St. Luke's: The Services for Men.

St. Luke's, Bold Street, perhaps the most stately of Liverpool's newer churches, was originally selected as the temporary cathedral. It is on the verge of the inner city, and yet close to a favourite residential district. Rodney Street is close at hand, an almost aristocratic part of the old city, and now the headquarters of the medical profession-the Wimpole Street of Liverpool. Under the present vicar, the Rev. Archdeacon Madden, St. Luke's has become remarkable for its Sunday evening gatherings of men-sometimes numbering six hundred. They assemble at the Bible-reading which, at 8.30, succeeds the ordinary evening service. The children's church and the classes for elder boys and girls are among the interesting features of an assiduous pastorate. Not far from St. Luke's is the very capacious church of St. Mark's, provided with 2400 seats in the years before the suburban outflow of the population.

the

We shall see more of the living reSunday in ligious activities of the Liverpool of outer City. to-day if we turn to the more residential quarters of the

large city and its suburbs. On the one hand we may go northward to the thickly settled labour district towards Bootle, with its sadly sordid and insanitary streets and alleys almost within touch of the stately commercial centre of the city. On the other, the more prosperous suburban districts, with their newer and well-attended churches, must also be glanced at. We shall see some of the worse and some of the better aspects of Sunday in Liverpool, and some of the arduous and admirable efforts for grappling with the great seaport's gravest problems.

Memories of

Leaving Bold Street we St. Jude's: shall easily reach historic Hugh McNeile. and picturesque Everton, from whose lofty brow we can look down upon the great city below. But on our way we shall do well to call at a church of many cherished associations, once the most notable of the city's many places of worship. It is St. Jude's, Hardwick Street. Here Dr. Hugh McNeile, Liverpool's greatest preacher, officiated from 1834 to 1848, when his congregation built St. Paul's church, Prince's Park, for his pastorate. Liverpool still remem

bers his touching farewell as Dean of Ripon, at the age of 73.

Sunday at Everton.

At Everton we have ascended to a picturesque district of greater Liverpool. Everton has long been notable for its considerable religious activities. It is known not only for its Episcopal Protestant churches, and for a resemblance in this and other respects to historic Islington in London. Here also are the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in Liverpool, their chief training college, the Bishop's house, and the stately pro-Cathedral. Here too are the places of worship of the Welsh colony, the Presbyterians, and an important centre of the Congregationalists of Liverpool.

In Shaw Street is Liverpool University, with its memories of Dean Howson, and Dr. Selwyn, former headmasters, and the school days of Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Father Berry's Homes for Destitute Boys, for which Liverpool is SO honourably known, are also in Shaw Street. The Wesleyans too, have here one of their principal homes for the same class, founded by their veteran superintendent, the Rev. Charles Garrett.

ST. LUKE'S CHURCH.

of St. George's, Canon Trench, in a district numbering sixty thousand souls. St. Augustine's, Everton, is one of the largest of Liverpool churches, and nowhere in Greater or Lesser Liverpool shall we see more impressive sights than its

thousand, and in the evening there are generally at least seventeen hundred present.

Emmanuel Church, where the Rev. Charles Courtenay has just concluded a term of fruitful and memorable service; St. Saviour's, St. Cuthbert's, St. John the Evangelist, St. Chad's, St. Polycarp's, and other churches confirm the welcome evidence that Everton maintains its exceptional record of long sustained efficiency under great social changes. It would be difficult to find elsewhere a group of old township churches of such numbers and importance.

The brighter

Side.

Thus far our Sunday morning in Liverpool has shown us some of the brighter spots in the city's life. Nor should we be disappointed in our visits to the churches and chapels of other communions in this part of Liverpool, where Welsh and Scotch, Irish and English places of worship abound, and gladden the eye with the evidence of prevailing religious observances. In some of the Sunday-schools we should find as many as six hundred children and upwards in attendance. At the Roman Catholic churches here, and as in other parts of Liverpool, we should see with surprise the large congregation of children who attend the ten o'clock service specially arranged for their benefit. At a still earlier hour we should see the equally special service for the mothers. At the eleven o'clock service for men we should find as a rule a crowded congregation. At the important church of St Francis Xavier, close to Shaw Street, there is a morning congregation of twelve hundred. Compared with other large towns we are so far prepared to think very highly of the observance of Sunday in Liverpool.

