Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/157

134 We had had a glorious view of the romantic Irish coast the evening before and all the morning, and I thought it a fine sight when Liverpool, proud commercial town, lay before me. I did not find Liverpool ugly. Her stately public buildings, broad streets, public squares, and noble statues redeem her from the charge; and after a bath, a nap, and an excellent dinner at the comfortable Adelphi we took a drive to a park in the environs, which we found charming. They say the first cathedral you see remains with you forever as the cathedral of the world. Perhaps this first glimpse of an English June and of a European park so favorably impressed me because it was the first, but I am convinced it was charming; so was the fresh-looking, pleasant-spoken English lady whom we met walking in the park, and who so kindly and even learnedly answered our questions about the new trees and flowers. And this English lady, who so agreeably surprised us by her affability and courtesy, was a type of all our accidental acquaintances. "His speech bewrayeth him," and our accent generally brought out, "I see you are Americans"; or if not, we had but to say so, and our questions were answered with a ready politeness which it is but fair to say English people do not seem to show to each other. I suppose the great differences of rank necessarily bring about a certain stiffness. We took our first bath in antiquity at Chester, where we spent a Sunday. The service in that venerable cathedral — those boy voices in the choir — shall I ever hear anything like it this side the golden gates?

Time should be imaged with a paint-brush instead of a scythe; he knows how to wield the former even better than the latter. What he has adorned let no man attempt to copy. I dare say those ruined cloisters were