The contrasts offered by London itself are hardly greater than those to be found in Liverpool; the physical division of the great town into high and low is not more marked than its moral division into luxury and want, into respectability and infamy, into leisure and toil. There is a calm, tranquil, well-bred comfort about some of the uncommercial districts of Liverpool as characteristic and as striking as the splendour of its great streets, the long line of shops, each displaying the products of the teeming wealth of many countries, and are lost in those wonderful masses of warehouses, stores, factories, and shipping offices, which epitomise the whole history of commerce in its greatest forms, while they exhibit it in its minutest detail. The actual story of the world in its most practical, and at the same time not in its least romantic, aspect may be read by him who runs--if his hurried way should take him past the great landing-stages which project upon the Mersey. All the interests of life in its present crowded phase, and in its extended intercourse of business and of greatness, find their symbols there; its transitoriness, its change, its tumultuous variety, its youthful hope, its keenest anxieties, its bitterest partings, have found their theatre there since the first ship brought in the wealth of a foreign land, and the first ship carried out the produce of our own. The steadiest industry, the most inveterate vagabondism, find their representatives among the population of Liverpool; there is no place in existence in which the student of human nature may discover more to interest, to edify, to puzzle, and to appal him.
The sailor who had travelled by the five-o'clock train to Liverpool was seemingly possessed by a great curiosity concerning the commercial city. He had not eaten or drunk since early in the day; but this circumstance, rarely devoid of interest to persons of his class, seemed to trouble him but little. He had not turned into any eating-house, he had not visited any drinking-bar; but he took his way slowly, and always meditatively, along the streets which led to the water-side. In Water-street he lingered long. The great business centres and conduits were emptying themselves of the swarms of human beings whose business lies in the deep waters, who, if they did not go down to the sea in ships themselves, spent their lives in business matters connected with those who do; hurrying crowds jostled the sailor upon the pathways, crowds whose backs were turned upon the direction in which he was going; and as he took his way at a lounging pace, which contrasted curiously with the vigorous hurry and breaking-up air of bustle around him which marks the close of the business day in Liverpool, and the 'coming on of evening mild,' with its welcome recreation, at home or elsewhere, according to the diversity of tastes. The water-side was almost deserted when he debouched upon it from Water-street under the shadow of the huge warehouses.
In the dim light the prosaic landing-stage looked almost picturesque--shortly to be turned to a silver radiance by the yet unrisen moon; the waters of the Mersey lay in solemn calm; in the dim light, the long lines of huge warehouses, with their cumbrous apparatus of crank and pulley, of windlass and stage, looked more than ever like a series of gigantic gallows, prepared for a general execution. The mind speedily loses itself in the mere contemplation of their resources in the way of sacks and bales. To stray into considerations of cotton is to get lost, to think of pig-iron is distraction; the best way is to accept it all as a picture, happily unaccompanied at that hour of the night by the maddening noise of the day-time, and to be satisfied, without attempting to comprehend them, with the vastness, with the wealth, of Liverpool.
Probably this was not the line on which the sailor's thoughts were running when he examined the before-mentioned long range of warehouses, which lie parallel to the great landing-stage, with the wide roadway lying between, to inspire the observer with constant wonder how, by any effort of human industry, it is ever kept in a state of repair. His examination was minute, careful, and marked by one peculiarity. He laid his hand on every door as he passed it by, giving the sturdy panel a strong and stealthy push; in every instance but one, the response to this movement was the steady resistance of a stout bolt. One door, very far down the range, and in a place where already the profoundest tranquillity reigned, fell open at his touch, and the sailor, with a lounging gait of perfectly idle curiosity, ready, if challenged, to apologise for an intrusion on that score, passed into the yard to which the complying portal gave admittance.
It was some minutes before he emerged and began to retrace his steps towards Water-street; but he had now discarded his lounging gait, his step was purpose-like, quick, and wholly out of unison with his dress and appearance; nor had he any longer the uncertain discovery-making manner of a man unacquainted with the locality in which he finds himself for the first time.
He threaded his way with great rapidity through a number of small streets and lanes, best described by the generic term of 'slums,' quite regardless of the sights and sounds in perfect harmony with the neighbourhood, which was a particularly villanous one; he bent his steps to a low public-house, and close to the river.
Here he called for bread-and-cheese, of which he ate sparingly, and for a pot of beer, of which he drank a very small quantity--the meal did not seem to recommend itself to his palate; here, too, he spoke no word, and looked no one in the face, but he passed in and out quite disregarded.
The drinking-den--for it was hardly more--was, indeed, crowded, as it was at most hours of the day, and as far into the night as the police would permit but its occupants were either drinking or quarrelling, or both, and too much engaged in these pursuits to notice the surly newcomer.
Having thus sparingly satisfied the hunger and thirst which he must have been experiencing, the sailor sought for a place of repose. He selected for this purpose a common lodging-house, much in use by men of his craft when on shore, under circumstances which may be briefly described as 'down on their luck.' It was a dirty, ill-ventilated, wretched place, where beds of the very coarsest sacking, with very repulsive-looking bed-clothes, were stretched out in long lines on two sides of the low whitewashed room; a carpetless and matless lane ran up the centre, encumbered with the discarded garments of the occupants of the beds, and every accessory of the scene was unpleasant. The sailor seemed indisposed to avail himself of even the full extent of the accommodation which this uninviting hostelry afforded, limited as it was; he abstained from undressing himself, but flung himself down in his clothes upon the bed which was pointed out to him, and which he was congratulated by the proprietor of this hideous retreat upon having been so fortunate as to secure, as it was the only one which had not already a tenant.
This was not exactly a place in which good order might be expected to reign. Its temporary occupants were in many instances drunk, in very few decent, in almost all noisy; but the new-comer contributed no more to the horrid merriment of the sleeping den than he had contributed to the conviviality of the drinking den during that day. He met all attempts at questioning with a sullen growl; and placing his tarpaulin bundle under his head for a pillow, he soon fell, or seemed to fall, into a heavy slumber.