We now approach Colquitt-street, in which resided that shrewd, plodding merchant, Gilbert Henderson, the father of our respected and able Recorder. Here, also, lived Thomas Parr, who afterwards retired into Shropshire. His house was disposed of by a tontine, and, at a later day, became the Royal Institution, from which so many youths have gone forth to encounter the storms or pluck the honours of the world. Here, likewise, lived that true-hearted man of the old school, Peter Whitfield Brancker, one of the worthiest among the worthies of the days we write of. He was one who eschewed anything like nonsense, and was highly gifted with common sense. What he said he meant, and what he did he did with all his heart and soul. Few thought that he had so much kindness beneath his somewhat blunt and bluff bearing; and many called him selfish, when he laid up for his family what others threw away upon vanity and ostentation. We always looked upon him as one of the best men of the day; and, although he was a silent man in general company, he was far before most of our merchant princes in reading and intellectual attainments. In Rodney-street, then only partially built upon, lived Mr. Leicester, and also that “fine old English gentleman,” Pudsey Dawson, who was the delight of our boyhood, as we listened to his powers of talking, and watched, with amazement, his capabilities for taking snuff. He was the father of, we may say, besides his other sons, a race of heroes. William, who was in the Royal Navy, distinguished himself greatly in the East Indies, by the capture, after a desperate action, of a French frigate, which had long been an annoyance and a thorn in the side of our trade in that quarter. Another fell, gloriously, in Spain. Charles, a lamb in society, a lion in battle, was killed at Waterloo. If our memory holds good, both of these last mentioned were then in the 52nd, a crack regiment in the famous fighting brigade of those gunpowder times. Noble old Pudsey Dawson! How he would talk by the hour, of wars and rumours of wars, to the circle which would gather round him at the Athenæum, until, as he turned from one to another, the whole ring in which he moved might be tracked by the overflow of his snuff-box. And what a horror he had of Napoleon and Frenchmen and everything French. It was well for them, as he used to say, that he was not at Blucher’s elbow when he entered Paris, it being his firm belief that the earth would never be quiet, until that city of trouble and confusion was blotted from its face. But Liverpool society could not point to a man of whom it was prouder, or one more respected, esteemed, or honoured, than this same Pudsey Dawson. All men liked him, and we did not make an exception. CHAPTER VIII.