have been worth the trouble of the journey to make acquaintance with the projector and soul of this gigantic enterprise, a certain Mr. Jackson. With his desire to create a great commercial emporium proceeds, pari passu, that of improving and elevating the condition of the labouring classes there; and, before his docks are even excavated, he is building houses for three hundred families of work-people, each of which is to have three rooms and necessary conveniences, to be free of all taxes, and plentifully supplied with water and gas, for 2s. 6d. a week each family. These houses adjoin the warehouses and docks, where the people are to be employed; and thence is to run a railroad to the sea, and every man liking to bathe will be conveyed there for a penny. There are to be wash-houses, where a woman will be able to wash the linen of her family for two-pence; and 180 acres have been devoted to a park, which Paxton has laid out, and nothing at Chatsworth can be more beautiful. At least 20,000 people were congregated there last Sunday, all decently dressed, orderly, and enjoying themselves. Chapels, and churches, and schools for every sect and denomination, abound. Jackson says he shall create as vigorous a public opinion against the public-house as is to be found in the highest classes. There are now 3,000 workmen on the docks and buildings, and he is about to take on 2,000 more. Turn which way you will, you see only the most judicious application of capital, skill, and experience--every thing good adopted, every thing bad eschewed, from all other places; and, as there is no other country in the world, I am sure, that could exhibit such a sight as this nascent establishment, where the best interests of commerce and philanthropy are so felicitously interwoven, I really felt an additional pride at being an Englishman."

The Liverpool Standard, in some comments upon the above letter, states that it is not true that seven years ago there were only three houses at Birkenhead, but that there were nearer three hundred. He adds that Hamilton Square had part of it built upon, and the centre enclosed more than twelve years ago; and that Liverpool, which is said to have one hundred and eleven acres of enclosed water-space, has upwards of nine miles quay-room, and forty acres of new docks now forming.

(To be continued.)

FRESH-WATER FARE.

ENGRAVED BY J. WESTLEY, FROM A PAINTING BY NIEMANN.

Some two years since, when, as the town reader has to be reminded, the country one to be informed, the open part of St. James's Park was wont on Sunday to be crowded with mad methodist preachers, rational philosophers, and total temperance lecturers, we once heard

a self-ordained shepherd (that we a few days afterwards recognized running counter" over a fur shop in Regent-street) give out, by way of text, an "amusing story" to this effect:-Two unfortunate travellers were once upon a time washed up to the shore of a certain uninhabited island, the natives of which quickly gathered around them, though, luckily, without evincing any of the usual cannibal island symptoms. Well, one of these two fashionable arrivals, it so turned out, was a reg'lar gentlemen, the other nothing but a poor basket-maker; both, however, did their best to cultivate the acquaintance of their new hosts. The gentleman made them a bow, and the basket maker made them a basket; and somehow or other, whether they were not susceptible of common politeness, or knew too much of it already, the working man got on a deuced deal the best. So much, indeed, did they admire his handicraft, that at the end of three months, having made a couple of baskets for every chief on the island, and considering every other man he met was a chief in his own right, this was rather a stiffish job, they ran the gizzard wing of a cock canary through his nose, had him tattooed in the newest style, fitted him out with a score or so of squaws, and made a man of him forthwith. The gentleman, on the other hand, being up to nothing but looking about him, rather too much (as it was said) at one of his friend's wives, got shipped off again at the first opportunity, to agreeably surprise his heir-at-law, who had, it appeared, given up him and taken up the title.

We

The palpable moral of this was, that every great and good man ought to be a basket-maker, or at all events ought not to be a gentleman; a piece of intelligence uncommonly well taken by the congregation, the applause, in fact, running very hard on an encore. lacked something of the face of his reverence, or beyond a doubt we should, on his concluding, have opened an opposition shop, and a controversy on the soundness of his argument. What's the good of being able to make a basket after all, without in the first place you know how to fill it? Put a man, now, into a bona fide desert island, on the real Robinson Crusoe terms of a chest of drawers and a fowlingpiece; place him in here for a few months with no one to admire the skill of his "'prenticed hand" but birds, beasts, and fishes, and then only consider what will become of your basket-making genius! We will only put it to the vote of acclamation, as the Jockey Club did the other day, whether the gentleman would not be healthy, wealthy, and wise in all the land possessed, by the time our right reverend friend the dean of St. James's hero had twisted himself an osier bed to lie down and die on? But, then, what is a gentleman-without his recreations? who cannot shoot, who cannot hunt, who cannot fish; who, in a word, cannot help to fill a basket as well as empty one? At this moment we should really be afraid to hazard our plain opinion as to what he is; at any rate he ought not to be suffered to share a traveller's delights and dangers; or, under any circumstances, if he will, never to expect us to make an example and a moral of him.

To come a little nearer our subject, there are few more pleasant ways of filling a basket than fishing, and, to run the line closer still,