ndred yards is claimed to be the
finest street in the kingdom. In Low Friars Street is the old chapel of
the Black Friars monastery, where Baliol did homage to Edward III. for
the Scottish throne. Sir William Armstrong lives at Jesmond, just
outside Newcastle, and at Elswick, west of the city, are the extensive
workshops where are made the Armstrong guns. The great High Level bridge
across the Tyne Valley, built by Stephenson, with a railway on top of a
roadway, and one thousand three hundred and thirty-seven feet long, is
one of the chief engineering works at Newcastle. George Stephenson was
born in 1781 at High Street House, Wylam, near Newcastle, while at
Frudhoe Castle is a seat of the Duke of Northumberland. At Wallsend,
three miles east of Newcastle, begins the celebrated Roman wall that
crossed Britain, and was defended by their legions against incursions by
the Scots. Its stone-and-turf walls, with the ditch on the north side,
can be distinctly traced across the island.

HEXHAM.

Ascending the Tyne, we come to Hexham, an imposing town as approached by
the railway, with the Moat Hall and the abbey church occupying
commanding features in the landscape. The Moat Hall is a large and
ancient tower, notable for its narrow lights and cornice-like range of
corbels. The abbey church, formerly the cathedral of St. Andrew, is a
fine specimen of Early English architecture, of which only the transept
and some other ruins remain, surmounted by a tower rising about one
hundred feet and supported upon magnificent arches. Here is the shrine
of the ancient chronicler. Prior Richard, an attractive oratory: and the
town also produced another quaint historian of the Border troubles, John
of Hexham. It is an antique place, and almost all of its old buildings
bear testimony to the disturbed state of the Scottish frontier in the
olden time, for not far away are the Cheviot Hills that form the
boundary, and in which the Tyne takes its rise. Similar evidence is also
given in Haltwhistle, Hexham's suburb, across the narrow river.

[Illustration: HEXHAM.]

ALNWICK CASTLE.

[Illustration: ALNWICK CASTLE, FROM THE LION BRIDGE.]

[Illustration: THE BARBICAN GATE.]

[Illustration: THE BARBICAN.]

Journeying northward through Northumberland, and following the
coastline--for here England narrows as the Scottish border is
approached--the road crosses the diminutive river Alne, running through
a deep valley, and standing in an imposi