This flat sandy coast is far from being so innocent as it looks. There are the wrecks of two vessels in sight even now. One of these, I hear, it took the lifeboat fourteen hours’ _continuous hard work_ to reach, and they brought off every man of the crew, twenty-five in number--a feat deserving wider fame than it has attained. They must be glorious sea-worthies, these Lancashire fishermen! Of the fine public buildings, the four-miles tramway, the Free Library, Botanic Gardens, and the rest, I need not speak. Lord Derby’s _mot_ on opening the Botanic Gardens is enough,--that the Southport folk can skate on real ice in July, and sit under palm-trees at Christmas. But I may say that the esplanade is a grand course for tricyclers and bicyclers, who seem fond of challenging and running races with tradesmen’s carts--a somewhat risky operation for other vehicles and passengers. One word, however, before I close, about the most striking of the churches, St. Andrew’s. I was attracted to it by its good proportions, and the stone tracery of several of the windows, reminding one of the patterns of the early decorated period of Gothic art. It can seat some 1500 people on the floor, there being no galleries. I am sorry to say, however, that appearances are deceitful. It is of no use to have fine proportions and good decoration if they won’t stand; and unhappily, although the church is only twelve years old, the cleristory walls have been blown out of the perpendicular, so that the whole nave roof has to come off that they may be solidly rebuilt. What would an old monkish architect have said to such a catastrophe? The more’s the pity, inasmuch as the necessary closing of the church is going to shelve, probably for months, the most striking preacher I have heard this month of Sundays. I first learnt, sir, in your columns the golden rule, that during prayers the worshipper is responsible for keeping up his own attention, while at sermon-time it is the parson’s business. Well, I have been to St. Andrew’s for the last three Sundays, and during sermons, none of which have lasted less than half an hour, have neither gone to sleep, nor thought about anything but what the preacher was saying. I suspect it is (as Apollo says of Theodore Parker, in the “Fable for Critics”) that-- This is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher, There’s a background of God to each hard-working feature, Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest. Whatever be the cause, however, there is the fact; and I own I am somewhat surprised, being rather curious about such matters, that I had never heard the name of Prebendary Cross before I happened to come to this place. A Village Festival