Shadows.

But we have yet to see the Liverpool Sunday on a greater scale. Inner, central Liverpool, with its vast and thickly settled population nearer to the water-side, still awaits us. As we stand upon the lofty natural terrace above hilly Everton, we look down upon the denser city below. Dimly descried, we see it lying crescent-shaped, clinging to the Mersey as its bow-line. We can still see farther the distant hills on the far side of the great river. Between us lie the greatest problems of the greatest sea-port in the world.

Darker

We easily come

Liverpool. upon the scene. Three great parallel highways, known as Great Homer Street, Scotland Road, and Vauxhall Road, pierce the heart of this wide thickly-settled, and for the most part povertysodden, quarter. Here we shall find the "Ratcliff Highways" of Liverpool, at once far more populous and more squalid than their London prototype. Here, on the flanks of each of the great thoroughfares, dwell the hewers of wood and drawers of water for nautical Liverpool. Here, too, in the two-storied blind alleys, with cellars for living and sleeping rooms, dwell in their thousands the workless, the helpless immigrant, the vicious, and the destitute. It is here, in these miles of unsanitary by-streets with their blind alleys and cellar bed-rooms, that we see the worst survivals of older Liverpool, and the lives of the people as lived in their own chosen quarter. Away from the city's stately buildings, gay promenades, and luxuriant parks and pleasure grounds, we find

living by themselves the unskilled, the shiftless, the migratory, Liverpool's chief burden, most of them, alas! too dumb and indifferent

the poor by the more eminent of the Irish residents and leaders in social and religious work.

Liverpool is not ignorant of the dark spots in her midst. Few indeed are the great towns in England in which the evidences of religious and social work are to be seen in such abounding variety and plenitude. In a former paper we saw something of the greatness of commercial Liverpool-her maritime enterprise, her municipal eminence, her palatial buildings devoted to civic life, literature, science, and art. Not less admirable are Liverpool's aspirations and labours for the poorer classes of the population. As we proceed to look into the social side of the great city's life, we shall be no less impressed at the magnitude and variety of the work for the uneducated, the abject, the destitute, and the lost, which meet us at every turn.

the firemen and seamen of the great ocean steamers, the stagemen, yardmen and other workmen of the railway companies, prefer to live farther away from waterside and central Liverpool. There is a comparatively large number of respectable shopkeepers; and the honest and industrious poor who cannot choose their place of residence are by no means wanting in worst quarters. Wide areas are still occupied by insanitary houses, melancholy survival of Liverpool's worst days. Yet in only one of the streets is there a serious approach to the Sunday morning marketing which flourishes on the greater scale in so many parts of London.

"Little Ireland."

It is at Scotland Road that we find the great settlement of immigrants from Irish shores. "Seven-eighths of my parishioners," writes the English vicar of St. Alban's, Limekiln Lane, the Rev. Musgrave Brown, "are Irish." "Every other person you meet in Scotland Road," writes Father Roche, "is a Catholic." For many generations the immigrants have been for the most part the poorest of their race.

On the other hand, Liverpool numbers among her adopted sons of Irish birth many of her ablest and most conspicuous citizens. We shall see in future visits to "Little Ireland," and indeed in all the Irish quarters of the city, some of the strenuous and praiseworthy efforts which are being made for

ONE

NE of the results of the dinner-party at Dr. Vivian's a party which had begun disastrously but had proved amusing and interesting after all-was a suggestion by Mrs. Beauchamp that we should carry on the memory of our Highland holiday by occasional meetings for informal talk over questions that interested us. One winter evening, therefore, we found ourselves assembled in Mr. Wynne Beauchamp's library, a beautiful room that I knew well; not encumbered with furniture but lined with books from floor to ceiling, airy and spacious, a perfect Paradise for a book-lover. A fire of logs flamed on the wide old-fashioned hearth, and about a dozen guests were dispersed about the interior.

