channel between
Folkestone and Cape Grisnez, in four fathoms water. This plan, was
recommended to the consideration of parliament by several merchants,
ship-owners, and other influential persons. The building proposed to
be called 'The Light of all Nations,' was to consist of a Doric column
one hundred and twenty-five feet high supporting a lantern twelve feet
in diameter, surmounted by a colossal statue of the Queen, her sceptre
being the point of a lightning-conductor. This column was to rise from
a base one hundred feet in height, and fifty in diameter, to be formed
by a caisson composed of cast-iron plates bolted together: the part
under water was to be divided into four pyramidal chambers, opening
into and supporting one another; the lower one resting on the rock
beneath the sands, and the whole forming a conical core to the
cylindrical base. The only part of this plan that was executed was the
cast-iron caisson, which was deposited in its place among the sands.
In this situation, during one dark and stormy night, it was struck by
a ship and shivered to a thousand fragments. This untoward accident
has led to the abandonment of the design.

One of the characteristics of this country is the mode in which we lay
out the mineral wealth which nature has bestowed upon us so liberally
in the shape of coal and iron. With the assistance of the former we
mould the latter into a thousand shapes of usefulness, neatness, and
durability, and so much attached are we to this material, that it is
daily superseding the use of the more cumbrous wood and stone, and
other substances which were once in great demand. Iron furnishes most
of the multifarious instruments required in the mechanical and
agricultural arts--it ministers alike to war and to peace, by
furnishing the sword and the ploughshare. It supplies some of the most
useful domestic apparatus for the kitchen, the parlour, and the
bed-room, and now even the bedstead itself may be formed of iron. It
has been long used in some of our great public works: we have iron
roads--iron bridges--iron statues--steam-boats of iron--houses of
iron, and lastly, iron lighthouses.

The suggestion of metallic lighthouses originated a few years ago with
Captain Sir Samuel Brown, when it was proposed to place a lighthouse
on the Wolf Rock near Land's End, a position where it would be exposed
to the most violent storms of the Atlantic. A plan for the erection of
a stone lighthouse on this point