"Names, please," said the smiling man in waiting, opening what appeared to be the book of fate. We added ours to the long list of pilgrims and strangers who had sojourned here, dotting our i's and crossing our t's in the most elegant manner imaginable. If any one has a doubt as to our early advantages, let him examine the record of the Washington Hotel, Liverpool. The heading, "Remarks," upon the page, puzzled us. Were they to be of a sacred or profane nature? Of an autobiographical character? Were they to refer to the dear land we had just left? Through some political throes she had just brought forth a ruler. Should we add to the U. S. against our names, "As well as could be expected"? We hesitated,--and wrote nothing. Up the wide stairs, past the transparency of Washington--in the bluest of blue coats, the yellowest of top boots, and an air of making the best of an unsought and rather ridiculous position--we followed the doily upon the head of the pretty chambermaid to our wide, comfortable room, with its formidable, high-curtained beds. The satchels and parcels innumerable were propped carefully into rectitude upon the dressing table, under the impression that the ship would give a lurch; and then, gazing out through the great plate glass windows upon the busy square below, we endeavored to compose our perturbed minds and gather our scattered wits.
It is not beautiful, this great city of Liverpool, creeping up from the sea. It has little to interest a stranger aside from its magnificent docks and warehouses. There are mammoth truck horses from Suffolk, with feet like cart wheels; there is St. George's Hall, the pride of the people, standing in the busy square of the same name, with a statue of the saint himself--a terror to all dragons--just before it. It is gray, many columned, wide stepped, vast in its proportions. Do you care for its measurement? Having seen that, you are ready to depart; and, indeed, there is nothing to detain one here beyond a day of rest, a moment to regain composure after the tossing of the sea. There are some substantial dwellings,--for commerce has its kings,--and some fine shops,--for commerce also has its queens,--and one fine drive, of which we learned too late. The air of endurance, which pervades the whole city, as it does all cities in the old world, impresses one greatly, as though they were built for eternity, not time; the founders having forgotten that here we are to have no continuing city. In the new world, man tears down and builds up. Every generation moulds and fashions its towns and cities after its own desires, or to suit its own means. Man is master. In the old world, one generation after another surges in and out of these grim, gray walls, leaving not so much as the mark the waves leave upon the rocks. Unchanged, unchanging, they stand age after age, time only softening the hard outlines, deepening the shadows it has cast upon them, and so bringing them into a likeness of each other that they seem to have been the design of one mind, the work of one pair of hands, and hardly of mortal mind or hands at that. They seem to say to man, "We have stood here ages before you were born. We shall stand here ages after you are forgotten." They must be filled with echoes, with ghosts, and haunting memories.