CHAPTER XXXIV. LIVERPOOL. In life we shall find many men that are great, and some men that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.-COLTON. Am again at the place of my disembarkation on British soil. My passage has been taken in the steamer "Atlantic," now riding at anchor in the river. A few days more and my face is turned, perhaps forever, from the cities and towns of five realms, which have engaged my interested and instructive attention during the last ten weeks. The city where I am to pass the remaining hours of my sojourn in England, has a just and increasing renown for enterprise and commercial prosperity. Liverpool has long been the rival of Bristol-but is fast leaving its competitor far in the rear. Though quite up the channel, and troubled with a sand bar at the mouth of the river, which often detains vessels during wearisome hours, yet it has other facilities which have, during the last thirty years, rendered it the shipping port of England West. As a necessary result the population has advanced from thirty thousand, to three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, while public energy and private thrift are visible on all sides. The pride of Liverpool are the Docks, and with all propriety, for there is that in their extent and firmness, and beauty and usefulness, which reflects credits hardly capable of fitting expression by words, upon those who projected and carried to a successful termination this vast and most noble undertaking. Their necessity was demanded by the Sir Charles Napier. Liverpool Docks. fact that the tides, which rise from thirteen to twenty feet, effectually prevent large ships from remaining safely in the channel, unless it be far down in the offing. These massive structures of stone extend six miles along the east bank of the Mersey, thus furnishing a safe shelter to thousands of sea-craft from every nation of the globe, while upon the shore are vast store-houses, in which is deposited for safe keeping, merchandize of untold quantity and value. The landing place is an immense floating pier, rendered necessary by the great variation between low and high water mark. It is five hundred and seven feet long and eighty feet broad, the whole resting on thirty-nine pontoons, sustaining a weight of two thousand tons, containing forty-nine thousand cubic feet of wood, and erected at a cost of forty thousand pounds sterling. From this pier I saw a noble regiment of cavalry embark on the magnificent steamer "Himalaya,” for the Baltic, sent thither to attack Cronstadt, or other places neighboring upon St. Petersburgh. And so they would, and the English lion have obtained an early and easy victory over the Northern bear, if Sir Charles Napier could only have accomplished all the purposes so confidently and valiantly expressed in his after-dinner speech at London. But promise and achievement are not convertible expressions, as the naval baronet soon discovered, to his great chagrin and disgust. If ever the simile of the ascending and descending rocket found a fit application, it was in this commander's voyage to and from the northern ports. He has made all effort to cast the blame of failure upon the noble Secretary in charge of the War Department; but the country heeded not his appeal for acquittal from censure. It had been well for Sir Charles if he had remembered the counsel of ancient War. City Celebrities. wisdom, "let not him that putteth on the harness, rejoice as he that taketh it off." Among the many manly forms which bore him company, a large number were never again to tread their native soil. I saw the wives and mothers and sisters, as they waved a last adieu, and with crushed spirits returned to their desolate homes, there to weep the absence of those whom they were destined never again to greet and embrace. Oh, war! war! by what fitting name shall we designate thine inhuman, unchristian-yea, satanic spirit! The leading public buildings of Liverpool are the Town Hall, Post Office, and Sailor's Home, which, from their size and material of hewn stone, unite with many private buildings in giving to the streets an air of dignity and permanence. [For a full description of Liverpool in 1851, the reader is referred to the ample pages of Prof. Silliman.] Turning from docks, ships, buildings, &c., to persons, the names of two at once occur- -Rev. Hugh McNeil, an episcopalian, and Rev. Dr. Raffles, dissenter. But few, if any, names stand with justice before them in either branch of the church for learning, genius, eloquence, all devoted heartily and supremely to the progress and triumph of the protestant faith and the evangelical spirit. Mr. McNeil has imbibed a deep and inexhaustible abhorrence of ecclesiastical tyranny and hierarchical despotism, which Papists and High Church Episcopalians have felt to their sorrow and dis may during the last twenty-five years. His transcendent talents and unquestioned sincerity have secured for him a position in his own city which enables him to say and do what but few other persons could, without losing their character, or at least their clerical commission. Dr. Pusey and his disciples, not less than the Pope of Rome and his fol Rev. Hugh McNeil. Dr. Raffles. lowers, are belabored without gloves; receiving scars which show that they have had to do with a giant. How Dr. Raffles stands in public regard, the American Church is well informed. His great talents, extensive learning, world-wide philanthropy, chaste genius, warm piety and social excellencies, have given him a rank which he has sustained with undiminished success, for nearly half a century. He had been absent for many months, upon a tour of health, to Syria and adjacent regions, and had returned to his home in time to allow me the privilege of his personal acquaintance, and hearing him discourse twice to crowded audiences assembled to welcome their beloved pastor to his parish. By means of an obliging letter from the Rev. Dr. Knox, of New York, I passed a truly pleasant hour with him at his home, obtaining many valued thoughts, bearing upon the condition and prospects of Christianity in the British islands. Dr. Raffles' celebrity is based not more upon a successful pastorate of more than two score years, over one of the most important and flourishing of English Dissenting Chapels, than as the successor and biographer of Rev. Thomas Spencer, whose lamented death by drowning, on the 15th of May, 1811, created a sensation throughout the Christian world, not soon to be forgotten. In selecting as its victim a youthful preacher, who occupied the position of Mr. S., death chose indeed a "shining mark." His decease was commemorated in pulpit discourses, newspaper paragraphs, eulogistic resolutions, poetic elegies, and finally, a memoir widely circulated at the time, a second edition of which was issued last year. Among funeral elegies it were difficult to name one of richer thought and deeper feeling than Elegy. that by the late James Montgomery on Mr. Spencer, the last stanza of which will complete this brief chapter on Liverpool: The loveliest star of evening's train |