The boy was delighted. He had chosen what was then the work of a common labourer, with a labourer's wages. The term Civil Engineer was unknown. With a heart beating high with hope he went off and engaged himself to a philosophical instrument-maker--a man who made instruments for navigation and astronomy. With him he worked steadily--eager to improve the instruments--eager to improve himself--so eager, indeed, that he divided out his time so as to make the most of it: so much for reading, so much for experiments, so much for business, and so much for rest and relaxation. And so on the threshold of manhood--having got, as it were, "a free hand"--he made great strides onward. He may not have done much business at the time, but he read papers before the Royal Society, and he kept open a keen, mechanical eye for everything--from minute, delicate instruments to the building of canals and bridges and waterworks. He thought no trouble too great to take if so it made him thorough. He set himself to study French and Italian, so as to read the works in these languages on mechanical subjects, and he even set off to Holland--that land of dykes and harbours and docks--that he might examine them for himself. And while he looked about him, always at the same time busy with the work that lay nearest to his hand, the great work of his life was drawing close to his door. Many years before Smeaton lived, England was in the custom of lighting up her rocky headlands with lights or beacons. First came "the candle in the cottage window" to light the sailor husband home, then stacks of blazing wood, piles of coal, oil, torches, pitch-pots. Guided by these flaring lights in the darkness, men and vessels plying round our coast were saved from shipwreck and death. Sometimes these beacons, flaming high from their pinnacles, warned the people inland that war was expected, the country was in danger of being invaded, or that pirates were about to swoop down upon them. At other times _false_ lights were shown by men known as "wreckers," and homeward-bound vessels, rich in goods and human souls, were dashed upon the rocks. So our coasts were lighted up in those old days, but it happened at times that the pitch would become drenched and drowned, the wood and coal fires would spurt up for a space and then drop down and fade. Things were uncertain. It did not matter, perhaps, greatly, as long as England's commerce by sea was small, but when our trade with foreign lands began to grow, there grew, too, the question how best to light our rocky coasts and docks and headlands. So an order of monks--the Brethren of Trinity House--was made, and these prayed for the safety of the sailors, and later looked to the lighting of the coast.