alarm of Newcastle, and the history of the town is studded with the attempts of its jealous neighbour to suppress its trade. In the fourteenth century the efforts of the Newcastle Corporation were directed against the fisheries and staithes on the south bank of the Tyne, which were frequently destroyed by "the malice of the men of Newcastle." In 1553 the two towns were united, but the Act was repealed by Queen Mary, who came to the throne in the same year. It was proposed to renew the union in 1568, but the anxious petitions of Gateshead, and the opposition of several influential persons in the Palatinate, frustrated the scheme. There are, however, several cases in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the interference of Newcastle with the trade of Gateshead. These troubles were the price that Gateshead had to pay for its advantageous position by the side of the greater town. Gateshead was given one representative in the House of Commons by the Reform Act of 1832, and was incorporated by its inclusion in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The boundary of Durham is now the south bank of the Tyne, but formerly the Bishop’s jurisdiction extended over one-third of the river, and was marked by a blue stone on Tyne Bridge. The old bridge, which stood where the Swing Bridge is now, was built in 1248 to replace the Roman bridge, Pons Ælii, which dated from _circa_ 119. In 1389 the burgesses of Newcastle carried off the Blue Stone, seized the whole of the bridge, and built a tower on the south end, which they held against the Bishop. It was not until 1415 that Bishop Langley at length obtained judgment against the Corporation of Newcastle, and took possession of the tower with all his chivalry. The tower stood until the great flood of 1771, when part of the bridge was swept away. After this catastrophe the whole was rebuilt, the new bridge being completed in 1781. The High-Level Bridge was built in 1849, and the present Swing Bridge replaced the old stone one in 1876. Meanwhile, the conservation of the River Tyne had been placed in the hands of commissioners, and the jurisdiction of the Bishop over the river came to an end. _Durham to South Shields._ The city of Durham, lying almost in the centre of the county, is an excellent point of departure from which to visit the other towns and places of interest in the Bishopric. The road which leads from the city to the mouth of the Tyne runs north-east from Framwellgate Bridge. The principal village through which it passes is Houghton-le-Spring, six and a half miles from Durham. The place is closely associated with the name of Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North, who in the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, was Rector of Houghton-le-Spring, and the chief instrument in spreading Protestant doctrines through the North. From here it is seven miles to the mouth of the Wear, where stands the flourishing port of Sunderland. In early records the town