became prevalent, especially to America, Liverpool has been one of the chief ports from whence the emigrant ships have started. If we could number the aching hearts of those who have, from the Liverpool Docks, taken a farewell look at their old country, we should find it a large one. In one single month, April, 1842, no fewer than thirteen thousand emigrants are said to have embarked from Liverpool! It is sad, when we think of the features presented by emigration under some peculiar circumstances. At the very moment when this page is being printed, Canada has the deplorable prospect of being overrun by disease, brought over by the poor Irish, who have sought refuge from a land of starvation !

THE RAILWAY AND ITS TRAFFIC.

The Liverpool Docks and their associations have taken us long to talk about; and a rambler would find that they take him long to explore. No wonder at this. Whatever is the first of its kind demands a more than usually full attention; and the Liverpool Docks whatever we may say of the metropolis and its multifarious commerce, or of the past of Bristol, or of the present of Hull and Glasgow, or of the future of Birkenhead and Fleetwood and Grimsby - are most assuredly the first of their kind.

Perhaps, after viewing the ships in the docks, and the merchandise in the warehouses, and the entries in the Custom-house, and the merchants in the Exchange, we cannot do better than glance at the Railways, which place Liverpool at one end of the long commercial chain that bounds, and binds, and intersects the whole kingdom. How the cotton, in its millions of bags, and its hundreds of millions of pounds, is conveyed from Liverpool to the spinning and weaving districts, has been already noticed in one of the papers relating to Manchester (p. 195); but we have yet to dive into the recesses (for they are literally such) at the Liverpool end of the line.

It was a bold act of the Stephensons, at the time when the world knew hardly anything of railways, and when incredulity respecting them was the prevailing sentiment—it was a bold act, at such a time, to determine on piercing beneath a busy town, from side to side, and running an invisible railway beneath houses and streets, buildings and open places, sewers and water-pipes, secure in the conviction that the arching over-head would be strong enough to resist all the superincumbent pressure. There is a sort of faith, a self-reliance, an abiding confidence, in the power of mind over brute matter, which is exhibited in civil engineering more, perhaps, than in most other оссираtions; and the formation of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, twenty years ago, may be regarded as the opening step in the modern exhibition of this

power.

As the traffic between Liverpool and Manchester would manifestly include a vast amount of merchandise, (no less than eighteen hundred tons of goods are

said to pass daily, on an average, between Liverpool and Manchester), it was deemed desirable to provide railway accommodation for this of the most efficient kind; and this could not be done unless the railway extended down near to the water. On the other hand, a passenger-station is always most commodious when situated in the centre of a town. Coupling these two circumstances together, and remembering how immense is the cost to purchase up a line of houses for a railway above-ground, we have the rationale of the Liverpool tunnels. Let any one, starting from the visible railway at the eastern margin of Liverpool, near Edge-hill, go across or through the mass of streets from thence to Lime-street-Duke-street, King-street, Crown-street, Brown-street, Copperas-hill, and all the rest, he will be walking over the tunnel which conveys all the passenger-trains to the central station in Limestreet, a distance of a mile and a quarter. Let him retrace his steps, and find his way in the straightest possible line from Edge-hill to Wapping, near the King's Dock-passing a mass of streets somewhat to the south of the passenger-tunnel-he will now be walking over the goods' tunnel, which conveys all the merchandise to and from Edge-hill and Wapping, a distance still greater than that traversed by the passenger-tunnel.

The passenger-station, situated in an open spot in the centre of Liverpool, is an Italian structure, of considerable extent and beauty, having a columnar and pilastered front, and four arches to give entrance to vehicles, &c. From this station the line of railway ascends by the tunnel to Edge-hill; so that railwaytravellers see literally nothing of Liverpool. Large as this station may appear, the requirements of modern commerce are leading to the construction of one of still greater magnitude. So long as the Liverpool and Manchester Company remained independent, and even after they had amalgamated with the Grand Junction and the North Union Companies, the Lime-street station was found sufficient for the traffic; but since the fusion of all those companies, as well as the London and Birmingham, into the vast London and NorthWestern Company, events have occurred which give redoubled energy to the Liverpool operations. The Manchester and Leeds, and the East Lancashire Companies have found a distinct and independent entrance into Liverpool, which a sense of self-interest will lead them to make as efficient as possible. The 'broad guage,' too, is showing every year a more and more northward tendency; and no one can venture to predict where its giant strides will stop. The proprietors

of the old line, therefore, are urged to do all that lies in their power to anticipate the wants of the town and district, and to leave no grievances which may serve as an excuse and an encouragement to their rivals. Hence arises the expenditure of an immense sum of money, which is being incurred in the purchase of houses, and in the construction of works, in the immediate vicinity of Lime-street. This station, and the superb Assize Courts, will by-and-by give an air of great grandeur to

this part of Liverpool, and will go far to justify Kohl's remark, that whatever may be our merits or our deficiencies in pure matters of art, we know how to wed art to commerce, provided commerce be ranked paramount, and art subordinate.