The

The Philosopher, having seen fit to prolong his sojourn in town, was one of our number. So was Helen Hoffman, whom the Beauchamps had never ceased to care for, and who found herself helped and encouraged in every way by the kind artist and his wife. "Your friend has a future before her," they would say to me and I knew to whose efforts that future would be largely due. Arnolds were present, and another member of the party was Mr. Frank Merton, he who appeared in Scotland as the type of frivolous youth, but who was now partly reduced to soberness by his studies for the Bar, and who looked more sedate in irreproachable evenir g dress than he had looked in his Highland tweed. Dr. and Mrs. Vivian were there also some visitors whom we did not know. This latter fact privately roused the Philosopher's ire.

"I think I shall follow the Parliamentary usage and 'espy strangers ;'" he observed to me as, coffee cups in hand, we stood apart. He glanced darkly in the direction of the unknown members of the party.

"Do you not think it will be an advantage to have a little of some fresh element introduced into our discussions?" I asked.

"No!" he rejoined, "I wonder at Beauchamp for inviting such people; especially that square, commonplace man in morning dress, with spectacles and a bald head and a firm jaw. Then there is one who looks as though he were a poet a very, very minor poet! or even a relic of the extinct race of Esthetes - he with the long hair, and limp aspect, and the untidy wife in sage green."

"We have at any rate the advantage of contrast," I remarked, as I glanced at the two men referred to. Standing together in the library, they certainly did present a contrast: and the wife, if not untidy, was garbed in what appeared to be a long piece of green cashmere wound round and round her form.

An adjournment took place for a time to view Mr. Beauchamp's pictures, chiefly of cathedral interiors; then we returned to the library, and disposed ourselves on the various chairs and settees. I think we all felt a little at a loss.

No precise subject had been named for conversation, and the Philosopher, still brooding over his grievance of "strangers," sat dark and immovable in a corner.

"What delightful books you have, Beauchamp!" exclaimed Mr. Merton, breaking the silence, and glancing around the room with an air of appreciation.

"Too many," growled the Philosopher.

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Why too many? How can one have too many books?" replied his quondam antagonist.

"Because the best books are few, and it is the art of a wise man to read only the best," retorted Mr. Scrymgeour. "Because multitudes of shelves, and rows on rows of volumes, only mean dissipation of energy and waste of time, if not hopeless discouragement. They are for the most part, echoes of the few great voices, and echoes that weaken! Give me a man who knows his Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, Plato, Dante, thoroughly, to go no further, and I will show you a man of culture-but show me a man who reads or tries to read everything that comes out, and I will show you a man who is ruined, mentally, for lack of concentration.

"Time and opportunity are limited!" he continued, fiercely glaring. "All your twaddle about the growth of knowledge, advance of culture, cheap editions, free libraries--what does it mean? Only an increase of bewilderment; an increase in temptation to the misuse of thought and attention, or an increase in the number of blarks in a lottery, multiplying the difficulty of drawing a prize. I think it is Emerson who compares books upon books in a large library, to creatures imprisoned by an enchanter in wood and paper and leather, and disguised all alike, so that there is scanty chance indeed of their friends recognising them. Talk of Portia's three caskets and the difficulty of choice, forsooth!-here are two or three thousand caskets! and two or three hundred blanks to every prize!"

He stopped, more for want of breath than for any other apparent reason. This whimsical attack upon large libraries loosened several tongues. We began to object, demur, exclaim; and thus it was, that, without pre-arrangement or concert, we found ourselves launched into a discussion on Reading.

"There is a great deal of truth in what Mr. Scrymgeour has said as to the difficulty of selection," observed Mr. Arnold.

"And there is more truth still, sir, in another statement which I am about to make," suddenly broke in the ponderous gentleman who had roused the Philosopher's ire. "The difficulty with the majority of men lies in reading anything at all beside the newspaper. You talk eloquently about books, but how is a man who has to go to his office or counting-house or the Stock Exchange from morning to night, to read anything much besides the daily paper ? How are my clerks to