On the bridge of Hadrian two lofty hills looked down. The Tyne has here at some remote period scourged its way through a deep ravine, and Newcastle, and its opposite neighbour, Gateshead, are built partly around the feet of commanding eminences, and still more extensively on the summits of these hills. Old Newcastle was a town of stairs. Communication between its upper and its lower portions was, with the exception of one narrow and steep street leading from the bridge, maintained by means of long flights of stone steps, which still exist, and are up to this day extensively used. All the succeeding bridges were built on the site of that of Hadrian. "The Low Bridge" was the name given to the last of these from the time when the High Level was built. It is the Swing Bridge which now crosses the Tyne at the point selected so many centuries ago, this swing bridge being a gigantic iron structure, with a great central span that is moved by hydraulic power, and leaves two openings of such extent that the _Victoria_, the largest vessel in Her Majesty's Navy, has been able to pass through without grazing either of the piers. But notable as is the Swing Bridge as a work of engineering, it is inferior even in this respect to the High Level Bridge, and very far inferior in grace and beauty. The High Level does for the higher portions of Newcastle and Gateshead what all the bridges from Hadrian's time have done for the lower portions. It is a foot and carriage way between the neighbouring towns; but it is also more than this, for at a height of twenty-seven feet above the roadway, under which a full-rigged ship can sail, there is a railway viaduct along which passes the main line to Scotland. One of the most wonderful of the world's bridges, the High Level is also one of the most handsome and well proportioned, so that it has probably been painted more frequently than any bridges but those of Cumberland and Wales. It is an appropriate thing that in the Swing Bridge and the High Level Bridge, which are likely enough to last for centuries to come, Newcastle should have memorials of its two greatest engineers, the High Level having been built by Robert Stephenson, and the Swing Bridge by Lord Armstrong.