But I have walked into the world since then,

FORBEARANCE: AN ILLUSTRATION.
And seen the bitter work that cold can do-
Where the grim ice-king levels babes and men

There are pleasant spots where no sunbeams glow, With bloodless spear, that pierces through and There are feruile vales where no rivers flow, through.

There are flowers that bloom where no south winds

come, I know now, there are those who sink and lie And the air is stirred with the drowsy hum Upon a stone bed at the dead of night;

Of bees, where the place seems not to be I know the roofless and unfed must die,

A fitting haunt for such melody ; When even lips at Plenty's feast turn while. And we wonder much that things should be so,

Till, searching above and searching below, And now whene'er I hear the cuckoo's song We the hidden secret of Nature know.

In budding woods, I bless the joyous comer; While my heart runs a cadence in a throng

There are cheerful homes, where the light of day Of hopeful notes, that say—" Thank God for Steals in with a faintly glimmering ray; summer!"

Where the labor is hard, and coarse the bread,

And but scanty rest for the weary head ; I've learnt that sunshine bringeth more than flow- Where childhood is nursed by Hunger gaunt, ers,

And clasped in the cold embrace of Want ;
And fruits, and forest leaves to cheer the earth ; And we wonder much, until we find
For I have seen sad spirits, like dark bowers, That a faith which never looks behind
Light up beneath it with a grateful mirth.

Gives feet to the lame and eyes to the blind. The aged limbs that quiver in their task of dragging life on, when the north wind goads Through life, as if seeking a light that is gone ;

There are yearning hearts that wander on
Taste once again contentment, as they bask
In the straight beams that warm their church- Yet no friendly hand may stay the tear,

Though no outward cause of grief appear,
yard road.

Which only in silent sadness reveals And childhood-poor, pinched childhood-half All that the desolate spirit feels ; forgets

These love not darkness, they seek for light; The starving pittance of our cottage homes,

But what to other eyes seems most bright, When he can leave the hearth, and chase the nets

| To them brings naught but despair and blight. Os gossamer that cross him as he roams.

There are gentle natures that strangely turn The moping idiot seemeth less distraught

From the hearts where Love doth warmly burn, When he can sit upon the grass all day,

Who hearken not to Flattery's voice, And laugh and cluich the blades, as though he Who care not for wealth, bút make their choice thought

To dwell alone, that so they may hear

The Muse's sweet voice forever near ; The yellow sun-rays challenged him to play.

And amid the treasures of the mind
Ah! dearly now I hail the nightingale,

A solace and support they find,
And greet the bee-the merry-going hummer- Than friendship far more true, more kind.
And when the lilies peep so sweet and pale.
I kiss their cheeks, and say—- Thank God for This is Nature's grand primeval law,

That from many sources the soul shall draw
summer!”

Happiness, profit, strength and content, Feel that limp, blue and bleeding, as they go As from every changing element,

For dainty cresses in December's dawn, The leaty tree and the springing flower, Can wade and dabble in the brooklet's flow, Derive new beauty and added power ; And woo the gurgles on a July morn.

Then blame not thy mates that they do not see

Each feature of truth which charmeth thee, The tired pilgrim, who would shrink with dread

But abide in thine own sincerity. If winter's drowsy torpor lulled his brain,

Knickerbocker. Is free to choose his mossy summer-bed, And sleep his hour or two in some green lane.

ANCIENT AND Modern TRIBUNE, or Horace Oh! ice-toothed king, I loved you once--but now

Greeley and Tiberius Gracchus.-The very idea of I never see you come without a pang

Land Limitation--as it is stated by the reporters to Of hopeless pity shadowing my brow,

have been uttered by Mr. Greeley on Saturday To think how naked flesh must feel your fang.

night—is the identical idea proposed by Tiberius My eyes watch now to see the elms unfold,

Gracchus, Tribune of the People—one of those

Roman heroes of whom the world has talked much And my ears listen to the callow rook, I hunt the palm-trees for their first rich gold,

and known very liule. An American reformer And pry for violets in the southern nook.

