Chapter II (3)

Whatever the future in store for the English lighthouse system, one thing is certain, that it cannot, and was never meant to supersede seamanship. No amount of lighting will dispense with the necessity for eyes, no extent of warning is so good as the capacity for grappling with a danger. The lighthouse authorities may cheer a sailor on his way with leading lights and beacon warnings, but he must still be a sailor to turn their warnings to account.

When Rudyerd’s Eddystone was building, Louis XIV. was at war with England, and a French privateer took the men at work upon the rock, and carried them to a French prison. When that monarch heard of it, he immediately ordered them to be released, and the captors to be put in their place; declaring that, though at enmity with England, he was not at war with mankind. Extremes meet. The most gorgeous monarch in Europe and the plain Quaker of Liverpool had one point in common;--they both agreed that the erection of a Lighthouse was “a great holy good, to serve and save humanity.”

Lovel the Widower.