We can lunch at York. Our train waits for no one, but if we like we can eat our sandwich on the platform, and look over old York city, with its dear old Minster, its river, its red-roofed houses; and if we close our eyes for a few minutes, our mental vision will show us many stirring scenes here.
We can imagine the Scots hovering around old York, assisted by the Britons, attacking the gouty Emperor Severus, who afterwards built one of the great walls across Britain to supplement Hadrian's rampart from the Solway to the "Wall's End"—a name now "familiar in our mouths as household" coals. Do you remember what the old worn-out Roman Emperor said at York when he was dying? He looked at the urn of gold in which his ashes were to be carried to Rome, and remarked, "Thou shalt soon hold what the world could scarcely contain!" Then we can see the end of the great Roses' Wars, the heads on the grim spikes of the city gates, while a long procession of kings and queens files out from the cathedral doors, on whose site a church has stood ever since Easter, 627 A.D.
If we had only time to sit and recall all the grand events which have happened in York Minster, we should have to wait for the next "Flying Scotchman," and perhaps for the next after that.
"Any more going on?" "Yes, we are." "Quick, please; all right." The train can't wait while we dream about the past; and have we not Darlington in front of us? Ah! there we must stop a little. Here are the cradles of all the "Flying Scotchmen," "Wild Irishmen," "Dutchmen," "Zulus"; of the four hundred expresses of England, and the thousands of other trains, fast and slow, which traverse the United Kingdom and the world. Yes, Darlington was the nursery of the locomotive railway-engine, and Mr. Pease the head nurse who taught it to run on the Stockton and Darlington line in 1825. To the Darlington Quaker family Stephenson's success was due, and the success of Stephenson's locomotive was owing to Hadley—William Hadley—who has been rightly called the "Father of the Modern Locomotive."
We are now on the North-Eastern line, which ends at Berwick-on-Tweed—for the true Great Northern, though its carriages run over the whole route, does not work the traffic all the way. The North-Eastern hurries us along towards Newcastle-on-Tyne, over Robert Stephenson's high-level bridge, and then over the North British line at Edinburgh.
What do we see from this breezy elevation? "Oh, earth, what changes hast thou seen!" What does a writer say of this? "The mountain stream beneath us, once a broad shallow, now affords depth for the heaviest ships. Away on the northern bank the Roman wall lies hid, its arrowy route just marked by a burial heave of the turf. Before us stands the massive keep, with sturdy Norman walls—the trains of the North-Eastern are scrunching on the curve within a yard of it. Stephenson's engine looks down on Elizabethan gables;" and so on. Near Newcastle—at Wylam and Killingworth—the first locomotive engines were born which changed the country and revolutionised travelling.
The warders at Berwick no longer look out from the castle walls to descry the glitter of Southern spears. The bell-tower from which the alarm was sounded is now silent—the only bell heard within the precincts of the castle being that of the railway porter, announcing the arrival and departure of trains. The Scotch express passes along the bridge, and speeds southward on the wings of steam. But no alarm spreads across the Border now.
We shall cross the Tweed presently, and pass through the country of the Moss-troopers and the territories of the Lords Marchers, the scene of so many conflicts and fatal raids. We first cross the Coquet, "the stream of streams," the poet calls it:—
"There's mony a sawmon lies in Tweed,
An' mony a trout in Till;
But Coquet—Coquet aye for me,
If I may have my will!"
We get a view of the Cheviots; and Tweed-mouth passed, we cross the "Royal Border Bridge," and run into Berwick.