l changes and
educational needs of the passing years; and now, like the Grammar School
of Queen Elizabeth at Hexham, it has been entirely re-constituted to
meet modern requirements. John Martin, the famous painter of "The Plains
of Heaven," received the beginnings of his education at this school. He
was born at East Land Ends farm in 1789. In after years the authorities
of Haydon Bridge Reading Room, wishing no doubt to afford a perfect
example to future generations of the truth of the proverb concerning a
prophet and his own country, refused some of Martin's pictures, which
the gifted painter himself offered to them--an act which their
successors have doubtless regretted.

At a little distance along the Langley Road, which leads past the
school, a memorial cross is standing. It was erected in 1883 by the late
Mr. C.J. Bates, the historian of Northumberland, to the memory of the
last of the Derwentwater family, whose castle of Langley he purchased.
The inscription on the cross reads:--"To the memory of James and
Charles, Viscounts Langley, Earls of Derwentwater, beheaded on Tower
Hill, London, 24th February, 1716, and 8th December, 1746, for loyalty
to their lawful sovereign."

A striking testimony, this, to the fact that freedom in England is a
reality, and not merely a name. In what other land would an inscription
such as this have been allowed to remain for more than twenty-four
hours?

A couple of miles or more down the South Tyne is Fourstones, so called
because of four stones, said to have been Roman altars, having been used
to mark its boundaries. A romantic use was made of one of these stones
in the early days of "The Fifteen." Every evening, as dusk fell, a
little figure, clad in green, stole up to the ancient altar, which had
been slightly hollowed out, and, taking out a packet, laid another in
its place. The mysterious packets, placed there so secretly, were
letters from the Jacobites of the neighbourhood to each other; and the
little figure in green was a boy who acted as messenger for them. No
wonder that the people of the district gave this altar the name of the
"Fairy Stone."

Between Haydon Bridge and Fourstones are both freestone and limestone
quarries, which latter have supplied many fossils to visitors of
geological tastes. Halfway between Fourstones and Hexham, the two
streams of North and South Tyne unite, and flow together down to the old
town of Hexham, with its quaintly irregular buildings c