University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.

Among the odd volumes in my father's library, was a
collection of old European and English guide-books, which
he had bought on his travels, a great many years ago. In
my childhood, I went through many courses of studying
them, and never tired of gazing at the numerous quaint
embellishments and plates, and staring at the strange title-pages,
some of which I thought resembled the mustached
faces of foreigners.

Among others was a Parisian-looking, faded, pink-covered
pamphlet, the rouge here and there effaced upon its now
thin and attenuated cheeks, entitled, “Voyage Descriptif et
Philosophique de L'Ancien et du Nouveau Paris: Miroir
Fidèle;” also a time-darkened, mossy old book, in marbleized
binding, much resembling verd-antique, entitled, “Itinéraire
Instructif de Rome, ou Description Générale des Monumens
Antiques et Modernes et des Ouvrages les plus Remarquables
de Peinteur, de Sculpture, et de Architecture de cette
Célébre Ville;” on the russet title-page is a vignette representing
a barren rock, partly shaded by a scrub-oak (a forlorn
bit of landscape), and under the lee of the rock and the
shade of the tree, maternally reclines the houseless foster-mother
of Romulus and Remus, giving suck to the illustrious
twins; a pair of naked little cherubs sprawling on the ground,
with locked arms, eagerly engaged at their absorbing occupation;
a large cactus-leaf or diaper hangs from a bough,
and the wolf looks a good deal like one of the no-horn breed
of barn-yard cows; the work is published “Avec privilege

du Souverain Pontife.” There was also a velvet-bound
old volume, in brass clasps, entitled, “The Conductor through
Holland,” with a plate of the Stadt House; also a venerable
“Picture of London,” abounding in representations of St.
Paul's, the Monument, Temple-Bar, Hyde-Park-Corner, the
Horse Guards, the Admiralty, Charing-Cross, and Vauxhall
Bridge. Also, a bulky book, in a dusty-looking yellow cover,
reminding one of the paneled doors of a mail-coach, and
bearing an elaborate title-page, full of printer's flourishes, in
emulation of the cracks of a four-in-hand whip, entitled, in
part, “The Great Roads, both direct and cross, throughout
England and Wales, from an actual Admeasurement by
order of His Majesty's Postmaster-General: This work
describes the Cities, Market and Borough and Corporate
Towns, and those at which the Assizes are held, and gives
the time of the Mails' arrival and departure from each:
Describes the Inns in the Metropolis from which the stages
go, and the Inns in the country which supply post-horses
and carriages: Describes the Noblemen and Gentlemen's
Seats situate near the Road, with Maps of the Environs
of London, Bath, Brighton, and Margate.” It is dedicated
“To the Right Honorable the Earls of Chesterfield and
Leicester, by their Lordships' Most Obliged, Obedient, and
Obsequious Servant, John Cary, 1798.” Also a green
pamphlet, with a motto from Virgil, and an intricate coat
of arms on the cover, looking like a diagram of the Labyrinth
of Crete, entitled, “A Description of York, its Antiquities
and Public Buildings, particularly the Cathedral; compiled
with great pains from the most authentic records.”
Also a small scholastic-looking volume, in a classic vellum
binding, and with a frontispiece bringing together at one
view the towers and turrets of King's College and the magnificent
Cathedral of Ely, though geographically sixteen miles
apart, entitled, “The Cambridge Guide: its Colleges, Halls,
Libraries, and Museums, with the Ceremonies of the Town
and University, and some account of Ely Cathedral.”
Also a pamphlet, with a japaned sort of cover, stamped with
a disorderly higgledy-piggledy group of pagoda-looking structures,
claiming to be an accurate representation of the “North
or Grand Front of Blenheim,” and entitled, “A Description
of Blenheim, the Seat of His Grace the Duke of
Marlborough; containing a full account of the Paintings,
Tapestry, and Furniture: a Picturesque Tour of the
Gardens and Parks, and a General Description of the
Famous China Gallery, &c.; with an Essay on Landscape
Gardening; and embellished with a View of the
Palace, and a New and Elegant Plan of the Great
Park.” And lastly, and to the purpose, there was a volume
called “THE PICTURE OF LIVERPOOL.”

