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Hall. We will dream of Wharncliffe and Wharncliffe only. Well! the day is nearly spent. We must away to the railway-station. Positively, the situation of this station is beautiful. The Don beneath; bold woods in front; an arm of the river coming broadly from the inland, no doubt a crawling brook upward, and here making a little lake-a bright line of stepping-stones crossing its shallows, and showing us a touch of human affection in the stalwart countryman who is tenderly helping a little girl over the slippery path. That gleam of yellow light, too, upon that white cherry-tree -and-the train is here! In two minutes we are talking of the price of cattle and the rise in wheat. There is much knowledge to be picked up in a second class railway-carriage, where the farmer and the tradesman are not bound up in those horrid conventionalities which make the would-be-genteel afraid to speak to each other. Never mind. Even the parvenus will grow wiser some day, and learn to be frank, and manly,

and inquiring, from those they think beneath them, who are beginning to know realities from shadows. The train is at Sheffield.

We shall remember this spring walk through Wharncliffe. There are little accidental effects of loveliness which sometimes present themselves during such a day as this, undefinable, not to be described, but never to be forgotten. Sheffield's own beautiful poet, in his verses, 'The Little Cloud '-verses suggested by remembrances of Wharncliffe has described such an accidental heightening of the ordinary charms of a noble landscape. We adopt his sentiment:

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"The day on which that cloud appear'd,
Exhilarating scenes endear'd;
And made it in a thousand ways
A day amongst a thousand days
That share with clouds the common lot;
They come,-they go,-they are forgot!
This, like that plaything of the sun,-
The little, lovely, lonely one,
This lives within me; this shall be
A part of my eternity."

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BIRKENHEAD.

THERE is a little corner of Cheshire, a far-off corner, where priors and monks were once the great men ; where all that was important derived value from those religious solitaries. That same little corner of the county, when a rude hand had violently thrust aside the religious communities with their faults and their virtues alike, became almost a blank in the social system it was scarcely known or cared for beyond the margin of its own narrow precincts. That same little corner once again rears its head into importance; but in a far different spirit from that manifested in its ancient days. The cell, and the cowl, and the refectory-all are gone: we have, instead of them, the steam-engine and the railway, the dock and the warehouse, the ship and the locomotive; and though we may have lost the primitive simplicity of early days, we are being taught a lesson how social comfort, as well as public wealth, admit of being advanced by the science and the art of the nineteenth century.

This little corner of Cheshire, which has astonished not only its own county, but every other county, by the rapidity of its progress, is occupied by BIRKENHEAD.

town.

It is rarely that we have an opportunity to see the birth of a town. A town may extend in length and breadth; or new channels of commercial prosperity may be opened to it; or it may become the recipient of new municipal or electoral privileges-all these changes may occur; yet there are but few cases in "the Land we live in" where we can point back to a time when, for certainty, the town really began to exist. In some instances, the proud baron of the feudal times may be regarded as the creator of the He built his lofty and sternly-fashioned castle on the com.nanding height of a hill, perhaps overlooking a fertile plain below. He gathered near him his vassals and retainers, for whose accommodation houses were built around the castle; and for the sustenance of whom, artificers and traders and agriculturists were employed. In process of time these traders and artificers, these retainers and vassals, found themselves possessed of a certain amount of power: the sovereign was frequently well inclined to use such agents as a means to lower the influence of the feudal baron: money, the sinews of all war and conquest and political power, was supplied by them; and it was in the nature of things that a needy monarch—even if influenced by no other motives-would willingly grant charters and various political and commercial and manufacturing privileges, in return for the welcome subsidy or tax which the townsmen might undertake to furnish. Many an existing English town could point to such a birth and growth as this: the castle, perhaps in ruins, still stands; but it is as one of the "lions" of the place a very peaceful lion indeed, which has lost all its dread power, and is now venerable only from the associations that connect it with by-gone times.

feudal times was the creator of the town. Such abbeys as those which exist, either in ruins or in remembrance, at Reading, at Bolton, at Crowland, at Glastonbury, were all-powerful in their neighbourhood: the whole country, perhaps for miles round, belonged to them; and the revenues were most princely. The local historian might show, on a large scale, what Edwin Landseer has so admirably shown on a minor scale, in his "Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time;" viz., the pouring in of dues and rents, gifts and offerings, from all quarters. All the dwellers near such an abbey were as much the subjects of, and dependent upon, the abbot, as on the feudal barons in other instances; and in many cases it was not until the suppression of monastic establishments, in the time of Henry VIII., that the tenants of an abbey found themselves possessed of sufficient control over their own movements, to establish their town on an independent basis.

