They've brought home a shoulder of mutton, besides two thumping fat geese,

And when at the fire they're roasting, we're all to have sops in the

grease.

And there'll be pies and spice dumplings, and there'll be bacon and

peas,

Besides a great lump of beef boiled, and they may get crowdies who

please;

To eat such good things as these are, I'm sure ye've but seldom

the luck;

Besides, for to make us some pottage, there'll be a sheep's head and

a pluck.

Of sausages there'll be plenty, black puddings, sheep fat, and neats'

tripes;

Besides, for to warm all your noses, great store of tobacco and

pipes:

A room, they say, there's provided, for us at the Old Jacob's

Well;

The bridegroom he went there this morning, and spoke for a barrel

o' yell."

The byeway brings us at length to the main road near Scotswood Suspension Bridge, and on we go with a smoky view before us, past King's Meadow Island, past the great engineering works at Elswick, past rows of suburban houses, to which clerks and shopmen are returning from the labours of the day, past the New Cattle Market, and in the dusk of evening, into the busy streets of the Metropolis of Coal.

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CHAPTER VII.

Newcastle-A Surprising Town—Awful Smoke-View from the CastleRelics of the Olden Time-Handsome streets-The Museum-Learned Antiquaries-Rarities-Chapel and Guard Room-Saint NicholasGrey Street-The Exchange-Business and Philosophy-Stephenson's Works-The Pasha's Locomotive-The Rocket-George Stephenson's Monuments-Distressed Shipowners-To Elswick-Sir William Armstrong's Works-Hydraulic Engines-Printing by Water-powerMechanical Triumphs-The Armstrong Gun-The Oldest HouseUnhappy Bank-Happy Men-The Ragged School-Useful TradesRecreations-Music: Yankee Doodle-A Parting Song.

NEWCASTLE is a surprising town in many respects, for its history, site, trade, architecture, social economy, and smoke. If the wind be easterly your view of the place from the top of the castle will be almost as cheerful as the prospect of London in a November fog; and incredible as it may appear, you may safely pronounce Newcastle to be worse for smokiness than Sheffield. When the wind blows up the river, it is really awful. It is all very well to brag about commerce, and mineral resources, and wonderful bridges; but why not adorn these advantages by a rigorous precept against smoke?

Imagine yourself, reader, gazing from the embrasured turret of the castle aforesaid: you see bold hilly ground covered with houses, terminating steeply on the river, which here and for the remainder of its course separates the two counties of Durham and Northumberland.

You see the bridge which sufficed for the traffic in the days when stage-coaches contrived to ascend and descend the precipitous slope of Gateshead; and a little upwards, the high-level bridge from brow to brow, one hundred and fifteen feet above the river, across which express trains fly on the way from London to Edinburgh. A wonderful bridge truly, containing nearly three quarters of a million cubic feet of masonry, more than five thousand tons of iron, and built at a cost of more than a quarter of a million pounds sterling! With that before our eyes we may fairly back living Newcastle against Pons Ælii of the ancient days, and its victorious Roman garrison.

Below the bridge and along the quay the Tyne is crowded with ships, fishing boats, and other craft, and busy steam tugs; and above, you see a straggling fleet of keels. If you stroll up one of the narrow lanes or chares from that place of merchandise, you may see on the front of the Trinity House two old rusty anchors: trophies from the Invincible Armada. Of the old town wall, built to keep the marauding Scots from kidnapping the citizens, from behind which Hotspur marched to the battle of Chevy Chase, some fragments, a gate or two, and sallyport yet remain; and while wandering about in search of antiquity you will see squalor and huggermugger comparable only with that which we saw in our yesterday's walk, or with scenes discoverable in Wapping and Rotherhithe. But turn away from the river till your eye meets the stately column on which the statue of Earl Grey stands high aloft, and you behold a surprising sight: streets that might have been brought from that handsomest of European cities, Edinburgh, and placed here as gems in a poor, not to say ugly setting. You there behold the rare spectacle

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85

of entire reconstruction and beautifying in the very heart of a large town. How large may be judged of by the fact that taking both sides of the river we overlook the abodes of more than one hundred and thirteen thousand inhabitants.

The castle itself is well worth a visit. You would take it for a Norman keep, as it stands here isolated near the bridge, with walls sixteen feet thick. A civil old woman receives your sixpence, intimates that if you like you may sign your name in a book, and leads you into the great hall, where the lofty arched ceiling is but dimly visible on a gloomy day, as your eye travels upwards from the old weapons and banners that hang on the walls. In one recess she shows you the well, ninety-six feet deep; another was King David's prison, after his capture at the battle of Neville's Cross and then you are left to find the way up to the top, exploring all the ins and outs, and pondering over Roman inscriptions at pleasure. The ten stumpy guns which peer through the embrasures are as elegant in form as if Robert Shorthose himself, the builder of the castle, had invented them. On the way down a civil old man admits you to the library and museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle; you see the horse-shoe table at which the learned antiquaries sit during their meetings, and you will perhaps think that a more appropriate meeting-room could hardly be found. Well have these northern archeologists proved their learning: one, a noble member, has recently interpreted the mysterious inscriptions graven on a chimney-breast at Chillingham Castle; and Dr. Bruce's book on The Roman Wall, shows how historical research and scholarship, combined with a loving examination of ancient monuments, may renew the life of a dying subject, and

produce a narrative which many will read with as much pleasure as edification.

"A chief among these famous men is Doctor Heavytome,

Who has achieved a greater fame than all the gods of Rome;
For Rome was not eternal, we know it by her fall,

But the Doctor has decreed her an everlasting Wall."

Look round, you will see great store of Roman antiquities; and many a rarity of the olden time over which it is not unprofitable to linger. Among them are rude weapons of the stone age, rude weapons of the iron age, a fac-simile of the silver plate found in the river at Corbridge, an inscribed plate dug up at Lindisfarne, a silver ring found on Towton field, a pair of gloves once worn by the Earl of Derwentwater, and others which inspire varied emotions as you muse over the cases. And last, you descend to the chapel and guard-room in the basement, and the graceful style of the one, and the grim strength and huge groins of the other, will perhaps excite your admiration more than all the rest of the fortress.

If you love to contemplate tombs and monuments and good ecclesiastical architecture, take the trouble to discover the beadle, and get him to admit you into the church of St. Nicholas. There is something cathedrallike in its appearance and proportions; but marred by the close ranges of ugly pews. Look at a drawing which hangs in the vestry, and you will see how much of beauty the church has lost by the interference of iconoclasts or churchwardens. The sounding board of the richly carved pulpit shown in the drawing is now used as the vestry table.

Then walk up Grey Street and view the handsome architecture, and note how a town may be improved and embellished by intelligent enterprise. Read the