The best settlement on the opposite shore, called New Brighton, has the same character, but enjoys a share of the open Irish sea, with its keen breezes.  It must be bracing, healthy, dreary, and dull.

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Birkenhead is a great town, which has risen as rapidly as an American city, and with the same fits and starts.  Magical prosperity is succeeded by a general insolvency among builders and land speculators; after a few years of fallow another start takes place, and so on—­speculation follows speculation.  Birkenhead has had about four of these high tides of prosperous speculations, in which millions sterling have been gained and lost.  At each ebb a certain number of the George Hudsons of the place are swamped, but the town always gains a square, a street, a park, a church, a market-place, a bit of railway, or a bit of a dock.  The fortunes of the men perish, but the town lives and thrives.  Thus piece by piece the raw materials of a large thriving community are provided, and now Birkenhead is as well furnished with means for accommodating a large population as any place in England, and has been laid out on so good a plan that it will be one of the healthiest as well as one of the neatest modern towns.  It has also the tools of commerce in a splendid free dock, not executed so wisely as it would have been if Mr. Rendel, the original engineer, (the first man of the day as a marine engineer), had not been overruled by the penny-wise pound-foolish people, but still a very fine dock.  Warehouses much better planned than anything in Liverpool; railways giving communication with the manufacturing districts; in fact, all the tools of commerce—­gas, water, a park, and sanitary regulations, have not been neglected.

Some people think Birkenhead will be the rival of Liverpool, we think not:  it will be a dependency or suburb of the greater capital.  “Where the carcase is, there the eagles will be gathered together.”  Birkenhead is too near to be a rival; shipping must eventually come to Birkenhead, but the business will still continue to be done in Liverpool or Manchester, where are vested interests and established capital.

An hour or two will be enough to see everything worth seeing at Birkenhead.  To those who enjoy the sight of the river and shipping, it is not a bad plan to stop at one of the hotels there, as boats cross every five minutes, landing at a splendid iron pontoon, or floating stage, on the Liverpool side, of large dimensions, constructed with great skill by Mr. W. Cubitt, C.E., to avoid the nuisance of landing carriages at all times, and passengers at low tides in boats.

At Liskeard, a ferry on the Cheshire side, Mr. Harold Littledale—­a member of one of the first firms in Liverpool—­has established a model dairy farm, perhaps one of the finest establishments of the kind in the kingdom.