In the whole of England, so far as my experience goes, there is only one town that is grimier, murkier, or more appalling in appearance than the towns on the lower Tyne as they are seen from the railways which run along either bank of the river. Bilston in Staffordshire is of more fearful aspect than either Hebburn, or Walker, or Felling, or Jarrow. On Tyneside, too, one may look away to the bright open country, to where there are low sunlighted hills on the horizon; but at Bilston an eye which searches over a landscape of blackened and withered grass only beholds more forges. In these northern latitudes, again, the skies are very cloudy and wonderful; and in the Black Country one never becomes aware that Nature can work miracles with her clouds and skies. From the river itself the blackness, the squalor, the apparent dilapidation, of these Tyneside towns are not so conspicuous. The Tyne is like a bending shaft of sunlight, making darkness not only visible but sublime. There is a quaint variety and picturesqueness about the wharves and "staithes" and factories which line its banks. The chemical works are like belated castles, about which hives of Cyclopean industry have grown up, for they thrust tall wooden towers into the air, round which there goes a platform that seems to be intended for sentries on the watch. From Newcastle Quay downwards, ships of all sizes and varieties are anchored at either side of the stream. Some are loading, some are discharging their cargoes, some are waiting to load. There are others which glitter in all the glory of new paint, having but lately been released from the stocks on which they were built. Shipyards, where new vessels are being constructed, may be found here and there between the chemical factories and the engineering works; and just now there is in every berth of every yard a new vessel in some stage of its construction. Out of these heterogeneous materials the sun sometimes builds up magnificent effects on the Tyne. Doubtless, on dull days, as Mr. William Senior has mournfully observed, "the smoke hangs like a funeral pall over the grimy docks and dingy river-banks, and the pervading gloom penetrates one's inner being;" but there are seasons when this grimy stream becomes a painter's river, indescribably striking and grand. [Illustration: QUAY AT NEWCASTLE.] Below Newcastle Quay, at Sandgate and its neighbourhood, was the sailors' and the keelmen's quarter. Tyne sailors were the best that our country produced; and so it happened that the visits of the press-gang were frequent at the Sandgate shore. Many a fight there was before the captured men were carried off. All the folks of the neighbourhood, save such as had gone into hiding, would assemble for battle. The dialect of the place and the manner of these fights may both be surmised from these lines of the local muse:--