It was a curious and remarkable book; and from the
many fond associations connected with it, I should like to
immortalize it, if I could.

But let me get it down from its shrine, and paint it, if I
may, from the life.

As I now linger over the volume, to and fro turning the
pages so dear to my boyhood,—the very pages which, years
and years ago, my father turned over amid the very scenes
that are here described; what a soft, pleasing sadness steals
over me, and how I melt into the past and forgotten!

Dear book! I will sell my Shakspeare, and even sacrifice
my old quarto Hogarth, before I will part with you.
Yes, I will go to the hammer myself, ere I send you to be
knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles. I will, my beloved,—old
family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf
from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf
somewhere, though I have no bench for myself.

In size, it is what the booksellers call an 18mo; it is
bound in green morocco, which from my earliest recollection
has been spotted and tarnished with time; the corners are
marked with triangular patches of red, like little cocked
hats; and some unknown Goth has inflicted an incurable
wound upon the back. There is no lettering outside; so

that he who lounges past my humble shelves, seldom dreams
of opening the anonymous little book in green. There it
stands; day after day, week after week, year after year;
and no one but myself regards it. But I make up for all
neglects, with my own abounding love for it.

But let us open the volume.

What are these scrawls in the fly-leaves? what incorrigible
pupil of a writing-master has been here? what crayon
sketcher of wild animals and falling air-castles? Ah, no!
—these are all part and parcel of the precious book, which
go to make up the sum of its treasure to me.

Some of the scrawls are my own; and as poets do with
their juvenile sonnets, I might write under this horse,
“Drawn at the age of three years,” and under this autograph,
“Executed at the age of eight.”

Others are the handiwork of my brothers, and sisters,
and cousins; and the hands that sketched some of them are
now moldered away.

But what does this anchor here? this ship? and this
sea-ditty of Dibdin's? The book must have fallen into the
hands of some tarry captain of a forecastle. No: that
anchor, ship, and Dibdin's ditty are mine; this hand drew
them; and on this very voyage to Liverpool. But not so
fast; I did not mean to tell that yet.

Full in the midst of these pencil scrawlings, completely
surrounded indeed, stands in indelible, though faded ink, and
in my father's hand-writing, the following:—

Walter Redburn.

Riddough's Royal Hotel,
Liverpool, March 20th, 1808.

Turning over that leaf, I come upon some half-effaced
miscellaneous memoranda in pencil, characteristic of a
methodical mind, and therefore indubitably my father's,
which he must have made at various times during his stay
in Liverpool. These are full of a strange, subdued, old,
midsummer interest to me: and though, from the numerous

effacements, it is much like cross-reading to make them out;
yet, I must here copy a few at random:—

                   

	£	s.	d.
Guide-Book		3	6
Dinner at the Star and Garter		10
Trip to Preston (distance 31m.)	2	6	3
Gratuities		4
Hack		4	6
Thompson's Seasons		5
Library		1
Boat on the river		6
Port wine and cigars		4

And on the opposite page, I can just decipher the following:

Dine with Mr. Roscoe on Monday.

Call upon Mr. Morille same day.

Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday.

Theatre Friday night—Richard III. and new farce.

Present letter at Miss L—'s on Tuesday.

Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday.

Get my draft on London cashed.

Write home by the Princess.

Letter bag at Sampson and Wilt's.

Turning over the next leaf, I unfold a map, which in the
midst of the British Arms, in one corner displays in sturdy
text, that this is “A Plan of the Town of Liverpool.” But
there seems little plan in the confined and crooked looking
marks for the streets, and the docks irregularly scattered
along the bank of the Mersey, which flows along, a peaceful
stream of shaded line engraving.

