CHAR. Vil. 
MARINE CONSTRUCTIONS. 
Lighthouses.—The Eddystone.—Winstanley’s Lighthouse, 1696.—The Storm of 
1703.—Rudyerd’s Lighthouse destroyed by Fire in 1755—Singular Death of 
one of the Lighthouse Men.—Anecdote of Louis XIV.—Smeaton.—Bell Rock 
Lighthouse —History of the Erection of Skerryyore Lighthouse.—Illumination 
Lighthouses.—The Breakwater at Cherbourg.—Liverpool Docks.—The Tubular 
Bridge over the Menai Straits.—The Sub-oceanic Mine of Botallack. 
[vy one of the finest passages of * Childe Harold,” Byron contrasts 
the gigantic power of the sea with the weakness of man. He 
describes the resistless billows contemptuously playing with the 
impotent mariner—now heaving him to the skies, now whelm- 
ing him deep in the bosom of the tumultuous waters; he mocks 
the vain pride of our armadas, which are but the playthings of 
ocean, and points with a bitter sneer at the wrecks with which he 
strews his shores. A less misanthropic mood or a more truthful 
view of things might have prompted the wayward poet to celebrate 
the triumphs of man over the brute strength of the winds and 
waves; how, guided by the compass, he boldly steers through 
the vast waste of waters, how he excavates the artificial harbour, 
or piles up the breakwater to protect his bark against the destruc- 
tive agencies of the billow and the storm, or how he erects the 
lighthouse to point out the neighbourhood of dangerous shoals 
or the entrance of the friendly port. 
The various constructions planned and executed by man to 
disarm the turbulent or perfidious seas of a great part of their 
terrors, are indeed among the noblest monuments of his archi- 
tectural genius, nor are any more deserving of universal ap- 
planse and gratitude. Who has ever performed a winter voyage 
homewards over the wide Atlantic and not felt a thrill of delight 
when the first bright flash of light beamed over the dark waters 
and welcomed him back to his native isle? or what generous 
mind has ever experienced this feeling without devoting the 
