THE BELL ROCK LIGIITITOUSE. 85 
and Skerryvore. Nothing could exceed the patient ingenuity, 
the sagacity, and forethought with which that great engineer 
mortised his tall tower to the wave-worn rock, and then dove- 
tailed the whole together, so as to make rock and tower prac- 
tically one stone, and that of the very best form for deadening 
the action of the wave. Nor must we forget that our great marine 
lighthouses, of which Smeaton gave the model, are as remark- 
able from an artistic as from a utilitarian point of view, as 
pleasing to the man of taste as to the friend of humanity. It is 
to be regretted,” says, with perfect justice, the author of an excel- 
lent article in the Quarterly Review,* “that these structures are 
placed so far at sea that they are very little seen, for they are, 
taken altogether, perhaps the most perfect specimens of modern 
architecture which exist. Tall and graceful as the minar of an 
Eastern mosque, they possess far more solidity and beauty of con- 
struction; and, in addition to this, their form is as appropriate 
to the purposes for which it was designed as anything ever done 
by the Greeks, and consequently meets the requirements of 
good architecture quite as much as a column of the Parthenon.” 
Covered to the height of fifteen feet at spring tide, and 
little more than a hundred yards in its extent, the famous 
Bell Rock, or Inchcape, facing the Frith of Tay at a distance of 
twelve miles at sea, was as dangerous to the navigation of the 
eastern coast of Scotland as the Eddystone had been to the 
entrance of the Channel. To erect a tower on a spot like this 
was an undertaking of no common boldness, but, fired by 
Smeaton’s example, Mr. Robert Stevenson no less gloriously 
succeeded in converting what for ages had been a source of 
danger into a beacon of safety. 
On the opposite coast of Scotland, and placed in the same 
parallel of latitude as Bell Rock, the Skerryvore Reef had a name 
equally dreaded by the mariner. Situated considerably farther 
from the mainland than the Bell Rock, it isless entirely submerged, 
some of its summits rising above the level of high water, though 
the surf dashes over them; but the extent of foul ground is much 
greater, and hidden dangers, even in fine weather, beset the in- 
tervening passage between its eastern extremity and Tyree, from 
which island it is distant some eleven miles. In rough weather 
the sea which rises there is described as one in which no ship 
* No. 228. 
