Neither guide-book nor history nor commercial estimate, this Book merely attempts the much less laborious task of handing on the instant effect produced by that active, tangible quantity, the Liverpool of the present day; and its Writer has therefore been forced to rely, almost as completely as its Illustrator, upon the private reports of his own senses rather than upon the books and testimonies of other people. None the less he has managed to incur a little sheaf of debts, and these, although he is unable to repay, he is anxious at least to acknowledge. By far the greatest measure of his gratitude is due, not for the first time, to his friend Mr. John Macleay—lacking whose suggestion the Book would never have been begun—lacking whose counsel it would, when finished, have been even less adequate than it now remains; but he desires as well to offer his especial thanks to Professor Ramsay Muir, who generously permitted him to read certain chapters of the recently published “History of Liverpool” in proof; to Dr. E. W. Hope, Liverpool’s Medical Officer of Health, for courteous responses to various inquiries; to Mr. G. T. Shaw (of the Liverpool AthenÆum), Mr. A. Chandler (of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board), Mr. H. Lee Jones, Mr. T. Alwyn Lloyd, and Mr. William Postlethwaite, all of whom have provisioned him with much more information than he has found it possible to use. To them, and to all those other creditors whose names have not been mentioned but who may be equally inclined to deplore the waste of good material, he would protest that their assistance might have had a more commensurate practical result if only they could have persuaded those implacable niggards, space and time, to imitate their eager liberality.