Of all northern rivers this is the one which is most praised for the wild and yet tranquil variety of its scenery, for the charms which the quiet angler finds in the turns and windings of its rocky pass, and for the beauty and diversity of the foliage which clothes its steeply ascending vale. At Haydon Bridge, when the water is low, there lies a great expanse of shingle, polished into whiteness by the floods. White are the houses also, with roofs of bluish stone; and there is an aspect of great quaintness about the little village, which seems to have been founded in Saxon times, and to have borrowed much of its older building material from the Roman wall. Of its former state there are still some small remainders in the chancel of an old chapel, and a cottage here and there on the height. It was at Haydon Bridge that John Martin, the painter of "The Last Judgment," and "The Plains of Heaven," and "Belshazzar's Feast," was born, and here, up to his twelfth birthday, he evoked the wonder of the simple folk with his rough drawings, a number of which, with the family eccentricity, he once exhibited upon his father's housetop. From here it would be easy to make an excursion into King Arthur's country. Not, indeed, to "The island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, nor rain, nor any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly." Avilion is Glastonbury, it is said; but all about this ruder country there is store of Arthurian legend, mostly of that coarser sort to which belongs the story of the "bag pudding" which "the Queen next morning fried." The King and Queen Guinevere, the King's hounds, and the lords and ladies of his court, lie all together in an enchanted sleep in a great hall beneath the Castle of Sewingshields, near to the Roman wall; or so the legends say. And now we are once more approaching Warden Mill. To the North and South Tyne we must henceforth bid adieu. From this point they will flow together in the same bed. One has come down from the Scottish borders, a holiday stream, for forty-three miles; the other, not without doing its share of work by the way, has hurried over thirty-nine miles from the Cumberland fells. Thirty-six miles more, over half of which extent the Tyne is a great labouring, work-a-day river, and we shall meet the breezes and the billows of the northern sea. [Illustration: HEXHAM ABBEY.] THE TYNE. CHAPTER III. FROM HEXHAM TO NEWCASTLE. Hexham and the Abbey Church--Dilston Hall--The Derwentwater Rising--Corbridge--Bywell Woods--Prudhoe and Ovingham--Stephenson's Birthplace--Ryton and Newburn--The Approach to Newcastle.