ought not to be a plagiarist. We have a right to

demand from himn something of originality. The And when fair Flora sends the butterfly

American nation is fresh. Its political institutions Painted and spangled, as her herald mummer ; are original. Its genius is inventive. Why, then, “ Now for warm holidays," my heart will cry, should an American reformer borrow his philan· The poor will suffer less !—Thank God for thropy from Tiberius Gracchus of Rome ?- Cin

1. Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, Sharpe's Magazine,

1 2. A Cruise on the Lakes, by Dr. Wood,

For the Living Age,

6 3. Letters from Cuba, by W. C. Bryant,

N. Y. Evening Post,

11 4. Dog Breaking - The Pocket and the Stud, Quarterly Review,

19 5. Romance of Russian History,

Blackwood's Magazine,

30 6. Europe Canada - The Future France and its President,

Spectator - Examiner,

41 7. A Letter from the Diggins,

Sunday Times,

41 Poetry.—Lines on a Statue of his Dead Child, 10.–Morning Meditations, 18. - A Lament,

45.-Thank God for Summer, 46 - Forbearance, 47. SHORT ARTICLES.–To destroy Insects on Rose Trees, 18.- Private Pudding, 46.- Ancient

and Modern Tribune, 47.

Prospectus.—This work is conducted in the spirit of now becomes every intelligeul American to be informed Littell's Museuin of Foreign Literature, (which was favor of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And ably received by the public for iwenty years,) but as it is this not only because of their nearer connection with ourtwice as large, and appears so often, we not only give selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, spirit and freshness to it by many things which were through a rapid process of change, to some new state of excluded by a inonth's delay, but while thus extending our things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, or foresee. are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages satisfy the wants of the American reader.

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ences.

66

66

WASHINGTON, 27 Dec., 1845. Of all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this bag appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expunsion of the present age.

J. Q. ADAMS.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 269.-14 JULY, 1849.

stone.

From the Quarterly Review. homage, were exceeded by Leo, it has been a 1. Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse, with wise devotion of wealth which has enabled that

Notes on the Illumination of Lighthouses. By genius to embody its bright visions in enduring Alan Stevenson, Engineer to the Northern and costly materials. Next, however, to the Lighthouse Board. Edinburgh and London.

great testimonials which men like letinus and 410. 1848. 2. An Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse. By Buonarotti have reared to the consciousness of

Robert Stevenson, Civil Engineer. Edin- our spiritual nature and immortal destinies, we burgh. 4to. 1824.

can imagine no triumph of constructive skill 3. Narrative of the Building and Description of the more signal, no labors more catholic in their purConstruction of the Eddystone Lighthouse with pose, and more deserving in their success of hu

By John Smeaton. Civil Engineer, man gratitude and applause, than those recorded F. R. S. Second Edition. Folio. 1813.

in the trilogy of works enumerated in our litle

the labors of Smeaton and the two Stevensons, There is pleasure in the pursuit, and pride in father and son, men of whom Father Ocean, the discovery, in any fragment of the literature of could he exchange for articulate language the Greece or Rome. There is joy in the Vatican avngiuov yehuouw of his summer calm, or the over the discovery of a Palimpsest. Such feelings sterner accents of his equinoctial mood, might say: are legitimate, and we should be sorry to disclaim them for ourselves, ashamed to depreciate them as

Great I must call them, for they conquered me. entertained by more devoted slaves of the lamp. There is a passage in Byron, often selected for We confess, however, that our own sympathies quotation, in which, towards the close of his with such are tempered by the conviction that, so greatest poem, he brings the power and immensity far at least as works of fancy and imagination, of of the sea into contrast with the weakness and litpoetry and eloquence, are concerned, the best pro- tleness of man. The charm of verse has, in our ductions of the best authors are already in our opinion, seldom beer more abused than in this possession. In these departments we might hail splenetic pæan to the brute strength of winds and additions with a sober joy, but we have no intense waves, leaving, as it does, unnoticed, the great craving for any large accession to the creditable fact of their habitual submission to the moral and stock which has survived the sentence of Omar, intellectual powers of man.

