The inhabitants of the adjoining townships for 1831, were 40,760, and as all these places may, with great propriety, be said to form but one large town, the total amounts to 205,981, to which, if we also add the number of seamen belonging to the port, and who have been estimated at 10,000, the whole population will be 215,981.

This table fully confirms the various estimates of the increase in the population of this town. The proportion of births between the males and females for the year 1832 is in favour of the former, the males being 3979, and the females 3788, leaving a majority of 191; and the number of deaths is less on the part of the males, being for them 2900, and for the females 2966, forming a majority of 66. Of the number of deaths of both sexes during the same year, it appears that a great proportion is on the part of infants, there being 1550 of those who have died under two years of age. The number of deaths during the year 1832 was much greater than in any of the preceding years, which may be chiefly attributed to the ravages occasioned by the cholera.

INCREASE OF BUILDINGS.

In our historical sketch we have seen that Liverpool, a few centuries ago, was a paltry town, altogether destitute of wealth and importance, and that not until the year 1699 was it made a separate parish from Walton, to which

it had previously been merely a chapelry. We have seen that its population in 1700 did not exceed 5714; consequently, we may justly infer that the number of dwelling-houses and cottages together could not, at that time, have been more than nine hundred, so that little more than a century ago this vast town, which now far exceeds in wealth and magnitude the capitals of many kingdoms, could not then, with propriety, be designated any thing but a village. The painting we have before mentioned, exhibiting a representation of this town as it was in the year 1680, a description of which we have inserted, shows its then insignificance and limited extent. At that time ferry-boats were kept at the bottom of Lord-street, and at the bottom of Sir Thomas'sbuildings, for the purpose of conveying passengers over the water, which in those days flowed from the river along the present Paradise-street, Whitechapel, the Old Hay-market, and along Byrom-street; there was likewise a bridge at the lower end of Pool-lane, and another in Schoollane. At the bottom of Dale-street there were flood-gates, for the repairs of which frequent orders were made. In 1680, Mr. Dansie built the first house that was erected on the eastern side of the pool; it was situate near the bottom of School-lane, and at the corner of Manesty'slane. Until the beginning of the eighteenth‍ century there was only one church; and an act

of parliament for building the first dock was obtained so late as the year 1708; whereas there are, at the present day, no fewer than twentythree places of worship belonging to the established church, and nearly forty chapels belonging to the several bodies of dissenters.

The central locality of Liverpool with reference to the united kingdom, as well as being situate in a most populous country, the great seat of British manufactures, and to which it serves as the grand entrepôt for imports and exports, are circumstances that may be adduced as a primary cause of the rapid enlargement it has undergone since the period when the spirit of manufacturing and commercial enterprise began to manifest itself in this quarter of the empire.

One hundred and fifty years ago there does not appear to have been a single edifice to the south of the spot on which St. George's Church stands; and so late as the year 1770 Mr. Thomas Turner's farm, in Toxteth Park, was first broken up for the purpose of erecting buildings upon it. Ten years before this last mentioned period, the town extended eastwardly along Dale-street, no farther than Cheapside and Preston-street, and along Tithebarn-street as far as Key-street. A small part of Pitt-street, Duke-street, and Parklane, was now built. There was only one house in Clayton-square; a small portion of Churchstreet was covered with houses, and a part of

the lower side of Williamson-square was then built.

If we imagine ourselves placed in the centre of the town as it existed at the period we have just been considering, and suppose a line circumscribing the buildings at that time the most remote from this centre,-and then survey the extent of the edifices existing in the present day,— we shall find that thousands of structures, closely crowded together, reach for more than a mile, in a northern, eastern, and southerly direction, outside the supposed line, besides a vast quantity of buildings to the west, and all this without including the suburbs. Indeed, so closely are Kirkdale, Everton, Low-hill, Edge-hill, and Toxteth Park, now connected with Liverpool, by numerous uninterrupted chains of edifices, that they may, without the slightest impropriety, be considered as composing but one vast city. From the northern to the southern extremities of the docks, constitutes a distance of nearly two miles and a half, and the quay room has been estimated at about eight miles, one thousand five hundred yards. These facts alone evince an amazing increase of wealth and population.

In 1730 there was only one carriage kept in the town,—a circumstance affording but a mean idea of the resources of the inhabitants at that time, and presenting a strong contrast to the perpetual rattle created by the gentlemen's car