198 2T!)e 33mi) of t$t $n\\> ommon. 



selves with thinking, that as the letters of the name 

 increase, so will their love. 



Here then stands the beech-tree, in all its dignity and 

 fair proportions, its firm trunk based in the earth, but 

 with no knarled roots upheaving the soil around, and 

 making it unsightly. When the celebrated Smeaton 

 pondered within himself concerning the possibility of 

 constructing a building on the Eddystone rock, which 

 might resist the tremendous violence of contending seas, 

 which had swept away the previous erections of Win- 

 stanley and Rudyerd, and left not a stone remaining ; 

 seas which dash at least two hundred feet above the 

 rock, and the sound of whose deafening surges resemble 

 the continuous roar of thunder, his thoughts involuntarily 

 turned towards the oak. He considered its large 

 swelling base, which becomes reduced to one third, 

 occasionally to one half of its original dimensions, 

 by a gradual and upward tapering of the living shaft, 

 and it appeared to him that a building might be 

 erected on the model of the oak, that would be fully able 

 to resist the action of external violence. Thus thinking, 

 he projected the light-house of Eddystone, which soon 

 proved, amid the tremendous fury of contending 

 elements, that he had not erred in taking nature for 

 his guide. A beech or elm might have suggested the 

 same thought, for in the trunk of every forest-tree the 

 material is so disposed that the greater portion pertains 

 to the base of the column ; that part, especially, which 



