Bobert Stevenson, Esq. 196 



pupils ; and his attention to me during the few years I had 

 the pleasure of being known to him, was of a very marked 

 kind, for he directed my attention to various pursuits, with 

 the view to my coming forward as an engineer." 



After completing the Cumbrae Lighthouse, he was engaged 

 under Mr Smith in erecting lighthouses on the Pentland 

 Skerries in Orkney ; and notwithstanding his active duties 

 in summer, he was so zealous in the pursuit of knowledge 

 that he contrived during several successive winters to attend 

 the philosophical classes at the University of Edinburgh. In 

 this manner he attended Professor Playfair's second and third 

 mathematical courses, two sessions of Professor Robison's 

 natural philosophy, two courses of chemistry under Dr Hope, 

 and two of natural history under Professor Jameson. To 

 these he added a course of moral philosophy under Dugald 

 Stewart, and also a course of logic, and one of agriculture. 

 " I was prevented, however,'' he remarks in the manuscript 

 memoranda, " from taking my degree of M.A. by my slender 

 knowledge of Latin, in which my highest book was the Ora- 

 tions of Cicero, and by my total want of Greek.'' Such zeal 

 in the pursuit of knowledge under so many discouragements, 

 and views so enlarged of the benefits and value of a liberal 

 education, are characteristics of a mind of no ordinary 

 vigour. 



The great work of Mr Stevenson's life, and that on which his 

 reputation as an engineer principally rests, is the Bell Rock 

 Lighthouse. Of the progress of that great undei'taking, he 

 has left a lasting memorial and most interesting nan^ative 

 in his " Account," a quarto volume of upwards of 500 pages, 

 illustrated with numerous plates. But there are some cir- 

 cumstances connected with the early history of that work 

 which, while they could not properly have found a place 

 in his own narrative, have been noticed in the above- 

 mentioned manuscript memoranda, from which I shall tran- 

 scribe a few paragraphs detailing his early efforts and disap- 

 pointments while designing that lighthouse : — 



" All knew the difficulties of the erection of the Eddystone Light- 

 house, and the casualties to which that edifice had been Hable ; and 

 in comparing the two situation?, it was generally remarked that the 



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