LIBERAL ENTERPRISE AND PROSPERITY. 83 



there is no doubt that this young town is to be not only re 

 markable as a most agreeable and healthy place of residence, 

 but that it will soon be distinguished for extensive and profit 

 able commerce. It seems to me to be the only town I ever 

 saw that has been really built at all in accordance with the 

 advanced science, taste, and enterprising spirit that are sup 

 posed to distinguish the nineteenth century. I do not doubt 

 it might be found to have plenty of exceptions to its general 

 character, but I did not inquire for these, nor did I happen to 

 observe them. Certainly, in what I have noticed, it is a 

 model town, and may be held up as an example, not only to 

 philanthropists and men of taste, but to speculators and men 

 of business. 



After leaving the park, we ascended a hill, from the top 

 of which we had a fine view of Liverpool and Birkenhead. 

 Its sides were covered with villas, with little gardens about 

 them. The architecture was generally less fantastic, and the 

 style and materials of building more substantial ^han is usu 

 ally employed in the same class of residences with us. Yet 

 there was a good deal of the same stuck up and uneasy pre 

 tentious air about them that the suburban houses of our own 

 city people so commonly have. Possibly this is the effect 

 of association, in my mind, of steady, reliable worth and 

 friendship with plain or old-fashioned dwellings, for I often 

 find it difficult to discover in the buildings themselves the 

 elements of such expression. I am inclined to think it is 

 more generally owing to some disunity in the design often, 

 perhaps, to a want of keeping between the mansion and its 

 grounds or its situation. The architect and the gardener do 

 not understand each other, and commonly the owner or resi 

 dent is totally at variance in his tastes and intentions from 

 both ; or the man whose ideas the plan is made to serve, or 

 who pays for it, has no true independent taste, but had fancies 



