That a residence in the lighthouse, solitary and desolate as it must have been, was considered no hardship by those who undertook the office, the following anecdote will prove. A skipper was once carrying out in his boat a new light-keeper to the rock. The man had been a shoemaker, and the skipper said to him, ‘Friend Jacob, how is it that you choose to go out to be a light-keeper, when you can earn, as I have been told, half-a-crown or three shillings a day on shore, by making leathern hose,--the light-keeper’s salary is but twenty-five pounds a year, which, you know, is scarce ten shillings a week?’ ‘I am going to be a light-keeper,’ said the shoemaker, ‘because I don’t like _confinement_.’ This answer naturally excited the skipper’s merriment, and the shoemaker explained his meaning to be that he did not like to be _confined to work_. These dwellers on the rock were cut off from all communication with their fellow-creatures for weeks and months together during stormy weather; and it might naturally be expected that under these circumstances they should be bound to each other by ties of brotherly feeling and goodwill. But dissension and strife are not shut out from the human bosom by mere retirement from the busy scenes of life. When only two light-keepers inhabited the building, it happened that some visitors, who had repaired thither to gratify their curiosity by an examination of the lighthouse, observed to one of the men, how very comfortably they might live there in a state of retirement. ‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘we might live comfortably enough, if we could have the use of our tongues; but it is now a full month since my partner and I have spoken to each other.’ Connected with Rudyerd’s lighthouse an anecdote is told of Louis XIV. which is honourable to his feelings. During the progress of the work at the Eddystone rocks, a French privateer seized the men employed on the building, and took them, together with their tools, to France, expecting to be handsomely rewarded. While the captives lay in prison, the transaction reached the ears of the monarch. He immediately ordered them to be released, and the captors put in their place, declaring, that though he was at war with England, he was not at war with mankind. He observed that the Eddystone lighthouse was so situated as to be of equal service to all nations having occasion to navigate the channel that divides France from England, and he therefore directed the men to be sent back to their work with presents.