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 stre