The manufacturers of Manchester know much more about cotton than do Southern planters in the United States. They know each spring how much cotton is planted. They study carefully the crop prospects. They have approximately correct ideas as to what the yield will be. They then estimate the demand, and calculate the price. Most of these men manufacture goods to order. When one buys a thousand bales of cotton, he knows exactly how much money it will cost to work it up, how much goods it will turn out, how much waste there will be, and how much profit he is to reap. The people here say that the speculators of New York frequently buy up great quantities of cotton and hold it for better prices. To counteract this, a paper is addressed to the cotton manufacturers of England, and circulated through the country. Those signing this petition agree thereby to run their factories only half the time until the next cotton crop is put on the market. The enterprising people of Manchester have inaugurated a scheme by which they will be enabled to greatly reduce the price of their goods, and at the same time realize greater profits for themselves. It now costs them as much to send their goods by rail to Liverpool, a distance of thirty-six miles, as it does to get them from Liverpool to New York. The new scheme is to cut a canal from Liverpool to Manchester, through which the great sea-going vessels can come up to Manchester and be loaded from the factories. For this purpose, $25,000,000 have been raised. Work on the canal was begun some time ago, and will be pushed most vigorously. It will be the broadest and deepest canal in the world. To me, however, the object of greatest interest in the city is Dr. Alexander Maclaren, who is regarded by many competent judges as the greatest living preacher. Six volumes of his sermons grace the shelves of my library. My knowledge of his personal history, and my familiarity with his style of thought, make me all the more anxious to see and hear the man whose eloquence sways the multitude as the wind turns the grass of the field. Little before eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, I enter the elegant Union Chapel, wherein are seated some 2,500 to 3,000 persons. The preacher soon enters the pulpit. He is somewhat under medium size, measuring perhaps five feet and seven inches in height, and weighing, I imagine, about one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. His iron-grey hair is somewhat long, is combed straight back, and parted in the middle. His forehead is high and broad, and projects far over the large blue eyes which are set deep back in his head. His mouth is small; his features are hard and dry. He reminds me much of the late Jefferson Davis and Dr. Henson.