Or it may be in the power of townsmen to trace back their town to the ages when the Romans were in Britain: they may find a camp or a wall, a piece of tesselated pavement, or a collection of buried urns or vessels, which tell of Roman work, and show that their town has undergone social revolutions. Or, perchance, knowing nothing of barons or abbots or Romans, a town may have grown up insensibly, from a small fishing or agricultural or mining or manufacturing village, without having any exact record of its first introduction as one of the members of the social community.

Now it is as a contrast to all this that Birkenhead appeals to us. It wants neither Romans nor kings nor barons to introduce itself to our notice. It is, like Crewe, Wolverton, and Swindon-a creation of our own day. If we were to say that all four have sprung from the steam-engine, it would be so nearly the truth as to need but little in the way of qualification. The very name of Birkenhead was unknown to the majority of persons four or five years ago. There was, it is true, and has been for a long time, a Cheshire village of that name; but the sudden formation of this village into a commercial town is a phenomenon peculiarly fitting to these railroad days.

Let us settle two questions at once, before we take the reader to Birkenhead." Is Birkenhead finished as a commercial town?"-" Will Birkenhead ruin Liverpool ?"-Birkenhead is not finished; and Birkenhead will ruin Liverpool when Southwark ruins London— probably not before. It is necessary to check a little the enthusiastic wonder and astonishment which the recent proceedings at Birkenhead have engendered; for an inattentive reader might infer from them that the greatness of the town already exists in a developed form, and that the vast docks are laden with forests of shipping that would otherwise lie in the docks of Liverpool. This requires a distinction to be drawn between the present and the future: there are, as we Or it may be that one of the powerful abbots of shall see, many features of a most interesting character

already observable at Birkenhead; but the great scheme or theory of the town, if we may so express it, will be developed only by degrees, in future years; and it is the comprehensiveness of this theory, as yet only partially brought into practice, which so peculiarly marks it as the birth of a commercial era.

Now to trace rapidly what has been done, is doing, and will yet be done, in this busy nook of Cheshire.

BIRKENHEAD AS A VILLAGE.

The local historians of the county find much, in the names of particular places in and near Birkenhead, to support the opinion that a forest covered this region in ancient times. Birken (birchen) haven, Wood-church, Wood-side, the syllable Wal or Walt (grove or wood) in Wallasey-all belong to the neighbourhood. At Leasowe Castle, not far distant from Birkenhead, there is an old rhyme recording the fact, that in ancient days

"From Birchen haven to Hilbre

A squirrel might hop from tree to tree."

Indeed there are other proofs that an almost continuous forest existed, from the Ribble in the north to the Dee in the south. To Edward III. has been attributed the act of disforesting this region.

monarchs.

The whole of the peninsula included between the Mersey and the Dee formed a baronial territory in the days when feudal lords were all-paramount. It was possessed, after the Norman conquest, by Gherbaud, a noble Fleming; then by one Hugues d'Avranches, whose ferocity gained for him the cognomen of Le Loup, or the Wolf. At that period the banks of the Mersey were so dangerous, from the existence of sands and shoals, that very little shipping sailed thence; and the shores of the Dee became the point of departure for English troops, at the time when the conquest of Ireland began to engage the thoughts of the English The peninsula of North Cheshire came thus more and more into notice; and about the year 1170 a priory was established at the spot now known as Birkenhead, for sixteen monks of the Benedictine order. It is said that fragments of a gable-end, and of two chimneys, still remain to mark the spot where this priory was built. One hardly knows whether to wish to see time-worn ruins in the heart of a busy town, hemmed in by brick houses on all sides: there is a kind of melancholy effect about it. A green field, or a woodland, or a pleasant valley, seems a better home for such venerable relics. A ruined abbey in a busy street is like an old man jostled and elbowed by young disrespectful urchins, who can neither understand him nor humour him.

