The result is a bridge that for massive solidity may be pronounced unrivalled. It is perhaps the most magnificent and striking of all the bridges to which railways have given birth, and has been worthily styled “the King of railway structures.” It is a monument of the highest engineering skill of our time, with the impress of power grandly stamped upon it. It will also be observed, from the drawing placed as the frontispiece of this book, that the High Level Bridge forms a very fine object in a picture of great interest, full of striking architectural variety and beauty. The bridge was opened on the 15th August, 1849, and a few days after the royal train passed over it, halting for a few minutes to enable her Majesty to survey the wonderful scene below. In the course of the following year the Queen opened the extensive stone viaduct across the Tweed, above described, by which the last link was completed of the continuous line of railway between London and Edinburgh. Over the entrance to the Berwick station, occupying the site of the once redoubtable Border fortress, so often the deadly battle-ground of the ancient Scots and English, was erected an arch under which the royal train passed, bearing in large letters of gold the appropriate words, “_The last act of the Union_.” The warders at Berwick no longer look out from the castle walls to descry the glitter of Southron spears. The bell-tower, from which the alarm was sounded of old, though still standing, is deserted; the only bell heard within the precincts of the old castle being the railway porter’s bell announcing the arrival and departure of trains. You see the Scotch express pass along the bridge and speed southward on the wings of steam. But no alarm spreads along the border now. Northumbrian beeves are safe. Chevy-Chase and Otterburn are quiet sheep-pastures. The only men at arms on the battlements of Alnwick Castle are of stone. Bamborough Castle has become an asylum for shipwrecked mariners, and the Norman Keep at Newcastle has been converted into a Museum of Antiquities. The railway has indeed consummated the Union. CHAPTER XVII. ROBERT STEPHENSON’S TUBULAR BRIDGES AT MENAI AND CONWAY. We have now to describe briefly another great undertaking, begun by George Stephenson, and taken up and completed by his son, in the course of which the latter carried out some of his greatest works—we mean the Chester and Holyhead Railway, completing the railway connection with Dublin, as the Newcastle and Berwick line completed the connection with Edinburgh. It will thus be seen how closely Telford was followed by the Stephensons in perfecting the highways of their respective epochs; the former by means of turnpike-roads, and the latter by means of railways.