To make the perand escaped the baths and wash-houses of Alexan- vading sentiment of these famous stanzas as sound dria. It may be—for is it not written in Niebuhr as their cadence is sonorous, shipwreck should be —that Virgil made a mistake when he attempted the rule, and safe passage the exception. Among hesameters, that his true vocation was lyrics, and the greatest assertors of that qualified supremacy that he should have studied to emulate Pindar which Providence has delegated to the human rather than Homer ; we are, however, content race over the destructive agencies of the billow with such mistakes as the Æneid and the Georgics. and the storm, the architects of such buildings as If, indeed, we were privileged to select for resus- the Eddystone ard the Bell-Rock lighthouses are citation from the list of works no longer extant, preeminent; and the story of their construction is but of which the authors and subjects are known, well worthy the minute detail and costly illustraany one production, we suspect that our choice tion with which it has been recorded. would rest upon the narrative of the construction We cannot be surprised at the cordial satisof the Parthenon by its architect Ictinus. Much faction with which the narrators have evidently of interest would assuredly attach to the record of discharged a task of justice, not to themselves a process every step of which was evidently founded alone, but to many brave and skilful coadjutors on deep thought, and directed by high intention, till and subordinates. It must be remembered that in that result was attained which neither decay nor all these cases the presiding genius had to strugmutilation has deprived of its matchless grace, and gle not only with difficulties which would have which common consent has pronounced to be the foiled the skill, but with toils and dangers which nearest approach to perfection accomplished by would have cowed the spirit and exhausted the human artificer.

endurance of ordinary mortals. Bloody battles Apart from the charm which attaches to classi- have been won, and campaigns conducted to a succal associations and to remote antiquity, something cessful issue, with less of personal exposure to of kindred interest belongs to the narratives now physical danger on the part of the commander-inbefore us. It is indeed among the noblest functions chief, than for considerable portions of successive of genius to devise forms of beauty and sublimity years was hourly encountered by each of these for the structures destined for the performance of civilians. They could not and did not sit apart man's homage to his Maker. Within those lim- from the field of action, and send their staff with its which, fortunately for the purification of that orders into the fire. They were the first to

4

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CCLXIX.

LIVING AGE.

VOL. XXII.

spring on the lonely rock, and the last to leave it, | in fine weather beset the intervening passage beThey had to test the solidity of their own contriv-tween its eastern extremity and Tyree, from which ances in their own persons, to take up their island it is distant some 11 miles. In rough quarters in the temporary barrack, and to infuse weather the sea which rises there is described as by example their own high courage into the one in which no ship conld live. This terrible breasts of humble workmen unaccustomed to the relic of a volcanic æra had long attracted the atspecial terrors of the scene. It will be found that tention of the Northern Commissioners, under if these edifices were not, like the pyramids of whose direction the Bell Rock and other Lightthe Pharaohs or the canals of Mehemet Ali, com- houses had been constructed, and so long ago as pleted at a cost of human life, that immunity was 1814 an act was obtained for a light on Skerryobtained, under Providence, by the constant pres- vore, in which year Mr. Robert Stevenson landed ence, the cool and judicious directions, and the on the rock, in company with several members of prompt resources of the architect. Like Desde- the commission, and Sir W. Scott, who has noted mona, we listen to the tale, and admire the narra- the visit in his diary. The difficulty of the untor for the perils he has passed, as well as for the dertaking appears however to have deterred the benefits he has conferred. What these benefits commissioners from any active proceeding till the are, those best can tell who have neared their autumn of 1834, when Mr. Alan Stevenson recountry's coast in a season of starless nights and ceived directions to commence a preliminary surwintry gales-who have had experience of the vey, which he was only able to complete in 1835. navigator's struggle between hope deferred and That difficulty was not confined to the position and the fear of unknown danger and sudden wreck. character of the reef itself. The distance from These know the joy and confidence infused into land, strictly speaking, was some three miles less every bosom by the first gleam of that light which, than in the case of the Bell Rock, but the barren either by its steady lustre, its color, or its periodi- and over-peopled island of Tyree afforded neither cal occultation, identifies the promontory or the the resources of the eastern mainland, nor a harreef. In that moment, when the yards are braced, bor like Arbroath. It was necessary to construct, and the good ship put upon her course, which she at the nearest favorable station in Tyree, a pier can thenceforward pursue with confidence towards and harbor, and the buildings for workmen and the Sound, the Forth, the Mersey, or the Clyde, stores of all descriptions—all materials for which, the merits of the Smeatons and the Stevensons except the one article of stone, and after a little, will best be felt, their eulogy. may best be spoken. stone too, were to be transferred from distant

