Any accurate description of Stockton is in many respects applicable to Middlesbrough, a still more wonderful town, which has, within living memory, sprung up close to the estuary of the Tees. Fifty years ago there was only a single farmstead where the great town of Middlesbrough now stands. The United States have few examples of such marvellous growth. At the census of 1831 there were 154 persons in Middlesbrough, and at the census of 1881 the population was 55,281. It was in 1830 that the present town was founded, on 500 acres of marshy land. It has been assisted both by enterprise and good fortune. Originally it was intended as a port for the shipping of coals; but iron was discovered in the Cleveland hills, and blast furnaces were built where it was supposed that only coal-staithes would be seen. The first ton of Cleveland ironstone was mined in 1850, and in sixteen years the output was no less than two and three quarter millions of tons. When the iron trade was declining, a decade since, Middlesbrough men set themselves to devise new methods of manufacturing steel, with the result that Middlesbrough steel is now in demand all over the world. Talent, enterprise, the bounty of Nature, have all combined to make of Middlesbrough one of our large centres of population and industry, and to bring about a growth so rapid as has not previously been witnessed in the history of our country. The brief voyage down the Tees from Stockton to below Middlesbrough should be made in the night time, when clouds of smoke are shot through by columns of flame; when the furnace fires are blazing out into the darkness; when seething bars of iron, crushing and straining through the rolling-mills, make the forges look like some huge Vulcan's smithy; when the steel converters are sending out a fiery rain; and when the Tees is reflecting all manner of strange lights and weird coruscations--an appalling sight to one not accustomed to such spectacles, but grand and deeply impressive and wonderfully characteristic of the age in which we live. Middlesbrough has its fine docks, crowded with shipping. Where, a few years ago, the Tees spread itself over a broad estuary, the channel of the river has been divided from the wide stretch of mud and sand and creeping waves by a curving groin of slag; lines of light stretch downward as far as the eye can follow, guiding ships to the desired haven. Henceforth the Tees-- "Not hurled precipitous from steep to steep; Lingering no more 'mid flower-enamelled lands And blooming thickets; nor by rocky bands Held; but in radiant progress towards the deep"-- flows broadly onward to the Northern Sea. [Illustration: FERRYBOAT LANDING, MIDDLESBROUGH.]