On the northeast corner of the map, lies a level Sahara
of yellowish white: a desert, which still bears marks of my
zeal in endeavoring to populate it with all manner of uncouth
monsters in crayons. The space designated by that spot is
now, doubtless, completely built up in Liverpool.

Traced with a pen, I discover a number of dotted lines,
radiating in all directions from the foot of Lord-street, where
stands marked “Riddough's Hotel,” the house my father
stopped at.

These marks delineate his various excursions in the town;
and I follow the lines on, through street and lane; and
across broad squares; and penetrate with them into the
narrowest courts.

By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his
religion in a foreign land; but attended St. John's Church
near the Hay-market, and other places of public worship: I
see that he visited the News Room in Duke-street, the
Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that
he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the
historian, poet, and banker.

Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the
Town Hall, and come upon the Title Page, which, in the
middle, is ornamented with a piece of landscape, representing
a loosely clad lady in sandals, pensively seated upon a bleak
rock on the sea shore, supporting her head with one hand,
and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval sort
of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this
motto elastically stretched for a border—“Deus nobis hæc
otia fecit.”

The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary
representation of a now extinct fowl, called the “Liver,”
said to have inhabited a “pool,” which antiquarians assert
once covered a good part of the ground where Liverpool now
stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool derives
its name.

At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship
under full sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small
man, vainly essaying to roll over a huge bale of goods.

Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is
the following title complete; but I fear the printer will not
be able to give a fac-simile:—

The
Picture
of
Liverpool:
or,
Stranger's Guide
and
Gentleman's Pocket Companion
FOR THE TOWN.

Embellished
With Engravings
By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists.

Liverpool:
Printed in Swift's Court,
And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St.

1803.

A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all
the time bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception
accorded to previous editions of the work; and quotes
“testimonies of respect which had lately appeared in various
quarters—the British Critic, Review, and the seventh volume
of the Beauties of England and Wales”—and concludes
by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and
illustrated edition might “render it less unworthy of the
public notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is
intended to illustrate.”

A very nice, dapper, and respectful little preface, the time
and place of writing which is solemnly recorded at the end
—Hope Place, 1st Sept. 1803.

But how much fuller my satisfaction, as I fondly linger

over this circumstantial paragraph, if the writer had recorded
the precise hour of the day, and by what time-piece;
and if he had but mentioned his age, occupation, and name.

But all is now lost; I know not who he was; and this
estimable author must needs share the oblivious fate of all
literary incognitos.

He must have possessed the grandest and most elevated
ideas of true fame, since he scorned to be perpetuated by a
solitary initial. Could I find him out now, sleeping neglected
in some churchyard, I would buy him a head-stone, and record
upon it naught but his title-page, deeming that his
noblest epitaph.

After the preface, the book opens with an extract from a
prologue written by the excellent Dr. Aiken, the brother of
Mrs. Barbauld, upon the opening of the Theater Royal,
Liverpool, in 1772:—

Indeed, throughout, the work abounds with quaint poetical
quotations, and old-fashioned classical allusions to the æneid
and Falconer's Shipwreck.

And the anonymous author must have been not only a
scholar and a gentleman, but a man of gentle disinterestedness,
combined with true city patriotism; for in his “Survey
of the Town” are nine thickly printed pages of a neglected
poem by a neglected Liverpool poet.

By way of apologizing for what might seem an obtrusion
upon the public of so long an episode, he courteously and
feelingly introduces it by saying, that “the poem has now
for several years been scarce, and is at present but little
known; and hence a very small portion of it will no doubt

be highly acceptable to the cultivated reader; especially as
this noble epic is written with great felicity of expression
and the sweetest delicacy of feeling.”

Once, but once only, an uncharitable thought crossed my
mind, that the author of the Guide-Book might have been the
author of the epic. But that was years ago; and I have
never since permitted so uncharitable a reflection to insinuate
itself into my mind.

