With the exception of the lights at the head of Berwick pier, those on the Farne Islands, on the Northumbrian coast, off Bamborough, are the most northerly in England. Legend tells us that from a now ruined tower on one of the islands a light was formerly shown as a warning to passing ships; and if that was so, then in all probability it was one of those lights of which we have already spoken as being supported by charity, and was tended by a monk or hermit from the famous monastery of Holy Island. Such light would, of course, have been extinguished at the dissolution of the religious houses, and no other, however dim or flickering, marked the dangers of the Farne rocks till the year 1776. Proposals were made for a lighthouse on these islands some hundred years before, by a certain Sir John Clayton, who put forward many schemes for lighthouses, as objects of profit, at many points on the coast, but nothing came of it; it was crushed by the influence of the Newcastle traders, who did not relish having to pay for it. The sailors engaged in the northern coasting trade set these proposals afloat again in 1727, but they were stifled before they came to anything, though the then secretary to the Trinity House admits that he has heard ‘judicious commanders’ speak well of the suggestion. [Illustration: OUTER FARNE LIGHTHOUSE.] However, opposition—honest or the reverse—kept the Farne rocks without a lighthouse till the year 1776, when the first of the two that at present light them was set up. The second, on the Longstones, was built in 1810, and it is this latter that has become familiar to us as the scene of Grace Darling’s heroism. It was customary, sixty or seventy years ago, to place a family in charge of a lighthouse—a man, his wife, and one or two children, all of whom, male and female, if above a certain age, received a trifling salary, and were looked upon—women and girls quite as much as men and boys—as assistant light-keepers; indeed, there were women light-keepers appointed by the Trinity House so late as 1860. An arrangement such as this was adopted at the Longstones lighthouse; William Darling, his wife, and their daughter Grace, a girl of twenty-one, trimmed and tended the lights as recognized officials of the Trinity House.