One whose only knowledge of the Tweed is gained from what can be seen of it at Berwick, and when the tide is out, would not be likely to think of it more highly than he ought to think. For even at its "latter end" it seems to have no great sense of the dignity of life; it rolls neither broad nor deep, and does little more than trickle into the larger life to which it has all along so indolently tended. Nor is it here altogether happy in the surroundings which it owes to art and man's device. Berwick itself, rising from the water's edge to the top of Halidon Hill, and partly girdled by its fine wall, used as a promenade in these piping times of peace, looks quaint, and comely as well, seen from the opposite or southern bank. But when one has crossed the stream by the old bridge--Berwick Bridge, which has stood here since the time of James I.--and looks across at Tweedmouth, exactly opposite, and at Spittal, which has thought fit to spring up a little farther east and just at the river's mouth, the impression is less pleasing. Neither of these places is pretty in itself, while for their size they make an amazing amount of black smoke. Then there is Robert Stephenson's great railway viaduct, the Royal Border Bridge, which it is the fashion to praise up to the skies, as it well-nigh reaches them. As a successful bit of engineering, it is no doubt all very well; but an addition to the beauties of the scene it is not, whatever guide-books and gazetteers may say. In other directions, however, and farther afield, the outlook is more satisfactory. Away to the south the grey and rugged Cheviots make a glorious horizon-line; while out at sea are the Farne Islands, with their memories of St. Cuthbert, most austere of Western ascetics, and of Grace Darling, whose heroism puts so strange a gloss upon the holy man's abhorrence of womankind. The remnants of the ancient Abbey of Lindisfarne are among the very few examples of Saxon architecture which the destructiveness of the Danes has left to us; and that even these ruins remain, is due to no negligence of theirs. When they descended upon the island in the seventh century, not for the first time, they made a brave attempt to leave a desert behind them; but the massive strength which the builders of the church had intended to oppose to "tempestuous seas" was able in some degree to withstand their "impious rage." The abbey no longer shelters St. Cuthbert's remains, which must be sought in the Cathedral that looks down upon the Wear. But the old Saxon arches and columns have a stronger interest than this could have invested them with; for was it not here, in Sexhelm's Vault of Penitence, dimly lighted by the pale cresset's ray, that the hapless Constance de Beverley, after solemn inquisition, was doomed to her terrible death, the while her betrayer was listening to the song which so melodiously contrasts the traitor's fate with the destiny of the true lover? [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE RAMPARTS, BERWICK.]