much farther, by following and defcribing the various Roman stations that were all along contiguous to this ancient and stupendous work. We shall only observe, from Bede, the venerable historian of Jarrow, that, upon Severus' wall being broke down in several places by the barbarians, another was built, with turrets at intervening distances, by the Romans, to defend the feeble and enervated inhabitants of their provinces. And as the empire was convulfed through the competition of several rivals at once for the supreme power, the Roman troops took leave of the island, about four hundred and seventy-eight years from its being first invaded by Julius Cæfar. Twenty years afterwards, the Britons, finding the Scots and Picts too powerful for them, folicited the Romans to come to Britain to affift them; but they never returned. This last wall is said by Bede to have been eight feet broad, and twelve high, and was erected on the very site of the walls of Adrian and of Severus. It had a great number of towers, or little castles, a mile from each other, now called castle-steeds; and on the inside, fortified little towns or camps, called chesters. The inhabitants tell you, that there was also a brazen trumpet, or pipe, of which they now and then found pieces, fo artificially laid in the wall, between each castle and tower, that upon the apprehenfion of danger, at any single place, by the founding of it, notice might be given to the next tower, and so on through the whole breadth of the ifland. Vide Bede, as quoted by Camden. Mr. Brand, who, accompanied by the ingenious Mr. R. Beilby, in the year 1783, traced the whole extent of the Roman wall, has minutely recorded, in in the appendix to his history of Newcastle, his difcoveries of fragments of altars, urns, coins, &c. and fums up the whole of his observations with giving us the names of the various stations along the wall, viz. 10. Walwick-Chesters, 11. Walwick-Grange, 12. Walwick, 13. Walwick New Houses, 14. Wall-Shiels, 15. Walton-Mill, 16. Wall-Town, 17. Thirlwall-Castle, 18. Burnt-Wall, 19. Wallbours, 20. Walhome, 21. Wall, 22. Wall-Town, 23. Walton-Ridge, 27. Wall-House, in Northumberland. in Cumberland. Upon viewing the ruins of these once mighty efforts of human art, to see the broken fragments of castles, temples, palaces, and lofty structures, the mind is struck with strong emotions of a kind of melancholy sympathy; and it carries our reflections for D forward to the confummation of all things, as described by the unrivalled Shakespeare.- "The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, But our sensations are relieved, when we fee beautiful and fertile fields, covered with golden harvests, where once stood the rampart of huge ftones cramped with iron; and where fierce warriors conflicted in mortal combat, now the scenes of harmless bleating flocks, and of sportive lambs, gambolling in wanton play, along the venerable ruins of camps and entrenchments; as finely pictured by a great poet of nature.— 1 "And leads me to the mountain's brow, Where fits the shepherd on the graffy turf, Lost in eternal broil: ere yet she grew Where wealth and commerce lift their golden head, THOMSON'S SPRING. SITUATION SITUATION AND EXTENT. This town, which has made, for ages, a confpicuous figure among the commercial marts for trade, manufactures, and business of various kinds, does not impress the stranger, who approaches it from any direction, with ideas prepossessing in its favour. A very ingenious correspondent of the editors of the Monthly Magazine, in his account of it, says: "The situation of modern Newcastle has probably been determined by its bridge, which, having been originally built by the Romans at this termination of their great north-eastern road, has been, from time to time, renewed upon the same site. This warlike people seem to have preferred passing over the tops of hills, probably for the sake of stations, from which to overlook and keep in devotion the furrounding country. But the objects to be anfwered by a military nation are very different from those of a commercial one, which are best promoted by the ease and expedition with which goods and passengers can be conveyed from one part of a country to another. The great obstruction to this free communication, and the enormous needless waste of the powers of that noble animal on whose exertions we chiefly depend in these respects, occafioned by the servility with which we still continue to follow the track of our predecessors over the elevated barren ridge of Gateshead Fell, is a fource of daily mortification to the travellers upon this road. More especially when the view of that fingular edifice lately built for a patent-fhot tower at the white-lead works, a few hundred yards above the bridge, which presents D2 presents itself to the passenger about two miles north of Chester-le-street, cannot fail to convince him of the ease with which a perfectly level road might be carried in a straight line from that point to the western extremity of the town. The noble prospect up the vale of Tyne, which regales the eye of the traveller as he descends towards the town from the summit of the ridge, may perhaps be pleaded as some compensation for the trouble of its ascent. "After the Romans had retired from Britain, it appears that the works which they had here constructed were at least so far maintained as to continue it a place of confiderable strength; and that many religious fraternities in the later Saxon times had found in it a secure shelter. " But whatever causes may have determined the fituation of Newcastle, and however well chosen it may once have been for the purposes of security, it must be acknowledged to be fingularly ill adapted to answer those of neatness or convenience. To the stranger who arrives from the south, after he has been aftonished, and in some degree terrified, by his rapid descent through Gateshead, (now indeed confiderably mitigated by the circuitous direction of the new street), immediately on his turning upon the bridge, a precipitous eminence presents itself, which extends along the river westward to the extremity of the town, leaving only room for a narrow street, very properly denominated The Close; but clustered all the way to the very fummit of its almost perpendicular banks, with houses built during the turbulent times which preceded the union of the crowns, when the inhabitants naturally crowded as close as poffible under the protection of the Castle. Amidst these houses |