thousand persons. A portion of this octagon is fitted up as a Music-room, and other portions of the same building are devoted to the purposes of a laboratory, an apparatus-room, &c.; while beneath all these is a kitchen and a series of dining-rooms. 71. In June and July, 1843, an Exhibition of a very attractive kind took place in the various rooms and galleries of the College. It comprised an immense number of articles, specimens, and processes, illustrative of the mechanical and productive arts; a finer collection of pictures than had ever before been exhibited in Liverpool; and a variety of miscellaneous and curious objects. The exhibition (and a similar one has taken place in 1847) belonged to a class of which we shall speak somewhat more fully in connexion with the Mechanics' Institution. Such, then, is the Liverpool Collegiate Institution. It is, in fact, a large school, of which the first cost has been defrayed by subscription, but of which the annual maintenance will depend on fees from the scholars. But, whatever we call it-School, College, or Collegiate Institution-it is a worthy ornament to the public buildings or institutions of Liverpool; and if it march with the spirit of the times, it may have a wide career of usefulness. THE LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS. The Royal Institution is one of those societies now so prevalent in most of our towns, and calculated, under judicious management, of producing such good results, where a course midway between actual science and professed education is pursued,-where Art and Science and Literature are brought hand in hand. The Liverpool Royal Institution was projected in 1814; but three years elapsed before the proceedings actually commenced. On the 25th of November, 1817, William Roscoe-the Roscoe who earned for himself a European reputation, and whom Liverpool is justly proud to reckon among her sons-opened the Royal Institution with an inaugural discourse, on a subject which he was well qualified to illustrate-"The Origin and Vicissitudes of Literature, Science, and Art, and their Influence on the present state of Society." The building in which the objects of the Institution are carried out was formerly a large mansion belonging to a wealthy Liverpool merchant. It has schools, lectures, a most valuable museum, a library, a readingroom, an observatory; and a laboratory. The building serves not only for the Institution whose name it bears, but its lecture-rooms and other apartments also afford accommodation for various scientific, literary, and artistic societies of minor extent, such as the School of Design, the Literary and Philosophical Institution, the Natural History Society, the School of Medicine, and one or two others. As an architectural structure, the Royal Institution is of no mark: we must look to its spirit, rather than to its form. Liverpool has the credit of possessing the largest and finest and most successful Mechanics' Institution in England. Why it is that such institutions have in so many cases failed to realize the hopes of their founders, is a question too large to be entered upon here; but it is especially gratifying to think that this Society at Liverpool has, from the first, maintained its ground successfully, and has even acquired a degree of importance far beyond its earlier indications. The building itself, in which the business of the Institution is conducted, is, in like manner, far ahead of most of the kind in importance. In Mount-street, near the southern extremity of the town, is a large building with a massive stone front, having in the centre a bold tetrastyle Ionic portico: this is the Mechanics' Institution; of which the first stone was laid by Lord Brougham, in July, 1835. The Institution itself, however, dates back to the year 1825, when it was founded under the auspices and mainly through the exertions of Mr. Huskisson; and after having carried on its meetings for ten years, steps were taken to provide a building more worthy of the enlarged scope of the Institution. The Corporation gave the ground, and the expenses of the construction were defrayed by subscription. In March, 1837, an accidental fire nearly destroyed the interior: but the whole having been insured, the means were at hand to rebuild the damaged portion immediately; and the new building was formally opened on the 15th September, 1838. Since that date various additions have been made to the building; so that the entire expenditure has amounted to the munificent sum of £15,000. The internal arrangements of the building are on a large and complete scale, befitting the objects which it is to subserve. In the entrance-hall doors lead to the lecture-room, which is a commodious hall, capable of accommodating fifteen hundred persons. In other parts of the building are the apparatus-room, the mathematical and philosophical class-room, the library, the classical class-room, the language class-room, a sculpture-gallery and drawing class-room, a museum of natural history, and numerous other rooms for carrying on a very extensive course of instruction. This Institution is well worth a little steady attention, if only to show how much can be done by selfgoverning societies, when well managed. In the first place; for the payment of one guinea a year, the members are admitted to the lectures, the readingroom, the classes, and the use of the library, of twelve or fourteen thousand volumes. These members have also the right of admittance for their sons or apprentices, under certain restrictions as to age, to the lectures, the evening-schools, and the library, for the very humble payment of five shillings per annum; and, lastly, the wives and daughters of the members are admissible to the lectures and the library, at a payment of half a guinea annually. Provision is thus made for the intellectual advancement of young and old, male and female, under a system which seems to have stood the test of more than twenty years' experience. In some years the numbers of all these various classes