became impossible to obtain a vehicle of any description. Hundreds of persons might be seen camping along the high roads at some distance from the town, anxiously awaiting the expected sound of cannon, the clash of arms, and the cry of contending men. I laugh at this now--but it was no laughing matter then. I recollect one day passing down Dale-street (then a narrow, inconvenient thoroughfare) to muster, when the Warrington and Manchester coach was about to start: numbers of frightened people besieged it and attempted to turn out and off those who had obtained possession of its lumbering inside and its miserable basket behind. In it I remember was seated a tremendous man, a town councillor, who fairly roared and cried like a child because the driver would not hasten his departure--the cry of "the French" annihilated him, and I had half a mind to let off my fire-lock and see what the result would have been. We were not much addicted to punctuality in those good old times; so that half an hour's delay in the starting of a coach was held as nothing very important--the delay however seemed a year to the worthy magnate. In the town the utmost excitement prevailed. At the Pier Heads, at the Fort, and in St. Nicholas's churchyard (in the lower part of which there was a battery of six guns) might have been seen hundreds of stalwart fellows strengthening the fortifications; men in and out of uniform were marching through the town with drum and fife, some armed and some unarmed, coming and going from or to the rendezvous. The jolly sailors in the port mustered strong, and hearty were their demonstrations of enthusiasm. The shops were shut in many of the streets, while barricades were prepared at the street ends leading out of town, ready to be put up at any moment. Information was then so slow in its journeyings that falsehood became as strong-looking as truth, and it was easy to keep up a ferment for some time. Any atom of news became a mountain, until the fresh air of truth melted it away. We were therefore kept for days in a state of great excitement, and it certainly was some time before our warlike spirit subsided, and I must say that although we were somewhat laughed at for our extraordinary haste in coming to the conclusions we did, we had nothing to be ashamed of. We Liverpool men showed our pluck on that and many other occasions during the French war. I fear we were a little too much alive. We had too much pugnacity about us if anything. I recollect some poor simple looking French fishermen in that year put into Liverpool, in order to sell some oysters, when it was all once taken for granted that they were spies, sent to ascertain what we were doing. The mayor at a meeting held to consider the state of the harbour-defences, actually alluded to these poor fishermen as having in their possession the soundings and bearings of the harbour and river-entrance. I, for one, did not believe in their being spies, never