The goods'-station and tunnel illustrate commerce in a somewhat rougher point of view than the more polished passenger-station. At Wapping are most extensive warehouses for the deposit of goods, which have either been brought from Manchester or other inland parts for shipment, or have been unshipped from the docks. Beneath these warehouses the lower end of the tunnel commences; and, by an admirable arrangement, the railway-wagons are laden and unladen with great facility and quickness. The tunnel then commences. It proceeds, for about one-sixth part of a mile, on a level, and then ascends, for upwards of a mile, at a uniform gradient of one in forty-eight, to the vast excavated area at Edge-hill, where both the tunnels meet. The amount of goods that passes through this tunnel must be enormous. Since the amalgamation of the Liverpool and Manchester with other companies, the accounts have not been published separately; but in 1844, when the company was yet independent, the receipts from goods' traffic, on this line of only thirty miles' length (and a few short branches), amounted to nearly a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Still farther works are in process. A new goods' station near the New North Docks, connected by

a new tunnel with Edge-hill, is now in course of construction.

As engineering boldness has not yet been so daring as to propose to span the Mersey with a railway opposite Liverpool (although eight years ago several eminent engineers were disposed to favour the idea of a tunnel under the Mersey), as the existing stations well accommodate the central, eastern, and southern parts of the town; and as the stations for the Bury and Preston Companies will accommodate the northern, it does not seem probable that Liverpool will have many more railway stations. The capital of her merchants has already done wonders in this respect, and has been well laid out.

It is wonderful to see how, in the midst of this enormous railway traffic, the canals manage to keep up a trade. Yet they do so. The Liverpool and Leeds Canal, and the water communication with Manchester and with the centre of England, still carry their thousands upon thousands of tons of goods. The more carrying machinery there is, the more there seems to be to carry. A railway in great part creates that which is to feed it.

LORD ERSKINE Once gave a vivid sketch of Liverpoola sketch which probably owed more to what had passed through his mind than to what had met his eye:-" If I were capable of painting in words the impression Liverpool made on my imagination, it would form a beautiful picture indeed! I had before often been at the principal seaports in this island; and believing that having seen Bristol and those other towns that deservedly pass for great ones, I had seen everything in this great nation of navigators on which a subject should pride himself, I own I was astonished and astounded, when, after passing a distant ferry, and ascending a hill, I was told by my guide, 'All you see spread out beneath you—that immense plain which stands like another Venice upon the waters-which is intersected by those numerous docks—which glitters with those cheerful habitations of well-protected men—which is the busy seat of trade, and the gay scene of elegant amusements, growing out of its prosperity-where there is the most cheerful face of industry-where there are riches overflowing, and everything that can delight a man who wishes to see the prosperity of a great community and a great empire; all this has been created by the industry and well-disciplined management of a handful of men since you were a boy.' I must have been a stick or a stone not to be affected by such a picture."

This reads very much like a 'public dinner' oration; but it must be owned, that few towns excel Liverpool in those elements of greatness which are associated with the prosperity of a commercial nation. The same orator, when Mr. Erskine, and when advocating on one occasion the cause of the corporation in an action at law, said, that "This quondam village, now fit to be a proud capital for any empire in the world, has started up, like an enchanted palace, even in the memory of living men." It is not her dwellings and places of amusement; her churches, and colleges, and schools; her hospitals and houses of industry; her gardens and cemeteries—it is not these that mark out Liverpool for notice other towns equal, nay excel it, in these particulars. But it is the endless chain of commercial transactions; the intercourse maintained with all climates and all nations; the transfer of all the products of industry from those spots where they are in excess, to others where they are deficient: these form the true claims of Liverpool to admiration.

Yet her buildings and institutions generally form a most varied and extensive system; and as we have already noticed the great commercial features, so may we now glance round the town generally.

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE TOWN.

northward; so that this direction has a prevailing influence on the course taken by the principal streets. Yet is this course by no means a symmetrical one. The streets twist and twine one about another somewhat capriciously: there is not a good, honest, open avenue leading from east to west, or from north to south, and pointing out to you clearly whither you are tending. Dale-street is a good central artery; but its eastern outlet splits off into London-road on the one hand, and Islington-road on the other. Scotland-road and Whitechapel give an entrance from the north to the heart of the town; but near the Custom-house this artery is lost in a maze of small streets. But if we really wish to obtain something like a theory of the streets the street-ology-of Liverpool, we cannot do better, perhaps, than imagine a semicircular space, having the Custom-house and the Exchange near the centre of the straight side, and the various clusters of streets having a general tendency to radiate from that spot as a centre. This is certainly a thoroughly com mercial theory of the streets; for as the Custom-house and the Exchange are the centre of Liverpool commerce, and as commerce is the soul of Liverpool, so nothing can be better than that her streets should point towards those busy haunts of merchants. If we do not interpret this view too literally and stringently, it will be found near enough to the truth to assist us in a ramble through the town. In the first place, there is the water-side range of streets running between the town generally and the vast chain of docks: Waterlooroad, Bath-street, New Quay, Goree Piazzas, and Wapping, all run in an irregular north and south line, near the middle of which is the Custom-house or Revenue-buildings; and not far from this the Exchange. Then, bending round from north to east, we find that Great Howard-street, Vauxhall-road, Marylebone, Scotland-road and Whitechapel, Evertoncrescent and Richmond-row, the streets leading from the Zoological Gardens and the Necropolis—all have a general bearing towards the great water-side nucleus. Then, again, Dale-street and Islington, London-road and Kensington, the streets leading from Edge-bill and the Botanic Gardens, Mount-pleasant and Oxfordstreet, the string of streets from Lord-street and Church-street to Brownlow-hill, Bold-street, Dukestreet, Park-lane-all of these, however indefinite the relation which they seem to bear to each other, point with more or less directness towards the commercial buildings and George's Dock, the centre of the dock system.