ust not conceal the fact that, in many cases, great
cowardice was exhibited; as, when the report got current and the cry was
rife that "the French were coming"--a cry that used to frighten naughty
children to the verge of terror--numbers of the inhabitants became
panic-struck, and actually packed up their furniture and valuables, and
commenced a hasty exodus believing that they would be safer inland than
by the seaboard. I saw cartload after cartload of goods, toiling up
Prescot-road, Brownlow-hill, Mount Pleasant, Oldhall-street, and
Preston-road, accompanied by weeping and terrified women and children,
with the deepest anxiety exhibited on their countenances. The outskirt
roads were like a fair. It will scarcely be believed that the price of
cartage rose so high while the panic lasted, that fabulous sums were
asked and obtained for transporting goods out of town. It at length
became impossible to obtain a vehicle of any description. Hundreds of
persons might be seen camping along the high roads at some distance from
the town, anxiously awaiting the expected sound of cannon, the clash of
arms, and the cry of contending men. I laugh at this now--but it was no
laughing matter then. I recollect one day passing down Dale-street (then
a narrow, inconvenient thoroughfare) to muster, when the Warrington and
Manchester coach was about to start: numbers of frightened people
besieged it and attempted to turn out and off those who had obtained
possession of its lumbering inside and its miserable basket behind. In
it I remember was seated a tremendous man, a town councillor, who fairly
roared and cried like a child because the driver would not hasten his
departure--the cry of "the French" annihilated him, and I had half a mind
to let off my fire-lock and see what the result would have been. We were
not much addicted to punctuality in those good old times; so that half an
hour's delay in the starting of a coach was held as nothing very
important--the delay however seemed a year to the worthy magnate.

In the town the utmost excitement prevailed. At the Pier Heads, at the
Fort, and in St. Nicholas's churchyard (in the lower part of which there
was a battery of six guns) might have been seen hundreds of stalwart
fellows strengthening the fortifications; men in and out of uniform were
marching through the town with drum and fife, some armed and some
unarmed, coming and going from or to the rendezvous. The jolly sailors
in th