Our especial business being with the last in quarters. The gneiss quarries of the island did, date of the three constructions above enumerated, in the first instance, supply a stock of stone fit we have cited the two former chiefly for the sake both for rubble and masonry; and the liberality of occasional reference and comparison. In posi- of the proprietor, the late Duke of Argyll, who tion, the tract of foul ground infamous under the took from the first the interest which became him name of the Skerryvore Reef offers in many par- in the proceedings, gave every facility to the ticulars a pretty exact counterpart to the famous architect. This supply, however, soon failed. Inchcape or Bell Rock.

Placed in the same par- The younger Stevenson's narrative bears, as rallel of latitude, it presented the same obstacles in might be expected, continually recurring testikind and degree to the navigation of the west coast mony to the advantage he enjoyed in the instrucof Scotland, as the Bell and Carr Rocks opposed tion afforded by the example of his father's to that of the east. While the access to the operations, who in many respects was under simForth and the security of the northern coasting- ilar obligations to Smeaton.

In neither case, trade were mainly effected by the one, the great however, was the imitation servile, nor did either issue to the Atlantic from the Irish Channel and fail to adopt such changes in design and contrivthe Clyde was endangered by the other. It would ance as were indicated by the variations, slight in require deep study of a wilderness of blue books the main, between the local peculiarities of the to pronounce what annual amount of tonnage was respective sites. These changes are ably detailed affected in either case, so as to strike the exact and justified by Mr. A. Stevenson in a preliminabalance of anxiety and inconvenience. The statis- ry chapter. tics of actual loss, previous to the erection of the The earliest, and about the most anxious, of works in question, would perhaps be even more the many questions which present themselves to difficult to collect with precision. The list of the engineer intrusted with such a work are those ascertained wrecks is a long one in either case, of height and mass. In Smeaton's time, when but the fishers of Tyree took little note of the com- the best light in use was that of common candles, minuted fragments which reached their coast, and elevation beyond a certain height could do no many a good ship has left no traces for recogni- good. The application of the mirror or the lens tion aster a few minutes' collision with the gneiss to oil enables us now to illuminate the visible of Skerryvore. Situated considerably further from horizon of any tower which, in Mr. A. Steventhe mainland than the Bell Rock, it is less entire son's words, “ human art can hope to construct. ly submerged, some of its summits rising above The question of mass is affected by other considthe level of high water, but the extent of foul erations, and principally by the greater or less ground is much greater, and hidden dangers even facility of communication with the shore, which

must govern the question of space for stowage of reduced to the lowest limit compatible with safesupplies. The extent of the Skerryvore reef, ty. Proportions were therefore adopted for the some three miles to seaward of the spot available tower at Skerryvore which, involving a less profor the base of the edifice, indicated the expedi-jection of the base as compared with the summit, ency of a greater elevation than had been attained afforded a nearer approximation to the form of in the case of the Bell Rock, which is little more greatest solidity, the conic frustum. It does not, than 100 yards in its extent. It was determined however, follow that the curve resulting from the that the light should be elevated about 150 feet proportion taken at Skerryvore could have been above high water, so as to command a visible hor- advantageously substituted at the Bell Rock for izon of 18 miles' radius ; and it appeared that for the curve there adopted. The latter is covered to interior accommodation a void space of about 13,- the height of fifteen feet at spring tides. For 000 cubic feet would be required.