of members have amounted to nearly 4,000. The instructional classes of the Institution are neither | engines, railways, and locomotives; glass-blowing and few in number nor frivolous in character. The evening pottery-working; and innumerable other examples of classes or schools are those which more particularly industry applied to useful purposes. Did the visitor form part of the system of the Society. In one of the love science and its associated wonders,-there were Annual Reports of the Committee of Management, such electrical machines and galvanic batteries, air-pumps, a list of educational classes is enumerated as must and pneumatic troughs, oxyhydrogen microscopes and excite surprise in the minds of those to whom this daguerreotypes; and the best feature about it was, subject is new! "The evening schools consist, at that every machine or piece of apparatus was, as far as present, of eighteen departments, conducted by twenty- possible, represented in action. Then, for the admirers six masters, and containing, in all, about 650 pupils, of fine arts,' there was a picture gallery, containing to whom instruction is afforded in English grammar, nearly three hundred pictures; a sculpture gallery, composition, geography, history, writing, arithmetic, containing casts from a vast number of the most emimathematics, navigation, chemistry, natural philosophy; nent antique sculptures; a room containing paintings the French, German, Latin, and Greek languages; by Liverpool artists, and portraits of Liverpool men; landscape drawing, practical, perspective, architectural, a gallery of three or four hundred engravings and mechanical, and naval architectural drawing; orna- water-colour drawings. Then, again, antiquities and mental and figure drawing; painting, modelling, curiosities were not forgotten; for in the play-ground vocal music, and rhetorical delivery." When it is of the High School, roofed in for the occasion, was borne in mind that any or all of these departments of exhibited the whole of Mr. Catlin's collection of North instruction are open to all the members; that they are American Indian curiosities; another room was lined open not merely for a limited period, but from year to with cases of autographs of distinguished personages; year; that the payment in return for this amounts only while two other rooms contained a collection of about to a few shillings a year; and yet, with all this, that it a thousand miscellaneous curiosities and antiquities, is a paying concern, in which each member can proudly some of them of great value. Lastly, natural history feel that he is not dependent on charity for the mental came in for a share of attention; for there was a mufood which he receives-we cannot but feel that such seum filled with various zoological, botanical, and an Institution is worthy of the age we live in; nay, in geological specimens. many points, runs a good deal in advance of the age. But besides the evening classes, there is an extensive system of day-schools, open not only to the sons and apprentices of members, but to boys who are not otherwise connected with the Institution. There are a Lower School and a Higher School, for different ages, different branches of instruction, and at different rates of payment. The organization is something akin to that of other large public schools; and as each school has nearly a hundred boys belonging to it, the number of masters engaged is large. The number of boys in these day-schools has sometimes amounted to nine hundred. One of the most pleasant features in connexion with this Institution are the occasional exhibitions of fine arts, manufactures, and natural history. One such, held in 1842, occupied twenty large rooms; and in the course of six weeks, no fewer than a hundred thousand persons visited it, whose payments for admission, after paying all expenses, left a clear sum of £2,000 for the benefit of the Institution. The objects collected on this occasion were almost countless they were contributed by societies, companies, corporate bodies, and private individuals, on loan, for this exhibition; and the occasion was not a bad one for testing the liberality and goodwill of those who came forward with the required aid. Was a visitor one who took pleasure in mechanical contrivances and manufactured specimens,-he found displayed before him, in the various rooms, weaving-looms, with weavers at work; letter-press and lithographic printing, bookbinding and engraving-all going busily on; stockingweaving and lace-making; models of ships, steam The Collegiate Institution, the Royal Institution, and the Mechanics' Institution, are the three bodies which mainly give the tone to the educational and scientific advancement of Liverpool, each one comprising within itself something more than a mere school. There are a number of other buildings and societies in Liverpool, whose arrangements bear more or less on similar pursuits. For instance, the Literary, Scientific, and Commercial Institution, founded in 1835, is intended for young men engaged in professional and commercial pursuits and comprises a news-room, library, gymnasium, museum, and classes for the study of languages, and other objects. The Athenaeum, situated in Churchstreet, is said to have been the first institution of the kind formed in the kingdom. It was projected by Dr. Rutter, but it was practically brought into operation chiefly through the exertions of William Roscoe, who entered heartily into its spirit. It is an institution, consisting of five hundred subscribers, who have the use of a news-room, a reading-room, and a fine library: it is, in fact, wholly of a literary, and not of a scientific or artistic, character. So, likewise, is the Lycaeum, a society occupying an Italian Ionic building, in Waterlooplace. This comprises a news-room and a library, which, however, oddly enough, are wholly independent, and belong to a different body of subscribers. The library belonging to the Lycaeum is nearly eighty years old, and the collection of