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less liable to derangement, where the population of an invaded country is confident in their own leaders, and true to their own cause.

We now close these desultory observations, by stating, in justification of the tone of decision which we have presumed to adopt, that the theory they contain was deduced from an attentive perusal of the plans of Buonaparte's battles published at Paris. Yet we should have hesitated to offer them to the public on our slender authority, had we not found our opinion confirmed three years after we had embodied it in writing, by the excellent work of Sir Robert Wilson, and by a very stri

king treatise, entitled "Essai surke Systeme Militaire de Bonaparte, par C. H. S. Major d'Etat Muscovite," which we have liberally quoted a our notes. These authorities coinciding with our own opinion 50 much beyond our expectation, led us to give our sketch to the public, in hopes that, thus supported, it may operate as a sedative in tranquillizing the mind of those who do not know more of the practice of war than we do ourselves; and we shall not quarrel with the true-blue Englishman who may think with Corporal Trim, that one home-thrust of the bayonet is worth it all.

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BELL ROCK LIGHT-HOUSE.

WHILE the navy forms the great bulwark of British liberty, and ships are the chief instruments of our commerce, every attempt to afford a greater degree of safety to the mariner, and to give additional security to the adventures of the merchant, must be regarded as of national interest. In order to evince that a light-house upon the Bell Rock is calculated to serve the most important purposes, in facilitating the navigation of the North Sea and German Ocean, it is only necessary to advert to the situation of the Rock; and the brief account of the light-house, which we are enabled to lay before our readers, will be sufficient to shew that it is a work of much curiosity, and of no small enterprise.

The Cape or Bell Rock, lies about 11 miles in a south-west direction from the Read Head, in Forfarshire, and 30 miles north by east from St Abb's Head, in Berwickshire. These two headlands form the boundaries of the estuary or Frith of Forth, which is the principal inlet upon the east coast of Great Britain for vessels overtaken with an easterly storm, while navigating the German Ocean or North Sea.

This rock is almost one entire orcontinuous mass, having only a very few detached or separate pieces. It is a

red sandstone, very hard, and of a fir grit, with minute specks of mic At low water of neap tides the rock is only partially left by the tide; bư its dimensions, as seen at low water of spring tides, are about 2000 feet in length, with an average breadth of 230 feet; and then the height of the north-east part, where the light-house is built, may be stated at four feet per pendicular above the surface of the water; but the south-west, or op posite end of the rock, is lower, and its

surface is never fully left by the tide. The surface of the rock is very uneven, and walking upon it is diffi cult and even dangerous. Those parts which are higher, and conse quently oftener left by the tide, are covered with muscles, limpets, whelks; and numbers of seals occasionally play about the rock, and rest upon it at low water. Those parts which appear only in spring tides, are thickly coated with sea weeds; as the great tangle (fucus digitatus,) and badderlocks, or henware (fucus escu lentus,) which here grows to the length even of 18 feet. The redware cod is got very near the rock, and as the water deepens, the other fishes common in those seas are caught in abundance.

Such being the position of this fatal rock, appearing only a few fee:

above the low water mark of spring tides, and being wholly covered by the water when the tide has flowed but a short time, its dangerous effects have been long and severely felt, and the want of some distinguishing mark to point out its place, has been lamented with the occurrence of every shipwreck upon the coast. But until commerce had made considerable advances towards its present state, the erection of a light house could not be undertaken, as the ships frequenting those seas were not sufficiently numerous to afford the proba bility of raising an adequate revenue, by a small duty or tonnage upon each vessel, Tradition, however, informs us, that so long ago as the fourteenth century, the monks of Aberbrothwick caused a large bell to be hung upon the rock, in such a manner that the waves of the sea gave it motion, by which means warning was given to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. In this way the name Bell Rock is said to have arisen. Such a bell must soon have been swept away by the raging sea; and centuries elapsed without any effectual steps being taken for distinguishing the rock. In the year 1786, when the increasing state of trade, upon the coast of Scotland, made the want of light-houses be more generally felt, a bill was brought into parliament appointing commissioners, and granting certain duties upon shipping, for the erection of light-houses upon the northern parts of Great Britain. In virtue of those powers the Commissioners of the Northern Light-houses immediately proceeded to the general improvement of the coast, on which they erected nine light-houses in the course of seventeen years, still keeping in view the great object of erecting one on the Bell Rock. In

1799 a dreadful storm from S. S. E. occasioned the loss of about 70 vessels, with many of their crews, upon the east coast of Scotland, which more especially directed the attention of the commissioners to this rock; the fear of which was the unfortunate cause why many of these vessels did not then enter the Frith of Forth, for which the wind was favourable.

