We must, however, recollect that the Cheshire squires had then, and probably have yet, a strong aversion to Liverpool and all its works. Looking at their mortgages,—for in those days a Cheshire squire without mortgages would have been a _rara avis_ indeed,—they had a sort of prophetic feeling that the merchant princes of Liverpool were destined to eat them up, like another Canaan; in other words, to buy the acres of all the wiseacres in the county, and so exterminate the original squirearchy. _Hinc illæ lachrymæ_. Hence, when they lost the game, they took their revenge in bad jokes which kill nobody, and, indeed, are very harmless affairs, if, as the French proverb has it, _Il rit bien qui rit le dernier_, he has the best of the laugh who has the last of it. Mr. Leigh had a brother, a very quiet and respectable man. He lived in Duke-street at one time, and afterwards at Roby Hall. But, in speaking of Everton just now, we forgot to mention William Harper, one of the wealthiest men of his day, a blunt, downright sort of person, a member of the old corporation, and mayor in his turn. He also had made an encroachment on the pride, and trod on the toes, of the Cheshire squires, by buying an estate at Davenham, near Northwich. He had three daughters, co-heiresses, whom, when at school, he never forgot to toast at his own table as “The lasses of Ashbourn.” Some people thought this a good joke, and it was even alluded to in some of the election squibs of the day. But we always admired the old man for it, and looked upon it as an excellent trait in his character. One of them married Mr. Hoskins, or, as he afterwards became, Mr. Hoskins Harper. Another was Mrs. Formby. The third was united to Dr. Brandreth, or, as he was called in his father’s lifetime, Dr. Joseph Brandreth, who, in the second generation, has so well maintained the medical distinction achieved by the first. But to return from this digression; not far from Oak-hill was Highfield, now the seat of that prince of good fellows, Thomas Littledale, Esq., the chief magistrate of Liverpool, but then belonging to, and the residence of, the Parke family. A fine, glorious, jovial old man do we recollect Mr. Parke. He had three sons, whom we remember; Mr. Thomas Parke, Major Parke, and a third, of world-wide fame and celebrity, Baron Parke, of whom “the gude old town” cannot be too proud, as first and foremost among the legal ornaments of the judicial bench.