their country, who fought and were killed on the same day with their glorious chief! But Liverpool was never deaf to the call and inspirations of charity. To the poet’s question, “Art thou content to be the modern Tyre, Half pedlar and half tyrant of the world?” she may proudly and truly answer, that she has ever recognised and acted upon a loftier and nobler mission. Behold her Infirmary, her Blind Asylum, her Dispensaries, her Hospitals, her institutions of every kind, for every form and shape in which woe and want come upon mankind! Freely have her sons of many generations received, and freely have they given. They are not perfect, but selfishness has never been among their faults. The second time when Liverpool, within our recollection, was struck with distress, but it was altogether of another character, was when the great West Indian merchant, George Bailey, failed. It was thought at the time that nobody could survive the shock. For a season all trade was checked, all credit and confidence paralysed, and “Who next?” was the question of every day in every mouth, as men walked about doubtingly on ’Change, and looked into every new _Gazette_ with fear and trembling. The third season of consternation to which we have alluded was the actual panic occasioned by the abolition of the African slave trade. Our whole community was terror-stricken, when the cause of philanthropy triumphed in Parliament, and it was decreed that England should no longer play a guilty part in perpetrating and perpetuating the horrors of the middle passage. When this was proclaimed in Liverpool, prophets of woe and evil sprung up in every street. Destruction was about to fall upon us, chaos was to come again, an _avalanche_ was to overwhelm us, or an earthquake to swallow us up, grass was to grow in the area of the Exchange-buildings, our warehouses were to moulder into ruins, the streets were to be ploughed up, the docks were to become fish-ponds, and our mercantile navy, whose keels penetrate to every land, and whose white sails woo the breeze on every ocean, was to dwindle into a fishing vessel or two, or be utterly extinguished. It is true that there were some men amongst us of too sanguine or too sagacious a spirit to believe in these melancholy predictions. They had yet hope or faith in the development of the resources and energies of their townsmen. Among them we must place Mr. Shaw, of Everton, and Mr. Edward Houghton, of Great Nelson-street, both large holders of land in their respective neighbourhoods, who, influenced by an inward and assured conviction that Liverpool, cut off from one branch of trade, had yet a great future before her, calmly “bided their time,” and waited for the period when the town would reach them, and building land at so much per yard would be the cry. Above all Mr. Leigh, the solicitor, one of the shrewdest men of his day, clung to this notion, and boldly speculated upon it. And the result has been, in