books is very large. A separate subscription of a guinea a year suffices for the service of a largely supplied news-room, news-room at the Exchange has already come in for a word of notice. The Union News-room, near the Revenue-buildings, is another of the same class. The The 223,054; of whom about 160,000 may be estimated to belong to the working classes; and of these it is well known that a large proportion inhabit courts and cellars, the remainder living in houses, or rooms to the front of the street. The courts, in which so many of the inhabitants of Liverpool reside, consist usually of two rows of houses placed opposite to each other, with an intervening space of from nine to fifteen feet, and having two to six or eight houses in each row. The court communicates with the street by a passage or archway about three feet wide, in the older courts, built up overhead; and the farther end being in many instances also closed by a high wall, or by the back or side of an adjoining building, the court forms, in fact, a cul-de-sac with a narrow opening. Such an arrangement almost bids defiance to the entrance of air, and renders its free circulation through the court a matter of impossibility . . . . . The houses themselves are three stories high, contain three rooms of about ten or eleven feet square; and being built back to back with the houses of adjoining courts, there is of course no thorough draught. An enumeration of the court and cellar population of the borough was made two years ago (this probably alluded to 1842), under the authority of the Town Council, when it appeared that there were in the parish of Liverpool 1982 courts, contain THE MERCHANTS AND THE PEOPLE-THEIR CONDITION. This notice of the literary institutions of Liverpool naturally leads to a few thoughts on the characteristics of the place. Mr. M'Culloch has remarked, that, "Owing to the rapid rise of Liverpool, its population consists, in a great degree, of adventurers; not merely from all parts of the United Kingdom, but of the world, attracted to it in the expectation-which in many instances has not been disappointed—of making a fortune. In such a society there is necessarily less prejudice, and fewer conventional and established observances, than in other and differently constituted towns. There is here, in fact, the greatest toleration of all sorts of individuals and all sorts of opinions. Exclusiveness in Liverpool is, generally speaking, entirely out of the question; and you meet everywhere with people of all grades, all occupations, and all countries. It would be idle in such a place to look for that polish, and careful avoidance of debateable and irritating topics, that distinguish more aristocratical socie-ing 10,692 houses, and 55,534 inhabitants; that is to ties; but, on the other hand, it is free from the sameness and insipidity which characterise the latter. The ostentatious display of wealth, made by a lucky hit in successful speculation, is sometimes, no doubt, offensive enough; but, on the whole, society in Liverpool is, for its variety and ease, superior to that in most other purely mercantile towns. The higher class of merchants, having connexions and correspondents in most parts of the world, are generally very well informed; and some of them are honourably distinguished by their taste in literature, science, and the fine arts. All classes are eminently enterprising (sometimes, perhaps, to excess), vigilant, and industrious, and possess, in a high degree, the qualities that go to form successful merchants and traders." It is only fair, while Liverpool and its princely merchants are engaging notice and admiration, to bear in mind that there are yet dark spots to be cleansed, moral blots to be removed, and a neglected, poorer class to be raised in the scale of humanity. While so many benevolent institutions exist in Liverpool, and so large a sum of money is annually expended in their support, it must have been mortifying to the inhabitants to find the result of the "Health of Towns" commission in 1844,-a result which startled most persons by its unfavourable tendency. Dr. Duncan, in a "Report on the Physical Cause of the high Rate of Mortality in Liverpool," which the commissioners included among their documents, gave a sketch of the poorer parts of the town, which certainly ought not to be overlooked in a general estimate of Liverpool : "The population of the parish of Liverpool," says Dr. Duncan, "by the census of 1841, amounted to say, more than one-fourth of the whole parochial population, or more than one-third of the working classes, were resident in courts." Such are the courts: now for the cellars :-" The cellars are ten or twelve feet square; generally flagged but frequently having only the bare earth for a floor, and sometimes less than six feet in height. There is frequently no window; so that light and air can gain access to the cellars only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than the level of the street. In such cellars ventilation is out of the question. They are, of course, dark, and, from the defective drainage, they are also very generally damp. There is sometimes a back cellar, used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the external atmosphere, and deriving its scanty supply of light and air solely from the first apartment. The enumeration already alluded to showed that there were, in the twelve wards forming the parish of Liverpool, 6,294 inhabited cellars, containing 20,168 inhabitants, exclusive of the inhabited cellars in courts (of which there were 621, containing, probably, 2,000 inhabitants)." This is sad work. 20,000 inhabitants living in underground cellars; and 55,000 more living in narrow courts, almost wholly without ventilation! The courts and cellars, too, are almost utterly without drains; and, even in the open and public streets of the town, amounting to about 57 miles in length, there are (or were then) actually 32 miles of street without any sewers at all! Of the streets inhabited by the working