It was in 1550, during the short reign of Edward the Sixth, that the existing fortifications enclosing the town were begun, whose river-fronting walls are so conspicuous from Tweedmouth. The old bridge, built by James the First, was the first peaceful enterprise between the two kingdoms, for, although Berwick had for over a century been recognised as a neutral or “buffer” state, peace went armed for fear of accidents, and easy communication across the Tweed was not encouraged. There is food for reflection in comparison between that bridge and the infinitely greater work of the railway viaduct. The first, 1,164 feet in length, with only 17 feet breadth between the parapets, bridging the river with fifteen arches, cost £17,000, and took twenty-four years to build; the railway bridge of twenty-eight giant arches, each of 61½ feet span, and straddling the Tweed at a height of 129 feet, was built in three years, at a cost of £120,000. The “Royal Border Bridge,” as it was christened at its opening by the Queen, has precisely the appearance of a Roman aqueduct and belongs to the Stone and Brick Age of railways. Were it to do over again, there can be no doubt that, instead of a long array of graceful arches, half a dozen lengths of steel lattice girders would span the tide. It was at a huge cost that England and Scotland were thus joined by rail; bridge and approaches swallowing up the sum of £253,000. The first passenger train crossed over, October 15, 1848, but the works were not finally completed until 1850. In the August of that year the Queen formally opened it, nearly two years after it was _actually_ opened; a fine object-lesson for satirists. How we laugh at ceremonials less absurd than this when they take place in China and Japan. Berwick town is seen, on entering its streets, to be unexpectedly modern and matter-of-fact. The classically steepled building that bulks commandingly in the main thoroughfare and looks like a church is the Town Hall, and displays the arms of Berwick prominently, the municipal escutcheon supported on either side by a sculptured bear sitting on his rump and surrounded by trees. It is thus that one of the disputed derivations of Berwick’s name is alluded to. At few towns has the origin of a place-name been so contested as at Berwick; and, for all the pother about it, the question is still, and must remain, unanswered. It might as reasonably have come from _aberwic_, the mouth of a river, as from _bergwic_, the hillside village, and much more reasonably than from the fanciful “bar” prefix alluding to the bareness of the country; while of course the legend that gives the lie to that last variant, and seeks an origin in imaginary bears populating mythical woods, is merely infantile.