To proceed, however. "_Redburn grows intolerably flat and stupid over some outlandish old guide-books._" Such is the heading of Chapter XXX.; and, from what Mr Melville says, we do not, in this instance, presume to differ. We are now in Liverpool. Much of what Redburn there sees, says, and does, will be more interesting to American than to English readers, although to many even of the latter there will be novelty in his minute account of sailor life ashore--of their boarding-houses, haunts, and habits; of the German emigrant ships, and the salt-droghers and Lascars, and of other matters seemingly commonplace, but in which his observant eye detects much that escapes ordinary gazers. We ourselves, to whom the aspect and ways of the great trading city of northern England are by no means unfamiliar, have derived some new lights from Redburn's account of what he there saw. Clergymen of the Church of England, we are informed, stand up on old casks, at quay corners, arrayed in full canonicals, and preach thus, _al fresco_, to sailors and loose women. Paupers are allowed to linger and perish unaided, almost in the public thoroughfare, within sight and knowledge of neighbours and police. Curious, seemingly, of the horrible, Redburn visits the dead-house, where he sees "a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions: _he seemed his own head-stone_." We would implore Mr Melville to beware of a fault by no means uncommon with a certain school of writers at the present day, but into which it would be unworthy a man of his ability to fall. We refer to that straining for striking similes, at the expense of truth and good taste, of which he has here furnished us with a glaring example. A dead sailor's name is tattooed upon his arm; _therefore_--mark the consequence--he seems his own head-stone. How totally inapt is this; how violent and distorted the figure! Such tricks of pen may, by a sort of tinsel glitter, dazzle for a moment superficial persons, who weigh not what they read; but they will never obtain favour, or enhance a reputation with any for whose verdict Mr Melville need care. Neither will he, we apprehend, gain much praise, that is worth having, for such exaggerated exhibitions of the horrible as that afforded in chapter VI. of his second volume. Passing through Lancelott's Hey, a narrow street of warehouses, Redburn heard "a feeble wail, which seemed to come out of the earth.... I advanced to an opening, which communicated downwards with deep tiers of cellars beneath a crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk, crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned towards her, one on each side. At first I knew not whether they were dead or alive.