Recollections of Old Liverpool

the surface, divers works of human hands that excite the wonder of the ignorant, the notice of the intelligent, and the speculation of the learned. Things are presented to

after perusing many an erudite disquisition, we are sometimes as well-informed, and as near arriving at a conclusion as to the original purpose for which the object under discussion was intended, as

docks shipless, its warehouses in ruins, its streets moss-grown, and in its decay like some bye-gone cities of the east, that once sent out their vessels laden with "cloth of blue, and red barbaric gold." Under which of these two fates will Liverpool find its lot some centuries hence?-which of these two pictures will it then present? Be it one or the other, the strange undertakings of Joseph Williamson will perhaps, some ce

nder in the minds of the very few who were permitted to examine them. During the last few years, I believe they have been gradually filled up and very much altered, but they are still there to be laid open some day. Few of us know much of them, though so few years have elapsed since they were projected and carried out, since the sounds of the blast, the pick, and the shovel were last heard in their vicinity. Now what will be said of these minings, subterranean galleries, vaults and arches, should they suddenly be discovered a century hence, when their originator as well as their origin shall have faded away into nothing like the vanishing point of the painter? He

be set upon it. Here lies the ponderous stone as it fell after the upheaving blast had dislodged it from its bed; and there, vaulted over, is a gulf that makes the brain dizzy, and strikes us with terror as we look down into it. Now we see an arch, fit to bridge a mountain torrent; and in another step or two we meet another, only fit to span a simple brook. Tiers of passages are met with, as dangerous to enter as they are strange to look at. It must ever be a matter of regret that after Mr. Williamson's death, some one able to make an accurate survey of the property did not go through and describe it, because

running northward for about fifty or sixty feet. The end of this vault is the limit of Mr. Williamson's property. The tunnel already described as running up to Mason-street crosses the top of this vault. This vault is about thirty-six feet wide and perhaps thirty feet high, but the floor has been considerably raised since Mr. Williamson's time by debris and rubbish of all sorts thrown into it. In the right hand corner of the vault, about ten feet from the ground, there is the mouth of a tunnel which runs up first towards Mason-street, it then turns and winds in a variety of ways in passages continuing under the houses in Mason-street, and opening upon many of the vaults. To the left of the entrance vault, there is a large square area from which immense masses of red sandstone have been quarried. It is forty feet from side to side. There is a vault in the southern wall opposite the wall just described. It runs towards Grinfield-street, and is composed of two large arches side by side, surmounted by two smaller ones. In the eastern face of the quarry there is an immense arch perhaps sixty feet high; and about thirty feet from its entrance there is an immense and massive stone pier from which spring two arches on each side, one above the other, but not from the same level. The pier is hollowed on the inside by three arches. On the left hand wall inside the arch there are two large arches, from which vaults run northwardly, and on the right hand side of the wall there are also two vaults which extend to a great distance in a southwardly direction, towards Grinfield-street. From these vaults, other vaults branch off in all sorts of directions. The houses in Mason-street all rest upon these arches; and as you passed along the street, the depth of some of them at one time was visible through the grids. The construction of these arches is of the most solid description, and seems stable as the earth itself. There are some openings of vaults commenced at the end near Grinfield-Street, but discontinued. These arches seem to have given way and presented a curiously ruined aspect. In the lower range of vaults there was a run of water and what Wil

had to receive window duty into fits. These houses really appear as if built by chance, or by a blind man who has felt his way and been satisfied with the security of his dwelling rather than its appeara

least two hundred tons of coals. In all these vaults and places the rats swarmed in droves, and of a most remarkable size

and did a great deal of good in his own strange way. His effects were sold by Trotter and Hodgkins on the 7th June, 1841, and one of the lots, No. 142, consisted o