VIEW OF THE CLEVELAND COAST FROM HANDALE ABBEY.

(From a Drawing by the late Mrs. Turton, of Kildale Hall.)

"A form erect and manly; the body

Fit emblem of his rectitude of mind.

His hair, now bleach'd as white as Winter's snow,
After a life of honest industry,

Reminds us that his days are nearly done
On earth; yet will his influence survive
When he is dust, and many wish to tread
In his sure footsteps: for a well-spent life
Is never lived in vain."

PETER PROLETARIUS.

There are a few worthy gentlemen in our district-would that their number was much greater than it is!-who, though

possessed alike with antiquarian tastes and literary abilities, are little known as authors, but are unceasing in their endeavours to strengthen the hands of those who undertake that most laborious and least remunerative branch of authorship-local history. Of this ever-to-be-honoured class was Allan the Antiquary, now worthily represented by the present owner of Blackwell*; and of this useful little band of author-helpers is also John Reed Appleton, F.S.A., of Durham, and Francis Mewburn, the present Chief-Bailiff of Darlington. To the latter gentleman I did myself the honour to dedicate the second edition of my Visitor's Handbook to Redcar, Coatham, and Saltburn-by-the-Sea, "as a small acknowledgment of his great kindness in placing at my disposal, for the Local Works on which I have long been engaged, the many interesting and useful particulars relating to the Counties of York and Durham, collected by him during a long and laborious life, the leisure of which has been passed in studying and noting down whatever he could meet with relating to the History of the North of England." Surtees, Brockett, Walker Ord, and Longstaffe, have also publicly acknowledged their obligations to the subject of the present notice.

Mr. Mewburn belongs to a respectable family, long connected with Cleveland and South Durham; and he was educated at Ormesby, at a time when "the low side" was but thinly inhabited with a population whose chief commerce was an illicit one, so far as tariffs were concerned, and the ironstone in the adjoining Cleveland Hills was laying undisturbed and uncared for, waiting for the developement of that system of railroads, steam, and machinery, which alone could render it of commercial importance. Of Mr. Mewburn's important services to civilization as the first railway solicitor, I shall say little here, as that matter will be more appropriately treated of in my forthcoming History of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. But I may be allowed to remark, that he solicited, jointly with the late Mr. Raisbeck, of Stockton-on-Tees, the Stockton and Darlington Railway Act, which was passed in 1821; that he was appointed the law-clerk of the company and joint solicitor with Mr. Raisbeck; and on the latter gentleman retiring from the profession, he was appointed sole solicitor;

*Robert Henry Allan, Esq., J.P., D.L., F.S.A., of whom, as of his worthy relation, Allan the Antiquary, more anon.

in which capacity he solicited and obtained the following acts for making railways:-"The Auckland and Weardale Railway," "The Wear Valley Railway," "The Middlesbro' and Redcar Railway," "The Great North of England Railway," and "The Middlesbro' and Gisbro' Railway." The prejudices against the Stockton and Darlington Railway surpassed all conception: the country gentlemen did not like it, because it cut up their estates, without, as they mistakenly thought, conferring any advantages upon them in return; and they gravely alleged, that their cattle, corn, hay, and other agricultural produce, would be stolen by the waggoners employed on the railway: the farmers feared that their fields would be so much divided as to render them uncultivatable: the sportsman prophecied that it would totally destroy fox-hunting, and lead to the downfal of all our glorious institutions in church and state: whilst an ignorant populace of all classes regarded it as a sort of hell-in-harness, which was to cause pregnant women to mis-carry, and to enrich a few greedy Quakers, and other speculators, by depriving the poor of employment. Had any one then hinted at the immense development of unthought-of trade and commerce, of which that Stockton and Darlington Railway was to be the harbinger, it is not improbable that he might have had to have shared the horrors of one of our then grossly-mismanaged lunatic asylums,-just as poor Solomon de Caus, the Norman discoverer of steam-power for moving ships and carriages, was shut up in a French madhouse, in 1641, by the cardinal to whom he had so perseveringly made known his discovery!

Mr. Mewburn has been gratified by not only living to see the success of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, for which he so manfully battled, induce parties in other parts of the kingdom to obtain railways, until the whistle of the locomotive has become as common as that of the blackbird, but also to learn that in every part of the civilized world the blessings of railways are more or less enjoyed.

Mr. Mewburn commenced practice as solicitor in Darlington on the thirteenth of May, 1809. SHELLEY has truly sung :

"Those too the tyrant serve, who skill'd to snare

The feet of Justice in the toils of Law,

Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still,

And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold,