at the time of his death in the
engineership, is the sixth of the family who has held, successively or
conjointly, that office. The Bell Rock, his father's great triumph, was
finished before he was born; but he served under his brother Alan in the
building of Skerryvore, the noblest of all extant deep-sea lights; and,
in conjunction with his brother David, he added two--the Chickens and
Dhu Heartach--to that small number of man's extreme outposts in the
ocean. Of shore lights, the two brothers last named erected no fewer
than twenty-seven; of beacons,[6] about twenty-five. Many harbours were
successfully carried out: one, the harbour of Wick, the chief disaster
of my father's life, was a failure; the sea proved too strong for man's
arts; and after expedients hitherto unthought of, and on a scale
hyper-cyclopean, the work must be deserted, and now stands a ruin in
that bleak, God-forsaken bay, ten miles from John-o'-Groat's. In the
improvement of rivers the brothers were likewise in a large way of
practice over both England and Scotland, nor had any British engineer
anything approaching their experience.

It was about this nucleus of his professional labours that all my
father's scientific inquiries and inventions centred; these proceeded
from, and acted back upon, his daily business. Thus it was as a harbour
engineer that he became interested in the propagation and reduction of
waves; a difficult subject, in regard to which he has left behind him
much suggestive matter and some valuable approximate results. Storms
were his sworn adversaries, and it was through the study of storms that
he approached that of meteorology at large. Many who knew him not
otherwise, knew--perhaps have in their gardens--his louvre-boarded
screen for instruments. But the great achievement of his life was, of
course, in optics as applied to lighthouse illumination. Fresnel had
done much; Fresnel had settled the fixed light apparatus on a principle
that still seems unimprovable; and when Thomas Stevenson stepped in and
brought to a comparable perfection the revolving light, a not unnatural
jealousy and much painful controversy rose in France. It had its hour;
and, as I have told already, even in France it has blown by. Had it not,
it would have mattered the less, since all through his life my father
continued to justify his claim by fresh advances. New apparatus for
lights in new situations was continually being designed with the same
unwearied