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ternal appearance, with its noble wall and its four grim gates; and there is a look of gravity and grimness about the quaint streets and lanes, that insensibly recalls the days that are gone...But hark to the impatient scream of the genius of the new era! How the iron steed snorts and pants to be gone! In the glance of an eye, and the draught of a breath, and we are off. Railway Readings.

NEWCASTLE.

THE impression made upon the stranger visiting Newcastle now-a-days, has no relation to its eventful past. Its old walls, with the exception of a few sturdy fragments and one or two solitary towers, are pulled down. From being a town of military importance, it has now become one of commercial character... Wide over its hills stretch its dense buildings, and its tall chimneys vomiting volumes of blackest smoke. On its river lie numbers of ships, and busy steamers are plying about...A bridge, bearing a dusky and somewhat melancholy resemblance to London Bridge, and spanning a lesser Thames, links the city with Gateshead; and right and left, up and down the river, on this side of the country and on that, the kindred objects of coal-mines, and railways, strike the eye... Along the bank of the river you see ranges, one above another, of dim and dirty buildings, which have stood for centuries amid the smoke of the great capital of coal; and higher up, you catch the tops of houses and ranges of streets that indicate a certain degree of modern magnificence.

Newcastle has doubled its population within from thirty to forty years. It has been enriched almost entirely by the coal trade, which attracts vessels from all parts of the world to discharge their merchandise upon its quays. By the exchanges which follow these transactions, a multitude of trades are called into activity, which in their turn give employment and wealth to industrious thousands, who, spreading over the neighbourhood, form new and flourishing communities...In this way North and South Shields, at the mouth of the Tyne, and many intermediate villages on its banks, have sprung up within the memory of persons

now living. Of the coal annually consumed in London, one half may be said to be supplied from Newcastle.

The great wall*, which was built by the Romans nearly 1800 years ago across the narrowest part of England, ended near the hills on which Newcastle stands... The wall ran from the Solway Firth to a point on the banks of the Tyne, three miles east of Newcastle, and called to this day Walls-end: whence the name of the well-known coal. Howitt.

HOLY ISLAND.

WE land beneath the bluff † on a bare stony beach; the boys are left in charge of the boat, the skipper thinks he will call on his sister, whom he has not seen for months, while the two passengers ascend the steep and cross the field to the monastery. Judging from appearances, this venerable dark red structure will stand long, for it is properly protected by fences and walls... The Rainbow, as it has been called, one of the tower arches, still hangs aloft, with its diagonal span, too light, as it seems, for the massive columns ranged below... The west front is in good preservation, having a deep Norman doorway with bold mouldings. The south aisle and south side of the nave § are gone; but you can see one of the row of arches, narrower than the rest, compressed into a horseshoe form, and there are appearances which show that the nave was once roofed with stone... Among the out-buildings the big kitchen chimney remains; and many a rare effect of light and shade and contrast of color will you get while wandering about the ruin.

From lying opposite to the brook Lindis, the island was in ancient days called Lindisfarne; but Aidan, the first bishop, invited and encouraged by Oswald, left his retreat at Iona, and having built the first church, earnest monks

*See "Historical Narrative," p. 245.
Bluff, precipice overhanging the sea.
Aisle, (ile), wings or side divisions.
Nave, the central or middle division.

Iona, one of the Hebrides; and anciently also the seat of a monastery.

and the renowned saint followed, and the name was changed to Holy Island... That first church had walls of oaken balks *, and a roof of reeds; and it is well to remember that Aidan, and the monarch his friend, were both of that Christian church which already had communities in the north of England before St. Augustine landed with his missionaries in Kent.

Thoughts chase one another strangely through the mind while we stroll beneath the time-worn arches: now of groups of wondering listeners as the first Christian teacher told his errand; now of the wild sea-kings sweeping all before them with fire and sword; now of a monastery renowned for its sanctity, attracting pilgrims from all parts of Christendom...Not all the works of those old monks are as ruinous as their abode, for many of their books yet remain some preserved in that cathedral which looks down on the Wear, and one in the British Museum...You may see it, reader, the next time you go there, a thick volume, described as the Durham Manuscript, bound in jewel covers, lying in the glass-case. It is a copy of the Gospels in Latin, the work, as a memorandum in Anglo-Saxon informs us, of three monks of Lindisfarne.