two winters the lower part of the tower was exThese elements settled, the question of general posed not merely to wind and spray, but to the proportions came next. This was partly depend- direct action of the sea, without the advantage of ent on the preference to be given to one or the any superincumbent weight. During this period other of the two principles, by applying which the architect had to rely on the compactness, not the solidity of a compacted and unelastic mass on the weight, of his structure, and it became can be obtained—the principle of vertical pres- necessary to give the portion thus periodically sure, in which the power of gravity supplies the submerged the sloping form least likely to disturb strength required-or that of artificial tenacity, the passage of the waves. involving the more elaborate and costly contriv- On the interesting question of the best shape ances of dovetailing, joggling, &c. It appears for such buildings, Mr. A. Stevenson thus sums clear that, in the construction of buildings in up a singularly clear explanation of his views :which resistance to a recurrent action of disturb- In a word, the sum of our knowledge appears ing forces is a main object, the principle of verti- to he contained in this proposition--that, as the stacal pressure is to be preferred. The power of a bility of a sea-tower depends, cæteris paribus, on given weight to resist a given force is calculable the lowness of its centre of gravity, ihe general and constant—the strength which results from the notion of its form is that of a cone, but that, as the artificial connection of component parts is less en

forces to which its several horizontal sections are during, and cannot even at first be so accurately the solid should be generated by the revolution of

opposed decrease towards its top in a rapid ratio, estimated. These considerations had influenced some curve-line convex to the axis of the tower, the commissioners in their rejection of a plan for and gradually approaching to parallelism with it. an iron pillar, and they governed Mr. A. Steven--p. 56. son in the design which he was called upon to This is nothing more nor less than the conclusion execute for an edifice of masonry, and justified which Smeaton reduced to practice in the case of him for some departure from that of either Smea- the Eddystone, and, for aught we are aware, ton or his father.

for the first time. * The process of reasoning, There can be little doubt (he says) that the more

however, by which Alan Stevenson arrived at his nearly we approach the perpendicular, the more fully results is far different from that by which Smeaton do the stones at the base receive the pressure of the describes himself to have been influenced. He superincumbent mass as a means of retaining them thinks that Smeaton's famous analogy of the oak, in their places, and the more perfectly does this which has been often quoted and extolled for its pressure act as a bond of union among the parts of felicity, is unsound, and was only employed by the tower. This consideration naturally weighed him for the purpose of satisfying readers incapawith me in making a more near approach to the ble of understanding the profounder process by conic frustum, which, next to the perpendicular wall, must, other circumstances being equal, press

which he had really arrived at the truth :the mass below with a greater weight, and in a There is no analogy (says the modern architect) more advantageous manner, than a curved outline, between the case of the tree and that of the lightin which the stones at the base are necessarily house—the tree being assaulted at the top, the further removed from the line of vertical pressure lighthouse at the base; and although Smeaton goes of the mass at top. This vertical pressure operates on to suppose the branches to be cut off, and water in preventing any stone being withdrawn from the to wash round the base of the oak, it is to be feared wall in a manner which, to my mind, is much more that the analogy is not thereby strengthened ; as satisfactory than an excessive refinement in dove- the materials composing the tree and the tower are tailing and joggling, which I consider as chiefly so different, that it is impossible to imagine that the useful in the early stages of the progress of a work same opposing forces can be resisted by similar when it is exposed to storms, and before the super- properties in both. * It is very singular that structure is raised to such an height as to prevent ihroughout his reasonings on this subject he does seas from breaking right over it.- p. 64.

not appear to have regarded those properties of the

tree which he has most fitly characterized as its Of the three works the principle of vertical elasticity and the coherence of its parts.— Ibid. pressure has been most consulted in the case of Skerryvore, and least in that of the Bell Rock. Smeaton's Eddystone, and resembling it in situation and

* The only great work we know of, antecedent in In the Eddystone, indeed, as well as in the Bell exposure, is the Tour de Cordouan, in which the conical Rock, Mr. A. Stevenson is of opinion that the principle is not adopted. Mr. Rudyard's tower on the

Eddystone was a rectilinear frustum of a cone---a form thickness of the walls towards the top has been suitable to his principal material, which was wood.