But it is not needful to speak further of these more ancient lighthouses, or their builders; reference is made to them only to remind the reader of the antiquity of coast lighting as a system. These pages concern the lighthouses of our own country alone, and there is no evidence to prove or suggest that the shores of England were lighted prior to the Roman occupation. Indeed, of direct evidence of lighthouses being used by the Romans in Britain, there is exceedingly little. The system was extensively employed by them in Gaul, and the Tour d’Ordre at Boulogne—or ‘the Old Man of Bullen,’ as Elizabethan sailors called it—is mentioned as a lighthouse in the year 191 A.D.; so that it is hardly likely that the Romans would, for long, have left navigation around England unassisted by lights. We may, therefore, accept the ruined tower at Dover, and some similar remains on the English and Welsh coasts, as remains of Roman lighthouses. Whether or not, with the decay of the Roman power in England, lighthouses fell to ruin, we do not know; probably this was so, and probably, too, they were not resuscitated till Christianity had become firmly established here and was teaching men charity towards their fellow men. So early as the opening of the fourteenth century we find monks and hermits in England, and other maritime parts of Europe, doing their best to warn mariners of the dangers that lurked around their monasteries or hermitages, by means of lights maintained during the season of darkness. To the north of the island of Jersey lie a cluster of sharp-pointed rocks, known as the Ecrehou. Sailors give them a wide berth when they can; as well they may, for their cruel spike-like reefs stretch far, and on calm days, when the water is not breaking upon them, they lie silently and treacherously in wait for the passing ship. On the largest of these rocks there was, in the year 1309, a hermitage, or priory, served from the Norman abbey of Val Richer. Land in Jersey had, years before, been given to support two monks here who, by day, used to sing masses for the souls of those who had perished by shipwreck, and then, as night closed in, kindle, and keep burning till daybreak, as good and bright a light as they could upon their tiny building. Here is a picture romantic enough, and research would, no doubt, enable us to paint many such. The ruined chapels that one so often sees to-day, perched upon a rocky crag or headland of our coast, were often, in all probability, lighthouses to the mariner of old.