80 



CHAP. VII. 



MAEINE CONSTRUCTIONS. 



Lighthouses. — The Eddystone.— Winstanley's Lighthouse, 1696. — The Storm of 

 1703. — Eudyerd's Lighthouse destroyed by Fire in 1755 — Singular Death of 

 one of the Lighthouse Men. — Anecdote of Louis XIV. — Smeaton. — Bell Eock 

 Lighthouse. — History of the Erection of Skerryvore Lighthouse. — Illumination 

 Lighthouses. — The Breakwater at Cherbourg. — Liverpool Docks. — The Tubular 

 Bridge over the Menai Straits. — The Sub-oceanic Mine of Botallack. 



In 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- 

 plause 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 th& 



