Shakespeare and Walter Scott were descanted on in turn, and one dapper little man, who travelled in cutlery, averred that Sir Walter had on one occasion been exceedingly polite to him, and he should always say to the end of his life that he was a gentleman. At Dolgelly I was struck by the practice prevailing there of tolling, after the ringing of the curfew, a number of strokes on the biggest bell equal to the number of the days which had elapsed of the current month. I wonder whether they do so still? I went out of my way, I find, in the course of the same journey, in order to go from Liverpool to Manchester by the new railway, which to me, as to thousands of others, was an object of infinite curiosity and interest. My diary notes that there were fifteen carriages attached to the engine, each carrying twelve passengers. Two of these were first-class, and the fare for the journey to Manchester in them was 5_s._; in the others the fare was 3_s._ 6_d._ The train I was to travel by was called a second-class train. The first-class trains carried no second-class passengers, and did the journey of fifty-two miles in one hour and a half. They stopped only once on the way. The second-class trains stopped frequently, and were two hours on the road. I estimated the speed at something over twenty-five miles an hour, and remark in my diary that “that immense rapidity was manifested to the senses only by looking at the objects passed.” At Manchester I find myself to have been much scandalised at a scene which I witnessed in the Collegiate Church there. There were seventeen couples to be married, and they were all married at once, the only part of the service individually performed being the “I take thee,” &c. &c. I perfectly well remember at this distance of time the bustling about of the clerk among them to insure that every male should be coupled to the right female. “After this wholesale coupling had been completed,” says my diary, “the daily service was begun, and was performed in a more indecent and slovenly way than I ever before witnessed, which is saying a great deal! While the Psalms were being sung the priest, as having nothing to do, walked out, and returned just in time to read the Lessons.” Such were the manners and habits of 1832. A few weeks later I find an entry to the effect that, “while my father was reading _Grandison_ to us in the evening I got M. Hervieu (the artist who did the illustrations for my mother’s _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ and other books, and who chanced to be passing the evening with us _en famille_) to draw me a caricature illustrating the following passage of Beattie’s _Minstrel_:-- “And yet young Edwin was no vulgar boy; Deep thought would often fix his youthful eye. Dainties he heeded not, nor gaud, nor toy, Save _one short pipe_!” I possess this remarkable work of art to the present day!