of the Bell Rock, it was resolved by the Commissioners of Northern
Lights to build a lighthouse upon it. This resolve was a much bolder
one than most people suppose, for the rock on which the lighthouse
was to be erected was a sunken reef, visible only at low tide during
two or three hours, and quite inaccessible in bad weather. It was the
nearest approach to building a house in the sea that had yet been
attempted! The famous Eddystone stands on a rock which is _never
quite_ under water, although nearly so, for its crest rises a very
little above the highest tides, while the Bell Rock is eight or ten
feet under water at high tides.

It must be clear, therefore, to everyone, that difficulties, unusual
in magnitude and peculiar in kind, must have stood in the way of the
daring engineer who should undertake the erection of a tower on a
rock twelve miles out on the stormy sea, and the foundation of which
was covered with ten or twelve feet of water every tide; a tower
which would have to be built perfectly, yet hastily; a tower which
should form a comfortable home, fit for human beings to dwell in, and
yet strong enough to withstand the utmost fury of the waves, not
merely whirling round it, as might be the case on some exposed
promontory, but rushing at it, straight and fierce from the wild
ocean, in great blue solid billows that should burst in thunder on
its sides, and rush up in scarcely less solid spray to its lantern, a
hundred feet or more above its foundation.

An engineer able and willing to undertake this great work was found
in the person of the late Robert Stevenson of Edinburgh, whose
perseverance and talent shall be commemorated by the grandest and
most useful monument ever raised by man, as long as the Bell Rock
lighthouse shall tower above the sea.