on his business, necessarily involved great application and industry. Indeed, Smeaton was throughout life an indefatigable student, bent, above all things, on self-improvement. One of his maxims was, that "the abilities of the individual are a debt due to the common stock of public happiness;" and the steadfastness with which he devoted himself to useful work, in which he at the same time found his own true happiness, shows that this maxim was no mere lip-utterance on his part, but formed the very mainspring of his life. From an early period he carefully laid out his time with a view to getting the most good out of it: so much for study, so much for practical experiments, so much for business, and so much for rest and relaxation.

We infer that Smeaton could never have had a large business as a philosophical instrument maker from the large portion of his time that he devoted to study and experiments. Probably he already felt that, in the course of the development of English industry, a field was opening before him of a more important character than any that was likely to present itself in the mathematical instrument line. He accordingly seems early to have turned his attention to engineering, and, amongst other branches of study, he devoted several hours in every day to the acquisition of French, in order that he might be enabled to read for himself the works on that science which were then only to be found in that and the Italian language. He had, however, a further object in studying French, which was to enable him to make a journey which he contemplated into the Low Countries, for the purpose of inspecting the great canal works of foreign engineers.

Accordingly, in 1754, he set out for Holland, and traversed that country and Belgium, travelling mostly on foot and in treckschuyts, or canal boats, both for the sake of economy, and that he might more closely inspect the engineering works of the districts through which he

Society were dated. The very same year in which he began business, when he was only twenty-six, he read a communication before the Royal Society, descriptive of his own and Dr. Gowin Knight's improvements in the mariner's compass. In the year following (1751) we find him engaged in a boat on the Serpentine river, performing experiments with a machine of his invention, for the purpose of measuring the way of a ship at sea. With the same object he made a voyage down the Thames, in a small sailing vessel, to several leagues beyond the Nore; and he afterwards made a short cruise in the Fortune sloop of war, testing his instruments by the way.

His attention as yet seems to have been confined chiefly to the improvement of mathematical instruments used for purposes of navigation or astronomical observation. In the year 1752, however, he enlarged the range of his experiments; for we find him, in April, reading a paper before the Royal Society, descriptive of some improvements which he had contrived in the air-pump. On the 11th of June following, he read a second paper, descriptive of an improvement which he had made in ship-tackle by a construction of pulleys, by means of which one man might easily raise a ton weight; and on the 9th of November following, he read a third paper, descriptive of M. De Moura's experiments on Savary's steam-engine. In the course of the same year he was busily occupied in performing a series of experiments, on which his admirable paper, read before the same Society, was founded-for which he received their Gold Medal in 1759-entitled 'An Experimental Inquiry concerning the Natural Powers of Water and Wind to turn Mills and other Machines depending on a Circular Motion.' This paper was very carefully elaborated, and is justly regarded as the most masterly report that has ever been published on the subject.

To accomplish all this, and at the same time to carry

on his business, necessarily involved great application and industry. Indeed, Smeaton was throughout life an indefatigable student, bent, above all things, on self-improvement. One of his maxims was, that "the abilities of the individual are a debt due to the common stock of public happiness;" and the steadfastness with which he devoted himself to useful work, in which he at the same time found his own true happiness, shows that this maxim was no mere lip-utterance on his part, but formed the very mainspring of his life. From an early period he carefully laid out his time with a view to getting the most good out of it: so much for study, much for practical experiments, so much for business, and so much for rest and relaxation.

We infer that Smeaton could never have had a large business as a philosophical instrument maker from the large portion of his time that he devoted to study and experiments. Probably he already felt that, in the course of the development of English industry, a field was opening before him of a more important character than any that was likely to present itself in the mathematical instrument line. He accordingly seems early to have turned his attention to engineering, and, amongst other branches of study, he devoted several hours in every day to the acquisition of French, in order that he might be enabled to read for himself the works on that science which were then only to be found in that and the Italian language. He had, however, a further object in studying French, which was to enable him to make a journey which he contemplated into the Low Countries, for the purpose of inspecting the great canal works of foreign engineers.

Accordingly, in 1754, he set out for Holland, and traversed that country and Belgium, travelling mostly on foot and in treckschuyts, or canal boats, both for the sake of economy, and that he might more closely inspect the engineering works of the districts through which he

passed. He found himself in a country which had been, as it were, raked out of the very sea, for which Nature had done so little, and skill and industry so much. From Rotterdam he went by Delft and the Hague to Amsterdam, and as far north as Helder, narrowly inspecting the vast dykes raised around the land to secure it against the hungry clutches of the sea from which it was originally won. At Amsterdam he was astonished at the amount of harbour and dock accommodation, existing at a time when London as yet possessed no conveniences of the sort, though indeed it always had its magnificent Thames. Passing round the country by Utrecht, he proceeded to the great sea-sluices at Brill and Helvoetsluys, by means of which the inland waters discharged themselves, while the sea-waters were securely dammed out. Seventeen years later, he made use of the experience which he had acquired in the course of his careful inspection of these great works, in illustrating and enforcing the recommendations contained in his elaborate report on the best means of improving Dover Harbour. He made careful memoranda during his journey, to which he was often accustomed to refer, and they proved of great practical value to him in the course of his subsequent extensive employment as a canal and harbour engineer.

Shortly after his return to England in 1755, an opportunity occurred for the exercise of that genius in construction which Smeaton had thus so carefully disciplined and cultivated; and it proved the turningpoint in his fortunes, as well as the great event of his professional life.

CHAPTER III.

THE EDDYSTONE ROCK-WINSTANLEY'S AND RUDYERD'S
LIGHTHOUSES.

THE Eddystone forms the crest of an extensive reef of rocks which rise up in deep water about fourteen miles S.S.W. of Plymouth Harbour. Being well out at sea, they are nearly in a line with Lizard Head and Start Point, and besides being in the way of ships bound for Plymouth Sound, they lie in the very direction of vessels coasting up and down the English Channel.

At low

COAST OF DEVIN AND C RNWATT

water, several long low reefs of gneiss are visible, jagged and black; but at high water they are almost completely submerged. Lying in a sloping manner towards the south-west quarter, from which the heaviest seas come, the waves in stormy weather come tumbling up the slope and break over their crest with tremendous violence. The water boils and eddies amongst the reefs, and hence the name which they have borne from the earliest times of the Eddystone Rocks.