High over head goes the High Level, and the smoke and rumble of its trains mingle with the clash of Newcastle’s thousand anvils and the reek of her million chimneys; but there still stands against the sky-line—most fittingly seen from the Gateshead bank at eventide, when petty details are lost and only broad effects remain—the coroneted steeple of St. Nicholas and the great black form of the Norman keep, reminding the contemplative that Monkchester was the name of the city before the Conqueror came and built that fortress whose fame as the “New Castle” has remained to this day to give a title to the place, just as the “new work” at Newark has ever since stood sponsor for that town. Again, no sooner have you crossed the Swing Bridge and come to Quayside than other vestiges of old Newcastle are encountered, in the remains of the Castle wall and the steps that lead upwards to Castle Garth, where shoemakers and cobblers of footgear of the most waterside and unfashionable character still blink and cobble in their half-underground dens, the descendants, probably, of those whom a French traveller remarked here in the time of Charles the Second. If, instead of climbing these stairs, the traveller elects to follow the track of the coaches, he will traverse Sandhill, which in very early days was an open space by the river, but has for centuries past been a street. It was at Sandgate close by, according to the ballad, that the lassie was heard to sing the well-known refrain of “Weel may the keel row, the boat that my love’s in,” and indeed it is a district that breathes romance, commonplace though its modern offices may look. Does not the Moot Hall look down upon Sandhill? “Many a heart has broken inside those walls,” said a passer-by, with unwonted picturesqueness, to the present writer, gazing at that hall of justice.