The Earls of Chester had a parliament; and the priors of Birkenhead sat in this parliament as palatinate nobles. The priors, among other possessions, held the ferry which has ever since been known as the "Monks' Ferry," across the Mersey to Lancashire, and which was granted to them by charter in 1282. How the sixteen monks appropriated the large revenues of the establishment, is a tale for other times to tell; but

they seem to have been artificers as well as monks; for the records of Liverpool contain an entry,-" Paid for byndynge of a boke, to a monk of Byrket, ii shillings."

On the dissolution of the monasteries, the greater part of the Birkenhead Priory estate was granted to a member of the Wortley family; it afterwards became possessed by the Powells, then by the Clevelands, and lastly by one of the numerous Welsh families of the Prices. Yet, all this time Birkenhead remained a most insignificant place. Even twenty years ago only, it contained but a few straggling houses, on a bleak and rather dreary-looking coast.

What, then, has been the mainspring of the prospective greatness of Birkenhead?

sea.

WALLASEY POOL, THE MOTHER OF THE NEW DOCKS. A map of Cheshire will show that the north-western part of that county forms a curiously-shaped peninsula, bounded on the north-east by the Mersey, on the south-west by the Dee, and on the north-west by the So far as the eye can detect, the Dee is quite as well fitted for commerce as the Mersey: its estuary is very much wider, and Chester is not so far from its mouth as to seem beyond the reach of shipping. Consequently we find that Chester was an important commercial city when Liverpool and its neighbours on the Mersey were all but unknown. But unfortunately for the supremacy of the old city, the Dee became by degrees so much choked up with sand, that navigation was brought nearly to an end; and the citizens had to cut an artificial channel, nine miles in length, along the marshes, in order to keep up any connection at all with the sea. At high water, the mouth of the Dee forms a noble estuary, three miles in width; but at ebb tide it is nearly dry, and resembles an extensive dreary waste, covered with sand and ooze, through which the river runs in a narrow and insignificant stream.

Commerce, being thus shoaled out from the Dee, left old-fashioned Chester, and took refuge in the Mersey; where Liverpool has shown what wonders may be effected by untiring energy even on a shore troubled by many sand-banks and shallow spots. We propose not here to dwell upon these Liverpool marvels: our search is for a certain small stream which flows

into the Mersey very near its mouth, from the Cheshire side. This is the Wallasey. All parties, historians and geologists, agree that the two counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, at one period, nearly joined where the Mersey now exists; and that the wide estuary of the Mersey has been formed (geologically speaking, in a comparatively modern period) by some irruption of the sea. The estuary is believed to have been a sort of bog or morass, through which the narrow river flowed; but it is difficult now to say what connexion the ancient Wallasey Pool had with this morass. is enough for our purpose to know, that at the present time, (or rather before the commencement of the recent

It

operations) Wallasey Pool, situated a little to the north-west of the village of Birkenhead, was a low swampy spot, forming the estuary of a small river which emptied itself into the Mersey. The land had for ages not only been waste, but the tide had ebbed and flowed over it, without any effort having been made to reclaim the one or enclose the other.

