Other things we saw in Liverpool,—­the Royal Institute, with the statue of Roscoe by Chantrey, and in its collection from the works of the early Italian artists, and otherwise, bearing traces of that liberality and culture by which the man, happy enough to possess them, and at the same time engaged with his fellow-citizens in practical life, can do so much more to enlighten and form them, than prince or noble possibly can with far larger pecuniary means.  We saw the statue of Huskisson in the Cemetery.  It is fine as a portrait statue, but as a work of art wants firmness and grandeur.  I say it is fine as a portrait statue, though we were told it is not like the original; but it is a good conception of an individuality which might exist, if it does not yet.  It is by Gibson, who received his early education in Liverpool.  I saw there, too, the body of an infant borne to the grave by women; for it is a beautiful custom, here, that those who have fulfilled all other tender offices to the little being should hold to it the same relation to the very last.

From Liverpool we went to Chester, one of the oldest cities in England, a Roman station once, and abode of the “Twentieth Legion,” “the Victorious.”  Tiles bearing this inscription, heads of Jupiter, and other marks of their occupation, have, not long ago, been detected beneath the sod.  The town also bears the marks of Welsh invasion and domestic struggles.  The shape of a cross in which it is laid out, its walls and towers, its four arched gateways, its ramparts and ruined, towers, mantled with ivy, its old houses with Biblical inscriptions, its cathedral,—­in which tall trees have grown up amid the arches, a fresh garden-plot, with flowers, bright green and red, taken place of the altar, and a crowd of revelling swallows supplanted the sallow choirs of a former priesthood,—­present a tout-ensemble highly romantic in itself, and charming, indeed, to Transatlantic eyes.  Yet not to all eyes would it have had charms, for one American traveller, our companion on the voyage, gravely assured us that we should find the “castles and that sort of thing all humbug,” and that, if we wished to enjoy them, it would “be best to sit at home and read some handsome work on the subject.”

At the hotel in Liverpool and that in Manchester I had found no bath, and asking for one at Chester, the chambermaid said, with earnest good-will, that “they had none, but she thought she could get me a note from her master to the Infirmary (!!) if I would go there.”  Luckily I did not generalize quite as rapidly as travellers in America usually do, and put in the note-book,—­“Mem.:  None but the sick ever bathe in England”; for in the next establishment we tried, I found the plentiful provision for a clean and healthy day, which I had read would be met everywhere in this country.

All else I must defer to my next, as the mail is soon to close.

LETTER II.