By these marks, I perceive that my father forgot not his religion in a foreign land; but attended St. John’s Church near the Hay-market, and other places of public worship: I see that he visited the News Room in Duke-street, the Lyceum in Bold-street, and the Theater Royal; and that he called to pay his respects to the eminent Mr. Roscoe, the historian, poet, and banker.
Reverentially folding this map, I pass a plate of the Town Hall, and come upon the Title Page, which, in the middle, is ornamented with a piece of landscape, representing a loosely clad lady in sandals, pensively seated upon a bleak rock on the sea shore, supporting her head with one hand, and with the other, exhibiting to the stranger an oval sort of salver, bearing the figure of a strange bird, with this motto elastically stretched for a border—_“Deus nobis haec otia fecit.”_
The bird forms part of the city arms, and is an imaginary representation of a now extinct fowl, called the _“Liver,”_ said to have inhabited a _“pool,”_ which antiquarians assert once covered a good part of the ground where Liverpool now stands; and from that bird, and this pool, Liverpool derives its name.
At a distance from the pensive lady in sandals, is a ship under full sail; and on the beach is the figure of a small man, vainly essaying to roll over a huge bale of goods.
Equally divided at the top and bottom of this design, is the following title complete; but I fear the printer will not be able to give a facsimile:—
_The Picture of Liverpool: or, Stranger’s Guide and Gentleman’s Pocket Companion _ FOR THE TOWN. Embellished With Engravings By the Most Accomplished and Eminent Artists. Liverpool: Printed in Swift’s Court, And sold by Woodward and Alderson, 56 Castle St. 1803.
A brief and reverential preface, as if the writer were all the time bowing, informs the reader of the flattering reception accorded to previous editions of the work; and quotes _“testimonies of respect which had lately appeared in various quarters_ —_the British Critic, Review, and the seventh volume of the Beauties of England and Wales”—_and concludes by expressing the hope, that this new, revised, and illustrated edition might _“render it less unworthy of the public notice, and less unworthy also of the subject it is intended to illustrate.”_