hue, crossing bridge after bridge of the most solid and elegant construction, and finally entered Manchester by a viaduct, built on massive arches, at a level with the roofs of the houses and churches. Huge chimneys surrounded us on every side, towering above the house-tops and the viaduct, and vomiting smoke like a hundred volcanoes. We descended and entered Market-street, broad and well-built, and in one of the narrowest streets leading into it, we were taken to our comfortable hotel.

At Manchester we walked through the different rooms of a large calico-printing establishment. In one were strong-bodied men standing over huge caldrons ranged along a furnace, preparing and stirring up the colors; in another were the red-hot cylinders that singe the down from the cloth before it is stamped; in another the machines that stamp the colors and the heated rollers that dry the fabric after it is stamped. One of the machines which we were shown applies three different colors by a single operation. In another part of the establishment was the apparatus for steaming the calicoes to fasten the colors; huge hollow iron wheels into which and out of which the water was continually running and revolving in another part to wash the superfluous dye from the stamped cloths; the operation of drying and pressing them came next and in a large room, a group of young women, noisy, drab-like, and dirty, were engaged in measuring and folding them.

This morning we take the coach for the Peak of Derbyshire.