of the finest towers in existence; it replaced one built by the English between 1362-71, when the Black Prince was governor of Guienne. The stone building was begun by Louis de Foix in 1584, continued through the reign of Henry IV., and finished in that of Louis XIII. Its height is now one hundred and eighty-six feet, and its style of construction enables it to bear much more decoration than our own more homely structures; it is also memorable as the first house which exhibited a revolving light.
Perhaps the most familiar and celebrated of all lighthouses is that of Eddystone, which marked a crisis in the history of lighthouse building, for the marvellous success which attended its erection led to many other works of the same kind. The Eddystone forms the crest of a reef of rocks which rise fourteen miles S.S.W. of Plymouth Harbor; they are nearly in a line with Lizard Head and Start Point, and lie in the very path of vessels coasting up and down the English Channel; many a gallant ship has been dashed to pieces, and its sailors gone down within sight of home, on this cruel rock. The first attempt to establish a light upon it was made by Mr. Winstanley, who obtained the necessary powers in 1696, and finished his honorable undertaking in four years, though the light was first exhibited in 1698. The rock being uncovered only at low water and in calm weather, rendered the undertaking one of extreme difficulty, and the first summer was entirely spent in making twelve holes in the rocks, and fastening irons into them by which to hold the superstructure; sometimes for ten or twelve days together, the violence of the eddying sea would prevent all operations. The work of the second summer was the erection of a solid pillar on which to set the lighthouse; and during the third, it rose to a height of eighty feet. The fourth summer saw the completion of what resembled a Chinese pagoda, with open galleries and numerous projections; the main gallery under the light was so wide that an eye-witness recorded that it was "possible for a six-oared boat to be lifted up on a wave, and driven clear through the open gallery into the sea on the other side." Winstanley deserves every credit for his heroic endeavor to accomplish what had hitherto been deemed impossible, but a building so unsuited in every way to endure the violence of winds and waves could not stand, and we are not surprised to hear that, during a violent storm in November, 1703, it was entirely washed away, though we must regret that its brave erector perished in the fall of his own creation.
Three years after this failure, in 1706, the Brethren of Trinity House obtained an act of Parliament to enable them to rebuild the lighthouse, and the lease being taken by Captain Lovet, he entrusted the work to John Rudgood, who designed a simple and masterly tower which, avoiding the projections of its predecessor, offered as little resistance as possible to the elements; it was erected in the form of a cone, but its main defect lay in the material of which it was composed, for, like Winstanley's, it was of wood. It would take too long to follow the details of a building which was then considered a triumph of engineering skill: it is sufficient to say it stood bravely for fifty years and fell a victim to fire in 1755; the flames spread with rapidity through the dry and heated lantern, and in a few minutes the whole building was in ablaze. As the increasing trade in the Channel impelled its re-erection, the proprietors took at once the necessary steps for the work, and casting around for the best man their choice fell upon John Smeaton, whose name will ever live in connection with one of the proudest triumphs of human skill and patience. He was by profession a mathematical-instrument maker, and the matter in hand was wholly new to him, but he lost no time in devoting all his energies to it.
One of his first conclusions was, that the building must be of stone, thus combating the popular impression that "nothing but wood could possibly stand on the Eddystone." He carefully examined the plans of the two former lighthouses, and became more and more convinced that their defect was want of weight; he therefore resolved to make his building solid up to a certain height and from thence hollow, and greatly to increase the diameter of the foundation, taking for his model the bole of a spreading oak-tree; he also made very extensive use of the process of dovetailing, then unknown in masonry, and rooted his foundations into the rock. His plans were made before he ever visited the scene of his future labors, but so skilfully were they laid that slight modifications only were needed. Nothing could bring before us more vividly the almost superhuman difficulties of this undertaking than the account of Smeaton's first attempts to land on the Eddystone rock. Day after day a storm kept him on shore, and when he did reach his destination the sea was
