fashionable soirées; the fairest of the fair
have brought him ices and macaroons; Lords,
Baronets, and Chief Justices have called him
Fripaneili, and given him to snuff out of their
gold and jewelled boxes; and the list of his
pupils, with their half-guinea lessons, has
been at times so swollen, that, work from
morning till night, however hard he might,
some were sure to be in arrear.

But, ah me! what changes take place in
fifteen mouths—what Worlds are upheaved,
demolished, and built up again in fifteen
years; Fripanelli did not change! he had
always been, or seemed to be, as old and as ugly
as he was before; but fashion changed—time
changed. The fifteen years in their remorseless
whirl have caught him up scornfully from
Grosvenor Square, and the half guinea lessons
have dropped him in Tattyboys Rents, to give
lessons in singing, in instrumental music,
in French and German, even should they
be required, in tenth-class schools, to the
daughters of small tradesmen about the
Rents and Blitsom Street, and Turk's Lane,
for a shilling a lesson, for sixpence a lesson,
for seven shillings a quarter, for anything
that poor Gian Battisto can get to buy a
crust with.

Such is life for Art in the world's Rents,
as well as Tattyboys. The educated and
titled mob, which is ten times more fickle,
false, and capricious than the grossest
Flemish rabble that ever idolised an Artevelde.
or massacred a De Witt, will quietly drop you,
when it has had enough of you, and will let
you starve or die, or go hang, with admirable
indifference and composure. And it serves
you, and all other lions, thoroughly right, who
have not had the modest manhood to be
quietly superior to such mob, and to let it go
its way. I do not say this of poor old
Fripanelli, for he was a stranger in the land
before he came to the Rents, and he may
easily have taken its surface for its core.

OUR SISTER.

LONDON'S eldest sister, Liverpool, may be
said to rank second only to herself,— in
some matters she is even before her. Placed
on a spot the most favourable for
self-development, Liverpool has made a progress
more remarkable than that of any other city
in the kingdom. There are several elements
causing the great prosperity of Liverpool,
some of a general, others of a special
character. It has partaken, in common with
other ports, of the benefits arising from
ocean and coast steam-navigation, from the
opening of the trade with India and China,
and from free trade with foreign nations.
But it has at least one special advantage:
it is the cotton depot of the Lancashire
spinners. It has grown with them; it has
shared in their prosperity; and, like them,
has become a mighty section of the state.
Its position on the western shores of England
gives it other advantages: it is the most
convenient port for the importation of Irish
produce of all kinds, as well as for American
flour, corn, and other merchandise, familiarly
termed breadstuff's, and for Canadian timber,
planks, staves, and those other wooden
sundries which help to constitute the lumber
trade of our North American colonies.

At the death of Alfred the Great, there was
not an edifice of any kind upon the shores of
the Mersey: and it was not until the reign of
William Rufus that the then small cluster
of humble dwellings first received its name
of "Liverpole," as it continued to be spelt for
some centuries later.

When the Spanish Armada made its vain
attempt upon the English shores, and the
citizens of London equipped a fleet of well-
manned barques to repel the foreign
invaders, Liverpool possessed little more than
a dozen of vessels not exceeding two
hundred tons in the aggregate; whilst the
total of seafaring men did not amount to
more than a hundred.

It would appear that in spite of their early
obscurity, the citizens of Liverpool were
not a whit less hospitable than those of more
thriving places. There were no reform
banquets, no free trade festivals in the sixteenth
century; nevertheless, at about the same
time that the unfortunate Mary of Scotland
was effecting her escape from Lochlevin
Castle, the worthy burghers of Our Sister
were deeply engrossed in preparations for a
sumptuous entertainment, which was given
to their "good lord, the Earl of Derby"—
not in St. George's Hall, where his present
lordship would doubtless be feasted—on St.
George's Day. The city chronicles record
that the corporation charged for this
banquet the sum of twenty-four shillings and
sixpence; a modest sum enough no doubt, but
probably in fair proportion to their
municipal ways and means, seeing that when King
Charles levied his fatal ship-money, the
amount at which Bristol was assessed was
a thousand pounds sterling, whilst Liverpool
was asked to contribute no more than
twenty-five pounds.

In, the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the yearly
revenues of the Liverpool customs amounted
to not more than two hundred pounds:
the imported goods consisting of linen
yarns from Ireland, to be woven at
Manchester; oil, hides, and a .little wine: the
shipments were made up of Manchester
cotton, Yorkshire cloths, stockings, silkwares,.
cutlery, and hardware. At this period our
whole imports of calicoes, pepper, indigo, and
drugs from India did not exceed in value
two hundred thousand pounds.

The early progress of Our Sister may
be attributed to the Stuarts. The persecutions,
by that wrong-headed race, drove the
Puritans to the young settlements in North
America, and laid the foundation of a trade
between the new world in the west and