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princes, transactions between this and other kingdoms andstates, genealogies, histories, registers of monasteries, remainsof Saxon laws, the book of Genesis, thought to be the mostancient Greek copy extant, said to have been written byOrigen in the second century, and the curious Alexandriancopy or manuscript in Greek capitals. This library is kept inthe British Museum, with the large valuable library of Sir | Hans Sloane , amounting to upwards of 42,000 volumes, &c.
| There are many public libraries belonging to the severalcolleges at Oxford and Cambridge , and the universities ofNorth Britain.
LIGHTHOUSE , a marine building, erected for the pur-pose of exhibiting a light, to warn seamen in the night oftheir approach to any sand, promontory, or insulated rock:as those on the South Foreland, Flamborough Head, theEddystone, &c.; or a building erected at the entrance of aharbour, to direct the ingress and egress of vessels duringthe night, as at Ramsgate , and other places. The latterj kind are generally smaller than the former, and are called' harbour-lights.
| Lighthouses are generally built in the form of circularj towers, from 50 to 100 feet in height, arched over at the top,
! with a projecting platform surrounded by an iron railing.
! On this platform a framing of stone is fixed higher than the; railing, containing an excavation for the reception of the! bottom of the lantern; the space between this frame and; the railing, is called the gallery, into which the light-keepersj ascend to clean the outside of the glass.
I When lighthouses are erected on the main land, there: is nothing peculiar in their construction ; in somei cases, however, they are required in situations difficult of1 access, and exposed to the accumulated fury of winds and1 waves; and to erect a permanent building on a spot of this! description, requires uncommon resources, and necessarilyj brings every energy of the architect into action.
The most celebrated antique building of this description; was the Pharos of Alexandria in Egypt , the work of Sostratus, of Cnidus, under the patronage of Ptolemy Lagus, and his. successor Philadelphus, about 283 years before the Christian: sera; it is ascertained to have existed for a period of about| 1,600 years, and is supposed to have been thrown down by an! earthquake. This lighthouse obtained its name from theIsland of Pharos, on which it stood ; and from its greatcelebrity, other structures of a similar kind have frequentlyobtained the same name ; as the Faro di Messina, and others;but among the moderns, the most remarkable are the Tourde Corduan off the French coast, and the Eddystone Light-house, near the coast of Cornwall . The former of these,begun in the reign of Henry II. , and finished under Henry IY.in 1610, stands upon a small island near the mouth of theGaronne , in the bay of Biscay, and was the work of Luis deFoix, a celebrated French architect. The latter, which hasbeen very justly considered as the chef-<Loeuvre of this speciesof architecture, was constructed by the celebrated Smeaton ;and still stands an enduring monument of his genius. A fulldescription of this remarkable structure has already beengiven under the article Eddystone Lightuouse.
Among other remarkable buildings of this kind, may benoted the Bell-rock lighthouse, off Arbroath , in the mouthof the Frith of Tay.
The reef of rocks on which the Bell-rock lighthouse isfounded, is about 427 feet long and 230 feet broad; at theordinary height of spring tides it is about 12 feet underwater ; and from the floating sea-weed, the ridge can betraced 1,000 feet farther in a south-westerly direction, whenthe tides are very low. It is situated on the eastern coast ofScotland , about 16 miles south by east from the Red-head;
12 miles south-east from Arbroath : 17 miles north by e!l3from the isle of May; and 38 miles north by west » r °.Abbs-head. Its geographical position is in 56° 29' of n° rlatitude, and 2° 22' of west longitude. The reef presentsexceedingly rugged and uneven surface. The rock is cot 11posed of red sand-stone, similar to the strata of the con tig 110 ^promontory of Red-head and of the opposite shores 0Dunglas in Berwickshire. The present vegetation of l* 1rock consists only of sea-plants ; some of them not of coniffl 0 ^occurrence on our coast. It is the occasional resting-pl ace 0the seal and the cormorant; and is the chosen residen®of numerous marine vermes. At the distance of 100y arCl ’when the tide is low, the water varies from two to thr^fathoms in depth. The greatest depth between the rockthe opposite shores of Fife is 23 fathoms. This rock, thouga mere spot on the surface of the ocean, produces all t 1remarkable phenomena of in-sliore and off-shore tides, wo*exist on the projecting coasts of the mainland, or amongScottish islands. .
In the erection of the Eddystone lighthouse , the dang eand difficulties which were encountered and overcome, oW> n »to the smallness of the surface of the rock, were great a 11numerous; and although the surface of the Bell-rockconsiderably larger, still, being more sunk, and only discover®at low water, the dangers to be encountered were eqd* igreat and overwhelming. Owing to the enlarged dianie*of the rock, the engineer was enabled to make *masoury of this building more than double the cubi®,contents of the Eddystone. The following shortwill exhibit to our readers the relative dimensions, & cthe two lighthouses :—
Eddystone.
Height of the rock, about . X Leve > with h ^ h
° 3 J water mark.
Height of masonry above the rock ... 70 feet.
Diameter of the first entire course ... 26 feet.
Cubic contents in feet, about . 13,147.
table
ol
Bell-rock-Level with 1°^
Expense understood to have been about £21,000.
water mark'100 feet-42 feet.28,530Ascertain^*£61,331 9 2
the
Very early, no doubt, attempts were made to obviatedangers of this fatal spot; and accordingly, tradition rep® 1that the monks of the Abbey of Arbroath erected a benthe rock, which was to be rung by machinery affected by 1 jflowing and ebbing of the tides, whence the present naW ethe rock, it is said, took its rise. ^
After many complaints of the want of a lighthouse,especially after the violent storm in 1799, during which i° il ^ships were driven from their moorings in Yarmouth R° a , gand even the Downs, and so many of them destroyed onScotch coast, that, when the storm subsided all the bays ' v tmargined by broken timber, it was at last resolved to conS, Qng,a lighthouse. A bill for this purpose was passed in 1" ^which enabled the commissioners of the northern lightbouto levy three-halfpence a ton upon all British vessels tra ° 9n( lto and from the ports between Berwick and Peterhead, i
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twice as much upon foreign vessels. The bill also empo 1 tthe commissioners to borrow £25,000 from government >they had £20,000 of accumulated surplus, which showedthe provision of lights had not previously been kept upamount of the tax upon navigation. Still, however^ ^
While the proposal was in agitation, various
enabled the commissioners£45,000.