“Liverpool,” said one of its inhabitants to me, “is more like an American than an English city; it is new, bustling, and prosperous.”  I saw some evidences of this after I had got my baggage through the custom-house, which was attended with considerable delay, the officers prying very closely into the contents of certain packages which I was taking for friends of mine to their friends in England, cutting the packthread, breaking the seals, and tearing the wrappers without mercy.  I saw the streets crowded with huge drays, carrying merchandise to and fro, and admired the solid construction of the docks, in which lay thousands of vessels from all parts of the globe.  The walls of these docks are built of large blocks of red sandstone, with broad gateways opening to the river Mersey, and when the tide is at its height, which I believe is about thirty feet from low water, the gates are open, and vessels allowed to enter and depart.  When the tide begins to retire, the gates are closed, and the water and the vessels locked in together.  Along the river for miles, the banks are flanked with this massive masonry, which in some places I should judge to be nearly forty feet in height.  Meantime the town is spreading into the interior; new streets are opened; in one field you may see the brickmakers occupied in their calling, and in the opposite one the bricklayers building rows of houses.  New churches and new public buildings of various kinds are going up in these neighborhoods.

The streets which contain the shops have for the most part a gay and showy appearance; the buildings are generally of stucco, and show more of architectural decoration than in our cities.  The greater part of the houses, however, are built of brick which has a rough surface, and soon acquires in this climate a dark color, giving a gloomy aspect to the streets.  The public buildings, which are rather numerous, are of a drab-colored freestone, and those which have been built for forty or fifty years, the Town Hall, for example, and some of the churches, appear almost of a sooty hue.  I went through the rooms of the Town Hall and was shown the statue of Canning, by Chantry, an impressive work as it seemed to me.  One of the rooms contains a portrait of him by Lawrence, looking very much like a feeble old gentleman whom I remember as not long since an appraiser in the New York custom-house.  We were shown a lofty saloon in which the Common Council of Liverpool enjoy their dinners, and very good dinners the woman who showed us the rooms assured us they were.  But the spirit of corporation reform has broken in upon the old order of things, and those good dinners which a year or two since were eaten weekly, are now eaten but once a fortnight, and money is saved.