About this period various measures were concerted, and, in the year 1803, the Hon. Charles Hope, then Lord Advocate of Scotland, and er officio one of the Commissioners of the Northern Light-houses, with the late Sir William Pulteney, Bart. brought forward a bill making provision for the erection of this lighthouse; which bill was afterwards lost in the house of lords. The commissioners, however, still persevered; and in 1806 a bill passed in both houses of parliament under the auspices of the then Lord Advocate, the Hon. Henry Erskine, aided by Sir John Sinclair, Baronet, By this bill the northern light duty, of three-halfpence per ton upon British, and three pence per ton upon foreign bottoms, was allowed to be extended to all vessels bound to or from any of the ports between Peterhead in the north, and Berwick upon Tweed in the south, and the commissioners were empowered to borrow 25,000l. from the three per cent consols, which, with 20,0001, which they possessed, made a disposable fund of 45,0001., to go on with the work.

Provision having been made in the bill for the establishment of a floating light to ride off the rock while the light-house was building, a vessel for this purpose was fitted out in the most substantial manner, agreeably to the advice and opinion of Captains Grin

lay, Hay, and other members of the Trinity-house, Leith, and moored in the month of July 1807, about two miles in a north-east direction from the rock, and in 22 fathoms water. A very heavy cast-iron mushroom anchor, recommended for this purpose by Captain Huddard of the Trinity house, London, was employed; to this anchor the ship was attached by a very strong chain and cable. This vessel was furnished with three masts, on each of which was suspended a large copper lanthorn, glazed with polished plate glass. These lanthorns were furnished, in all, with thirty lights, behind each of which a small silver-plated reflector was placed. The floating light was thus distinguished by her three lanthorns from the double and single lights upon the coast. Soon after the storm of 1799, already alluded to, several plans and models for the erection of a lighthouse upon the Bell Rock had been submitted to the consideration of the Commissioners of the Northern Lights. Captain Brodie of the Royal Navy, well known for his ardent zeal in this measure, prepared several very ingenious models for a cast-iron lighthouse, and even constructed a beacon, consisting of four spars of timber, which stood for several months upon the rock And the late Mr Murdoch Downie, author of the Marine Survey of the East Coast of Scotland, brought forward a plan for erecting a light-house to stand upon pillars of stone. Mr Stevenson, engineer to the commissioners, having constructed various models for this work, made a survey of the rock in the year 1800, and his report was afterwards published by the board, along with a letter from the Hon. Captain, now Admiral Cochrane, who had called the attention of the Commissioners of the Northern

Lights to this important subject in the year 1793. So different, however, were the opinions of the public abor the practicability of the work, and still more regarding the kind of building best suited to the circumstances of the case, that, where so large a sum of money was necessarily to be ex pended, the commissioners judged it proper to submit the subject to the opinion of Mr Rennie. This eminent engineer coincided with Mr Stevenson in thinking, that a building of stone, upon the principles of the Eddystone Light-house, was both practicable, and advisable at the Bell Rock; and to these gentlemer was committed the execution of this great undertaking.

The bill for the erection of the light-house passed late in the session of 1806, and during the following winter materials were ordered from the granite quarries of Aberdeenshire for the outside casing of the first or lower 30 feet of the building: and blocks of freestone for the inside work and higher parts were brought from the quarry of Mylnfield, near Dundee. At Arbroath, where the stones were collected and hewn previously to their being taken off to the rock, a work-yard was procured on a lease of seven years, it being then thought that most of that time would be employed in the undertaking; here working-shades, and barracks for lodging the artificers when they landed from the rock, were erected. The work commenced at the Bell Rock in the month of August, 1807.

Little was done towards prepa ring for the scite of the building this season, the first object being to get up some temporary erection on the rock, as a place of refuge to fly to in the event of an accident befal

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