So much for the history of the four lighthouses that, in turn, have marked the Eddystone reef; but before speaking of the next lighthouse along the coast that claims our attention, there is one word more to be said about the third Eddystone. Smeaton’s massive tower was—on the present lighthouse being completed—taken down, stone by stone, and re-erected on Plymouth Hoe, where, as a landmark, it still renders service to the mariner. Thus the curious reader may see for himself what his ancestors a few generations back regarded, and rightly regarded, as the most wonderful lighthouse ever erected. If he likes he can go within it and see the interior arrangements just as they were when the building stood on the Eddystone—the candelabra in its original position, the clock which reminded the keepers of ‘snuffing time’ for the candles, and besides these, sundry relics of John Smeaton himself. Then, if in after days, when far from Plymouth and its bright and breezy Hoe, he desires to refresh his memory, to call to mind what the old lighthouse was like, he has only to pull out of his pocket any current copper coin of the realm, and there, to the left of Britannia, he will find a small but faithful representation of the building which won for its builder so famous a name. CHAPTER XV THE LIZARD Now let us pass on to the Lizard Point, where the massive whitened lighthouse with its four towers is quite one of the features of the Cornish coast. This excellently ordered building, with its wonderfully powerful light, was erected in 1752, and as the keepers narrate the fact, the majority of sightseers feel that they are in quite an antiquarian atmosphere, and think—even should their minds momentarily revert to the lighthouses of the ancients—that they are at least looking upon one of the oldest English lighthouses. The reader of these pages will not allow such historic errors to possess him; the thought that will cross his mind will be,—Strange that so important a point on the English coast should have remained unlit till 1752, so long after the building of lighthouses—though opposed and hindered in quarters where they should have been welcomed and encouraged—had become general all along our shores. Certainly it was strange that no lighthouse, that is, none with anything but a most limited existence, was placed on the Lizard till 1752; but a lighthouse was there for a short time, considerably more than a century earlier, and it is the history of that lighthouse, full as it is of incident and romance, that claims our attention here.