While recrossing the herring beach, we had a pretty sight in the departure of a number of fishing boats. The tide served, evening was coming on, and one after another they hoisted sail, stood out of the bay, made a tack, and then away to the open sea for five-and-twenty miles. White's Northumberland, &c.

THE GOODWIN SANDS.

EVERYBODY has heard, and heard with awe, of the Goodwin Sands. They have heard strange wild stories, not only of their danger, but of their origin. How where they now yawn to engulf the ships, once stood firm land—an island belonging to the famous Earl Godwin, father of King Harold; and really, so rarely is tradition without truth, that we are inclined to believe strong land did once lie where

Balks, pieces of timber 4 in. to 10 in. square.

now the Sands are...If so, however, it must have been centuries and centuries before Godwin was born; it must have happened at a time beyond all written record; but that tradition may carry back so far is proved by the fact that several nations, cut off from all the rest of the world, and without a leaf of writing, repeat to their children, to this day, some vague story of the Deluge.

Old legends of the old historians, however, insist on ascribing the transformation of the Goodwin Sands to an island to the time of Earl Godwin himself... By some it is said that a great feast was held on the island in honor of the marriage of the Earl's daughter; that the castle was full of noble guests, and that there were dancing, and gaiety, and all the mad frolic of the time; that in the height of midnight mirth a tempest rose, and in the morning the castle, and the houses were gone, and nothing left but the raging sea and the engulfing sands...Others say that the Earl once made an unsuccessful foray into Kent. Being in great peril, he made a solemn vow that if he were delivered from the desperate situation he was then in, he would build a steeple at Tenterden in honor of the Virgin... His vows were heard; and he was so absorbed in the building of the steeple that he neglected the sea-walls of his island; and the sea, pouring in upon it, in the height of a storm and earthquake, totally destroyed it. This story, no doubt, is the origin of the story that Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands... Again, Hector Boëthius, a writer who lived at the close of the fifteenth century, says, "About the end of the reign of King William Rufus, there was a sudden and mighty inundation of the sea, by which a great part of Flanders was drenched and lost, and the same storm violently overwhelmed Earl Godwin's isle with a light sand, and it became a most dreadful gulf, and ship-swallower."

But if there have been vague legends as to the origin of the Goodwins, there still exists a very mistaken idea as to the nature of them—a mistake which is fallen into by Boë

* Foray, an expedition for the purpose of plunder, a means of subsistence at that time common.

thius above quoted... It is almost universally believed that the Goodwin Sands are, as it were, soft to the bottom, with certain powers of suction, like a bog; that they are, in short, what they are above called, gulfs and ship-swallowers...This is by no means the fact. The Sands lie upon a surface perfectly hard-so hard, indeed, that only by extraordinary means can it be penetrated to any considerable depth. If these sands were as voracious as they are generally supposed to be, it would be impossible to erect beacons on them; and yet this has been done several times... A refuge-beacon erected by Captain Bullock stood for years without sinking an inch, and might have stood to this day had it not been knocked down by a light schooner, running over the Goodwins at high-water.

The sudden disappearance of large ships on the Goodwins, arises from their being wrung to pieces by the violence of the surf, and the irregular action of tides and currents. After knocking about in this way for a few minutes, ships are sometimes rolled bodily over into deep water and sunk... At the same time, the Sands are not shallow, and shift considerably. Heavy bodies sink into them easily, and, if not very bulky, soon become covered, to reappear from time to time, with the changes of wind and tide.

The Trinity Board erected a refuge-beacon not long ago. The ball upon its summit is fifty-on -one feet high, and the refuge gallery at least thirty-three feet above high-water mark. This place of safety is rendered easy of access; and the stability of the beacon is insured by four pairs of iron shrouds attached to the upright cylinder. This passes through the main body of the sand down to the Chuck rocks, upon which the particles of sand composing the Goodwins are collected... High-water mark reaches to the top of the large cylinder, and then the Goodwins are covered with water in many places eighteen feet deep, and in no part is there less than eight feet.

But, alas! practice has verified what the Deal boatmen predicted namely, that all refuge-beacons upon the Goodwin Sands would be useless things. These practical men predicted that they would never be the means of saving life... The view the Deal men took of this matter has, up

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