This epic, from the specimen before me, is composed in
the old stately style, and rolls along commanding as a coach
and four. It sings of Liverpool and the Mersey; its docks,
and ships, and warehouses, and bales, and anchors; and after
descanting upon the abject times, when “his noble waves,
inglorious, Mersey rolled,” the poet breaks forth like all
Parnassus with:—

It also contains a delicately-curtained allusion to Mr.
Roscoe:—

Indeed, both the anonymous author of the Guide-Book,
and the gifted bard of the Mersey, seem to have nourished
the warmest appreciation of the fact, that to their beloved
town Roscoe imparted a reputation which gracefully
embellished its notoriety as a mere place of commerce. He

is called the modern Guicciardini of the modern Florence,
and his histories, translations, and Italian Lives, are spoken
of with classical admiration.

The first chapter begins in a methodical, business-like
way, by informing the impatient reader of the precise latitude
and longitude of Liverpool; so that, at the outset, there
may be no misunderstanding on that head. It then goes on
to give an account of the history and antiquities of the town,
beginning with a record in the Doomsday-Book of William
the Conqueror.

Here, it must be sincerely confessed, however, that notwithstanding
his numerous other merits, my favorite author
betrays a want of the uttermost antiquarian and penetrating
spirit, which would have scorned to stop in its researches at
the reign of the Norman monarch, but would have pushed
on resolutely through the dark ages, up to Moses, the man
of Uz, and Adam; and finally established the fact beyond a
doubt, that the soil of Liverpool was created with the creation.

But, perhaps, one of the most curious passages in the
chapter of antiquarian research, is the pious author's moralizing
reflections upon an interesting fact he records: to wit,
that in A.D. 1571, the inhabitants sent a memorial to Queen
Elizabeth, praying relief under a subsidy, wherein they style
themselves “her majesty's poor decayed town of Liverpool.”

As I now fix my gaze upon this faded and dilapidated
old guide-book, bearing every token of the ravages of near
half a century, and read how this piece of antiquity enlarges
like a modern upon previous antiquities, I am forcibly reminded
that the world is indeed growing old. And when I
turn to the second chapter, “On the increase of the town, and
number of inhabitants,” and then skim over page after page
throughout the volume, all filled with allusions to the immense
grandeur of a place, which, since then, has more than
quadrupled in population, opulence, and splendor, and whose
present inhabitants must look back upon the period here

spoken of with a swelling feeling of immeasurable superiority
and pride, I am filled with a comical sadness at the vanity
of all human exaltation. For the cope-stone of to-day is the
corner-stone of to-morrow; and as St. Peter's church was
built in great part of the ruins of old Rome, so in all our
erections, however imposing, we but form quarries and supply
ignoble materials for the grander domes of posterity.

And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant
Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guide-books
are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose
future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach,
and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless
avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways
and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh.
From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River, where the
young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their
lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may
send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and
smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and
going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric
Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and
mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.

As I am extremely loth to omit giving a specimen of the
dignified style of this “Picture of Liverpool,” so different
from the brief, pert, and unclerkly hand-books to Niagara
and Buffalo of the present day, I shall now insert the chapter
of antiquarian researches; especially as it is entertaining
in itself, and affords much valuable, and perhaps rare
information, which the reader may need, concerning the famous
town, to which I made my first voyage. And I think
that with regard to a matter, concerning which I myself am
wholly ignorant, it is far better to quote my old friend
verbatim, than to mince his substantial baron-of-beef of
information into a flimsy ragout of my own; and so, pass it
off as original. Yes, I will render unto my honored guide-book
its due.

But how can the printer's art so dim and mellow down
the pages into a soft sunset yellow; and to the reader's eye,
shed over the type all the pleasant associations which the
original carries to me!

No! by my father's sacred memory, and all sacred privacies
of fond family reminiscences, I will not! I will not
quote thee, old Morocco, before the cold face of the marble-hearted
world; for your antiquities would only be skipped
and dishonored by shallow-minded readers; and for me, I
should be charged with swelling out my volume by plagiarizing
from a guide-book—the most vulgar and ignominious
of thefts!