About two miles from Egliston, still on the Yorkshire side, is the fine domain of Rokeby Park, along one side of which the Greta flows to the Tees. Greta Bridge is known to all lovers of literature through the mention of it which is made by Dickens. It was there that Nicholas Nickleby descended from the coach which had brought him thus far on his way towards Dotheboys Hall. "About six o'clock that night he and Mr. Squeers and the little boys and their united luggage, were all put down together at the George and New Inn, Greta Bridge." Dickens insists that whilst he was not exaggerating the cruelties practised on boys at schools resembling Dotheboys Hall, Mr. Squeers was the representative of a class and not of an individual. This is a view of the facts that the people around Greta Bridge cannot be induced to accept, and there is no doubt that the novelist really did--without intending it, probably--very serious injury to one who is held by those who knew him to have been a very estimable man. [Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE GRETA AND THE TEES.] There is now no one living to whom a relation of the facts can give pain, and so they shall be stated briefly here. The school which has been generally accepted as the subject of the great novelist's savage exposure was situated at Bowes, four miles from Greta Bridge. Bowes is no more than one straggling street, stretching away towards the desolation of Stanmore, and the school which was identified with Dotheboys Hall is the last house in the village, which lies along the Roman road of the Watling Street. The place was kept by a Mr. Shaw, who is said to have died of a broken heart. He had "only one eye," as Dickens remarked of his grim tyrant; he had also a wife and a daughter who assisted him in the management of the school. So far he "realises the poster," as an actor would say. There is no doubt, either, that his school was visited, and that he was seen by Dickens and by Hablot Browne. The one eye was in itself, unfortunately, a sufficient means of identification, there being no other one-eyed schoolmaster within any known distance of Greta Bridge. Dickens may have meant no more than to make use of this personal characteristic, combined with characteristics derived from other sources, as in the almost equally unlucky Miss Moucher case; but he had so associated a one-eyed schoolmaster with a place not far from Greta Bridge that no amount of explanation could remove the impression that Mr. Squeers was intended for Mr. Shaw, or could repair what was unquestionably an injury to one who stood high in the good opinion of his neighbours. All the members of the Squeers group of characters, indeed, were identified with persons then living in or around Bowes. John Browdie, for instance, is said to have been a farmer named Brown, and of the Browns there are still several families among the substantial farmers of the district. Of the good-feeling of which Mr.