This swampy spot became the germ of the prosperity of Birkenhead. The name of Laird has for somewhat above twenty years been closely connected with all that concerns Birkenhead; and to the same name must we attach the largest share in the operations that led to the changes at Wallasey Pool. The late Mr. Laird, an iron ship-builder at Liverpool, purchased in 1824, of the lord of the manor of Birkenhead, several acres of land on the shores of the Pool, for the establishment of a ship-building yard; and it is said that he paid about fourpence per square yard for the land so purchased. From the outset he had been convinced that Wallasey Pool was admirably calculated to furnish at noble series of Docks; and very soon after the establishment of the ship-yard he, in conjunction with Sir John Tobin, purchased largely from the lord of the manor, and had the Pool carefully surveyed by Telford, Stevenson, and Nimmo. These eminent engineers confirmed the correctness of Mr. Laird's opinion, by reporting most favourably of the capabilities of the Pool. The corporation of Liverpool, seeing the importance of the place, bought up nearly all the land surrounding the Pool, and were willing to give to Mr. Laird nine times as much for his land as he had paid for it three years before. Whether the corporation intended to make docks there, or whether they bought up the land to prevent docks from being made there, we will not stop to inquire; but certain it is, that nearly twenty years elapsed before anything was done in furtherance of the original scheme for the docks. In the mean time, steps were being taken to place Birkenhead itself on a more respectable footing as a town. It was for many ages extra-parochial, and a chapelry in the parish of Bidstone. But an Act of Parliament was obtained, constituting it a township under the government of Commissioners; and by a later enactment the neighbouring township of Claughton-cum-Grange, and part of the township of Oxton, were placed within the jurisdiction of the Commissioners thereby making Birkenhead, as a whole, cover an area of two square miles-the greater part of which is left for the future to build upon, rather than already built. Step by step the Commissioners proceeded to establish the town on something like a fair basis. In 1833 various powers were granted to them in respect to paving, watching, police, and markets; in 1841 the supply of water and of gas were arranged; in 1842 the Commissioners purchased the whole of the manorial rights relating to the Woodside Ferry-the most important of the numerous ferries across the Mersey, as being the nearest to Liverpool; and in 1844 they purchased the very ancient Monks' Ferry. A railway, too, the Chester and Birkenhead, was sanctioned in 1837, and

opened in 1840; thus placing the new-born town within an hour's distance of the net-work of railways covering the centre of England.

How all this was done-how a village, which till that time had neither corporate nor electoral privileges, could thus establish itself in all the dignity of a town, will be better explained in a later page, when a few other matters have been made familiar. Suffice it here to bear in mind, that silently and slowly the humble little village raised itself, until lordly Liverpool could not but look upon it as a neighbour, worthy, at least, of a glance from time to time. It was not the Giant and the Dwarf; for a dwarf always so remains; it was the noble tree and the sapling, the latter of whom might aspire to become a noble tree.

RENDEL'S PLAN FOR THE GIGANTIC Docks.

All was tending to one common result. The elements for a commercial town were gradually becoming grouped together; and in 1843 the bold step was taken to which Birkenhead will mainly owe whatever of prosperity the future may have in store for her. Messrs. Laird, Potter, and Jackson-names intimately connected with all that concerns the present condition of Birkenhead commenced negotiations with the corporation of Liverpool, having for their object to purchase back the land which had been sold to the corporation sixteen years before. A hundred thousand square yards were thus sold, at ten shillings per square yard (the price in 1824 having been fourpence, and in 1827 three shillings!); the conditions being, that the purchasers should have permission to make docks, slips, or basins, or other similar works, without any obstruction on the part of the corporation. In the following year the Liverpool corporation, actuated as it would seem by an impression that a good market was open for their land, offered the remainder of their Birkenhead estate for sale by public auction; but as they attached to the sale a condition that no docks should be constructed on the ground, no biddings were offered. Shortly afterwards, the restriction being withdrawn, six hundred thousand square yards of land were purchased by the same parties as before; and preparations were immediately made for bringing the scheme of the new Docks before Parliament.

Mr. Rendel, whose engineering works had often had relation to ports and harbours, was employed to make out a comprehensive plan for the whole. The plan which he proposed was a grand and imposing one. There was to be a sea or river-wall extending from Seacombe-Ferry to Woodside-Ferry, in the portion of Birkenhead immediately opposite the centre of Liverpool. The lower part of the Wallasey, just before its junction with the Mersey, was to be formed into a magnificent floating dock, called the Great Float, covering an area of 150 acres ; deepened to such a degree, and so provided with quays on either side, as to afford accommodation for an immense amount of

shipping and merchandize. At about midway in the

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