The Royal Liverpool Institution is a great benefit to the inhabitants. It has a good library, fine collections of paintings, and a good museum of natural history. Many of these paintings belong to the early masters, and date even before the fifteenth century. We were interested to find here a complete set of casts of the Elgin marbles. The originals were the decorations of the Parthenon at Athens, and are now in the British Museum. As we shall spend some time in that collection, I say no more at present about these wonderful monuments of genius. The Athenæum and the Lyceum are both fine buildings, and each has a good library, lecture, and news rooms.
We were disappointed at finding the Rev. Dr. Raffles, the most eloquent preacher of the city, out of town. He was the successor of Spencer, who was drowned bathing in the Mersey, and his Life by Raffles is one of deep interest. The great historical name of Liverpool is William Roscoe, the author of the Lives of Leo X. and the Medici. I must not omit to tell you that, during our stay, the town was all alive with a regiment of lancers, just arrived from Ireland, on their way to London. They are indeed fine-looking fellows, and are mounted on capital horses. I have watched their evolutions in front of the Adelphi with much pleasure, and have been amused to notice a collection of the most wretched-looking boys I ever saw, brought together by the troops. There seems to me more pauperism this week, in Liverpool, than I ever saw in New York in my life.
Does it not seem strange that I am here in London? I can hardly tell what to write about first. I stand at the door of our hotel and look at the crowds in the streets, and then at old King Charles, at Charing Cross, directly across the road, and when I think that this is the old city where Wat Tyler figured, and Whittington was lord mayor, and Lady Jane Grey was beheaded, and where the Tower is still to be seen, I am half beside myself, and want to do nothing but roam about for a good month to come. I have read so much concerning London, that I am pretty sure I know more about it than many of the boys who have heard Bow Church bells all their lives. We left Liverpool for Birmingham, where we passed an afternoon and evening in the family of a manufacturer very pleasantly, and at ten o'clock took the express mail train for London. We are staying at a hotel called the Golden Cross, Charing Cross. We have our breakfast in the coffee-room, and then dine as it suits our convenience as to place and hour. We spent one day in riding about the city, and I think we got quite an idea of the great streets.