classes, not more than one in five is sewered. These streets are, to a very large extent, composed of lodging-houses, in which every room is let out to any and all comers, under a system full of mischief both to mind and body. And when, as sometimes happens, temporary causes lead to an influx of poor Irish to a greater extent than usual, the results are quite deplorable, for each court and cellar becomes the centre of an atmosphere of fever and misery. We have before said, that, when Liverpool gives herself a task to accomplish, she enters on it with a gigantic spirit. Here we have a call for the best that the energies of her merchants can accomplish. And it is only just to say that very enlarged schemes of social improvement are now in course of development, bearing more or less on the well-being of the humbler classes. Three years have elapsed since the gloomy disclosures respecting the cellar and court population were made; and they have not been years of idleness. Building Acts, Drainage Acts, Water Companies, Gas Companies, Public Parks-all point to various phases of sanatory improvements. Not fewer than a dozen Acts of Parliament were obtained by the Corporation between the years 1842 and 1846, all bearing upon this matter. The most important of these was obtained immediately after the condition of the courts and cellars first became publicly known; giving power to the Corporate surveyors to exercise such a supervision over the construction and condition of the poorer class of houses, as must necessarily by degrees lessen the deplorable scenes that formerly occurred. When, therefore, we speak of these sad social disarrangements, let us hope that we may do so as of things that have been, rather than as existent usages. Let us now proceed on our walk through the busy town. The schools, of the usual varieties and grades, are very numerous. The Corporation, National, and Infant-Schools; the Church of England, the Kirk of Scotland, the Roman Catholic, the Unitarian, and the Quaker schools; the Sunday-schools, of which one is attached to almost every place of worship-all amount to a considerable number. Besides these, there are the "dame-schools," a class which society is frowning out of countenance, and the former existence of which will one day be a matter of astonishment to us. There are only a few of the Liverpool schools that present attractions for the eye. The oldest place of the kind in Liverpool is the Blue-coat School, which was founded in 1709, and which has now occupied one building for a period of a hundred and twenty years. It is a plain building, of red brick, situated a little eastward of the Revenue-buildings; and if its exterior is unadorned, its interior is at least commodious, for it affords entire support to three or four hundred children. Among the new buildings which the Corporation have undertaken to construct, and of which many were enumerated in a former page, schools of various kinds bear a notable part; and we may expect to see, year by year, new evidences of the awakened spirit of society in this matter. THE CHARITABLE AND CURATIVE INSTITUTIONS. Some of the buildings of Liverpool, devoted to charitable or correctional or curative purposes, are fine structures. Far to the east of the central part of the town, and not far from the Zoological Gardens, is the West Derby Union Workhouse, West Derby being one of the county divisions of this part of Lancashire. It is a large structure, and very conspicuous as seen by a person leaving Liverpool by the Islington and Brunswick roads. Situated rather nearer to the busy haunts of the town, south-east of the railway-station, is the Liverpool Workhouse, which has, we believe, the reputation of being the largest establishment of the kind in the kingdom. It is a brick structure, having a central compartment and two wings, and a large range of apartments occupied by inmates engaged in various industrial avocations. The Blind School, situated in London-road, was founded as an institution nearly sixty years ago; but the building itself dates from 1800. It is a plain, stone-fronted, substantial structure, comprising salerooms, refectories, dormitories, workshops, &c. "The pupils," we are informed in a local Guide Book, "are principally taught spinning and basket-making; the weaving of rugs; the manufacturing of thread, fishlines, and many other handicraft arts. They are also instructed in music, to qualify them for organists, and are familiarized with a new method of teaching music to others; and such has been the proficiency to which they have attained, that a considerable number have been pronounced competent to that office. Religious and moral tuition is sedulously afforded to them; and every domestic comfort is provided for, in the excellent arrangements of the institution. It is true that each blind one might say— 'Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of eve or morn, but Providence seems kindly to have compensated them for the loss of one sense, by increased activity and power of those remaining; for a more happy, merry, chattering crew can scarcely be seen than this blind family of the Liverpool Asylum." The Deaf and Dumb School, situated in the northeast part of the town, is a neat modern building, fitted for the reception of a much smaller number of inmates than the Blind School. This spot is a very centre for charitable institutions. If we place ourselves in the street called Mount Pleasant, and look around us, we shall find, within a furlong's distance, a greater number of such institutions than is to be met with, perhaps, in an equal space in any other town. Some of those already noticed are within this small circle. Among others is the House of Recovery, a large, plain, stone structure, built in 1806, for the reception of poor persons afflicted with contagious disorders. Another is the Lunatic Asylum, a fine stone structure, erected, a few years ago, from the designs of Mr. Foster, whose name is connected with the architecture of Liverpool as much as |