Gateshead has been disparagingly described as "a dirty lane leading to Newcastle;" but this was in the days that are no more. It is now a great congeries of lanes, streets, roads, and alleys, dirty and otherwise. But for a large town thus intervening, we might see how rapidly the land slopes upward from the riverside to the two-miles-distant crown of Sheriff Hill, which is on the road southward to Durham, to York, and through the fair English shires to London. It was on the summit of Sheriff's Hill that the Sheriffs of Newcastle--a place which boasted of such officers because it was a county as well as a town--received the King's Judges when coming on Circuit. Thus far they advanced to meet them into the county of Durham. There was a splendid procession through Gateshead, over the Low Bridge, up the steep "Side," into Newcastle, and to the Assize Courts. Gorgeous trumpeters made proclamation; the gilded and hammerclothed carriages of the Mayor and Sheriffs were guarded by halberdiers; a tall official walked in front, with a great fur cap of maintenance and a most amazing sword. When the judges, sated with hospitality, and with the gaol-delivery completed, set off on horseback towards Carlisle, they were presented with money to buy each of them a dagger, to guard themselves against robbers and evil men. [Illustration: COAL TRIMMERS.] [Illustration: A COAL STAITHE.] Gateshead was the site of a Saxon monastery that was certainly in existence in 653. It does not seem to have done much in the way of civilising the people, for when Walcher of Lorraine was made Bishop of Durham by the Conqueror, the Gateshead folk murdered him on the threshold of their church. This was not the present church of St. Mary, which is the most prominent object in Gateshead when the spectator stands on Newcastle Quay, but it probably occupied the same site. Gateshead was a domain of the Bishops Palatine of Durham, except for a short period during which it was annexed to Newcastle, and they built a palace there, no portion of which building now remains. [Illustration: NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.]