Thanks to Commissioners of Northern Lights. 381 



was quite enough of danger in the enterprise of approach- 

 ing it. Under these circumstances it enabled the mind to 

 call up for itself the terrors which must in former years have 

 beset those who were unhappily entangled in that wilder- 

 ness of rocks which that noble structure now crowns as a 

 beacon. When 1 looked down from the summit of the lofty 

 tower, and traced the perils which, under the smooth surface 

 of the ocean, lay stretching far and wide on every side like 

 the snare of death, it was impossible not to feel admiration 

 for the beneficent courage and the mechanical skill of the 

 late distinguished engineer, Robert Stevenson of Edinburgh, 

 which surmounted these difficulties, and turned into a source 

 of security that which had been long the cause of danger and 

 destruction. When I had satiated myself with the contem- 

 plation of the mechanical skill displayed in the construction 

 of the Lighthouse — when I thought of the extraordinary re- 

 sources both of wealth and talent that must have been ac- 

 cumulated to overcome such a tremendous difficulty, I natur- 

 ally looked to the nature of the power by which such 

 marvels had been achieved, and I found not a mere unen- 

 lightened body of what are called practical men, of persons 

 who followed the road of experience, going always in some 

 old track, and incapable of availing themselves of the pro- 

 gress of the age to perfect their feeble endeavours. I found 

 I was among men who were able to teach me in many im- 

 portant facts regarding which I had sought in vain for infor- 

 mation for years, and which I learned in the course of that 

 excursion. In a conversation I held with the engineers of 

 the Northern Lights, I learned much that was highly inte- 

 resting, and much I know that will be valuable to me for future 

 research ; and when I was led to ask the question, " who are 

 the controllers of this admirable system,'' I learned with sur- 

 prise that the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses are 

 not a set of salaried functionaries, not a set of men whose 

 professional habits might have led them to interest themselves 

 in these pursuits, but a body of lawyers and municipal magis- 

 trates ; and when I saw the unexampled perfection of their 

 administrative system — when I saw the order and method 

 that pervade all the details of their establishment, above all, 

 the scrupulous integrity, and the diligent exactness of their 



