class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 6]"/>School of Medicine was founded, and which to-day holds the headquarters of the Victoria University. Manchester, again, was the first town in England to take advantage of the Free Libraries Act of 1850, opening on September 2d, 1852, with Liverpool in its immediate wake. The Chetham Free Library (Manchester) had already existed for 200 years, conferring benefits upon the community which it would be difficult to over-estimate. Other Lancashire towns—Darwen, Oldham, Southport, and Preston, for example, have latterly possessed themselves of capital libraries, so that, including the fine old collection at Warrington, the number of books now within reach of Lancashire readers, pro rata for the population, certainly has no parallel out of London. An excellent feature in the management of several of these libraries consists in the effort made to attain completeness in special departments. Rochdale aims at a complete collection of books relating to wool; Wigan desires to possess all that has been written about engineering; the Manchester library contains nearly eight hundred volumes having reference to cotton. In the last-named will also be found the nucleus of a collection which promises to be the finest in the country, of books illustrative of English dialects. The Manchester libraries collectively, or Free and Subscription taken together, are specially rich in botanical and horticultural works—many of them magnificently illustrated and running to several volumes—the sum of the titles amounting to considerably over a thousand. Liverpool, too, is well provided with books of this description, counting among them that splendid Lancashire work, Roscoe's Monandrian Plants, the drawings for which were chiefly made in the Liverpool Botanic Garden—the fourth founded in England, or first after Chelsea, Oxford, and Cambridge, and specially interesting in having been set on foot, in 1800, by Roscoe himself.

The legitimate and healthful recreation of the multitude is in Lancashire, with the thoughtful, as constant an object as their intellectual succour. The public parks in the suburbs of many of the principal Lancashire towns, with their playgrounds and gymnasia, are unexcelled. Manchester has no fewer than five, including the recent noble gift of the "Whitworth." Salford has good reason to be proud of its "Peel Park." Blackburn, Preston, Oldham, Lancaster, Wigan, Southport, and Heywood have also done their best.

In Lancashire have always been witnessed the most vigorous and persistent struggles made in this country for civil and political liberty and the amendment of unjust laws. Sometimes, unhappily, they have seemed to indicate disaffection; and enthusiasts, well-meaning but extremely unwise—so commonly the case with their class—have never failed to obtain plenty of support, often prejudicial to the very cause they sought to uphold. But the ways of the people, considered as a community, deducting the intemperate and the zealots, have always been patriotic, and there has never been lack of determination to uphold the throne. The modern Volunteer movement, as the late Sir James Picton once reminded us, may be fairly said to have originated in Liverpool; the First Lancashire Rifles, which claims to be the oldest Volunteer company, having been organised there in 1859. In any case the promptitude of the act showed the vitality of that fine old Lancashire disposition to defend the right, which at the commencement of the Civil Wars rendered the county so conspicuous for its loyalty. It was in Lancashire that the first blood was shed on behalf of Charles the First, and that the last effort, before Worcester, was made in favour of his son—this in the celebrated battle of Wigan Lane. It was the same loyalty which, in 1644, sustained Charlotte de la Tremouille, Countess of Derby, in the famous three months' defence of Lathom House, when besieged by Fairfax. Charlotte, a lady of French extraction, might quite excusably be supposed to have had less care for the king than an Englishwoman. But she was now the wife of a Lancashire man, and that was enough for her heart; she attuned herself to the Earl's own devotedness, became practically a Lancashire woman, and took equal shares with him in his unflinching fervour. The faithfulness to great trusts which always marks the noble wife, however humble her social position, however exalted her rank and title, with concurrent temptations to wrongdoing, doubtless lay at the foundation of Charlotte's personal heroism. But it was her pasturing, so to speak, in Lancashire, which brought it up to fruition. Of course, she owed much to the fidelity of her Lancashire garrison. Without it, her own brave spirit would not have sufficed. Lancashire men have always made good soldiers. Several were knighted "when the fight was done" at Poitiers and Agincourt. The Middleton archers distinguished themselves at Flodden. The gallant 47th—the "Lancashire Lads"—were at the Alma, and at Inkerman formed part of the "thin red line." There is equally good promise for the future, should occasion arise. At the great Windsor Review of the Volunteers in July 1881, when 50,000 were brought together, it was unanimously allowed by the military critics that, without the slightest disrespect to the many other fine regiments upon the ground, the most distinguished for steadiness, physique, and discipline, as well as the numerically strongest, was the 1st Manchester. So striking was the spectacle that the Queen inquired specially for the name of the corps which reflected so much honour upon its county. In the return published in the General Orders of the Army, February 1882, it is stated that the 2d Battalion of the South Lancashire had then attained the proud distinction of being its "best signalling corps." The efforts made in Lancashire to obtain changes for the better in the statute-book had remarkable illustration in the establishment of the Anti-Corn-Law League, the original idea of which was of much earlier date than is commonly supposed, having occupied men's minds, both in Manchester and Liverpool, as far back as the year 1825. The celebrated cry six years later for Reform in the representation was not heard more loudly even in Birmingham than in the metropolis of the cotton trade.

The pioneers of every kind of religious movement have, like the leaders in civil and political reform, always found Lancashire responsive; and, as with practical scientific inventions, it is to this county that the most interesting part of the early history of non-conforming bodies very generally pertains. George Fox, the founder of the "Society of Friends," commenced his earnest work in the neighbourhood of Ulverston. "Denominations" of every kind have also in this county maintained themselves vigorously, and there are none which do not here still exist in their strength. The "Established Church," as elsewhere, holds the foremost place, and pursues, as always, the even tenour of its way. During the forty-three years that Manchester has been the centre of a diocese, there have been built within the bishopric (including certain rebuildings on a larger scale) not fewer than 300 new churches. The late tireless Bishop Fraser "confirmed" young people at the rate of 11,000 every year. The strength of the Wesleyans is declared by their contributions to the great Thanksgiving Fund, which amounted, on 15th November 1880, to nearly a quarter of the entire sum then subscribed, viz. to about £65,000 out of the £293,000. They possess a college at Didsbury; not far from which, at Withington, the Congregationalists likewise have one of their own. The long standing and the power of the Presbyterians is illustrated in their owning the oldest place of worship in