Liverpool, with its great line of protected dockage and quayage, and the movement of vessels of every description and of every size along its water front, is seen in its finest panoramic effect from the Birkenhead side of the river; but the city reveals itself also in increasing multiplicity of architectural detail and business activity to the visitor whose first impressions of it are obtained as he stands on the vessel that carries him over the Mersey bar to the landing-stage. At the same time, the passenger by rail does not enter Liverpool by any back door. At the Lime Street terminus of the London and North Western Railway he looks out immediately on the municipal centre of the city; should he arrive at the Exchange Station of the Lancashire and Yorkshire and Midland lines, he is at once in the commercial heart of Liverpool, surrounded by noble and spacious buildings. Other lines land him in scenes of shipping activity, others in more residential quarters; but nowhere is he left in squalid surroundings. The front of the Lime Street Station itself adds to the picturesqueness of the street it looks upon. Almost opposite, in isolated grandeur, is St. George's Hall, and on one side of that building is the magnificent range of edifices of the classic order where are housed the Brown Free Library (including the Museum of Natural History, presented by the thirteenth Earl of Derby), the Mayer Museum of Antiquity, the Picton Reading Room, and the Walker Art Gallery--all alike monuments of the beneficence of merchants who in this way have enriched and adorned the city from which they drew their wealth. Even St. George's Hall, the cost of which was £330,000, was in the nature of a gift, it being paid for by the Corporation out of the dock dues, which they controlled up to 1858, when the dues were transferred to the Dock Board. The fact, too, that the Corporation owned large estates makes the burden of taxation rest lightly on the citizens of Liverpool; and since the present century began, improvements have not ceased to be the order of the day in the city. The Town Hall is in Castle Street. It is in the Corinthian style, and is conspicuous for its dome and its raised portico; but a much more majestic building lies behind it in the Royal Exchange--a structure in the Flemish Renaissance style, with a noble façade, and wings that enclose a spacious quadrangle. Here on "the Flags," when the weather is favourable, the merchants and brokers of Liverpool mingle together in animated colloquy and strike their bargains.