lo Far AD A V, Correspondence of Lt.-Col. J. L. Philips. 



mother of John Leigh Philips. In 1766 Thomas Earle 

 and liis family returned to Liverpool, and in the following 

 year were residing in a house in Hanov^er Street, then a 

 fashionable quarter of Liverpool. This house is now the 

 Hanover Hotel. ]\Ir. Thomas Karle died on April i8th, 

 1781. and his wife died on January 29th, 1785, the two 

 daughters, Maria and Elizabeth Jane, inheriting their 

 father's fortune and the estates of Adam Mort, their 

 grandfather on the mother's side. Maria married her 

 cousin, Thomas Earle of Spekelands, the son of William 

 Earle, and Elizabeth Jane married Richard Gwill\-m* of 

 Bewsey Hall, Warrington. 



Thomas Taylor, the youthful friend of Leigh Philips, 

 appears to have remained unmarried. He seems to have 

 been one of those men whose lot it is to do zealous and 

 hard public work, under the shadow of more prominent 

 and older men, and to find his reward in self satisfaction 

 at the success of the enterprises undertaken, rather than 

 in public recognition of his labours. To him Liverpool is 

 largelx' indebted for its municipal progress, its Academy 

 of Art, and its Athen;\ium, though his name is practically 

 forgotten — and onl\- those who read the letters he sent to 

 his friends know how ungrudgingly he gave his services. 

 He died in 1803, and in a letter written to William Roscoe 

 from Norwich, in that year, Sir James E. Smith, the 

 botanist and first President of the Linnean Societ}-, gives 

 the following sketch of the man : " My good and kind 

 host, my oldest friend out of my own famil\', is no 

 more! In all our childish amusements he was always 

 my instructor and example (Taylor was a \'ear older 

 than Smith), when he went to boarding-school it was 

 the first real trial of my fortitude. He was my first 

 correspondent. I used to dream night after night that 

 he was home for the holidays. He then went to Liver- 



* High Sheriff of Lancashire, 1796. 



