Title:  The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 Vol.  XX, No. 578.  Saturday, December 1, 1832

Author:  Various

Release Date:  November 10, 2004 [EBook #14008]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

Volume XX., No. 578] Saturday, December 1, 1832. [Price 2d.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Tanfield arch, Durham.]

Tanfield is a considerable village, situated seven miles from Gateshead, in the county of Durham, and eight miles in a south-west direction from Newcastle-on-Tyne.  The above arch is about a mile from the village, and crosses a deep dell, called Causey Burne, down which an insignificant streamlet finds its sinuous course.  The site possesses some picturesque beauty, though its silvan pride be

  After a season gay and brief,
  Condemn’d to fade and flee.

It has much of the poet’s “bosky bourne,” and beside

  The huddling brooklet’s secret brim,

his pensive mind may feed upon the natural glories of the scene; while, attuned to melancholy,

  In hollow music sighing through the glade,
    The breeze of autumn strikes the startled ear,
  And fancy, pacing through the woodland shade,
    Hears in the gust the requiem of the year.

KIRKE WHITE’S Early Poems.

The arch was an architectural wonder of the last century.  It was built in the year 1729, as a passage for the wagon-way, or rail-road for the conveyance of coals from collieries in the vicinity of Tanfield, which were the property of an association called “the Great Allies.”  It is a magnificent stone structure, one hundred and thirty feet in the span, springing from abutments nine feet high, to the height of sixty feet:  a dial is placed on the top with a suitable inscription.  The expense of its construction is stated to have amounted to 12,000_l._; the masonry is reputed to be extremely good, and the arch itself is nearly perfect, though it is now only known as a foot-way, the collieries for the use of which it was built, being no longer worked:  previously it was but a private road-way.  In Cooke’s Topography we find it stated, (though it is not mentioned upon what authority,) that the architect built a former arch which fell, and that the apprehension of the second experiencing the same fate induced him to commit suicide.