adopted along the Welsh coast have been crowned with success; and how comfortable is it to reflect, when calmly seated at our winter hearths, that--while the "winds howl round our steady battlements," and "ships break from their moorings,"--there are friendly lights sparkling around our coasts, to cheer and direct the bewildered mariner in his course, to show him his danger, and to point out "a way to escape." To understand the importance of lighthouses, we need only remind the reader of the published "Statement," that the number of British vessels alone, which have been annually returned as wrecked, amounts to _five hundred and fifty_;--namely, "three shipwrecks every two days throughout the year." The average burden of merchant-vessels is about one hundred and ten tons; and if we value old and new together at half the price of building, we have £330,000 for the worth of the whole, which, by deducting the value of sails, masts, and other materials saved from some of those stranded, may be reduced to £300,000. If we add an equal sum for the cost of the cargoes, the whole loss from shipwrecks will amount to £600,000. This statement proceeds on an old estimate from 1793 to 1829; but M'Culloch, in the supplement to his Dictionary, says that the number of ships actually lost, or driven ashore, in 1833, amounted to _eight hundred_. It is probable, then, that the annual lost by shipwreck is not much short of a _million sterling_. If _one-fifth_ of this loss could be prevented by additional lighthouses, the saving of money would amount to a _million_ in five years,--to say nothing of the still more important saving in human life. We are anxious--not on the score of economy only, but of humanity--to place these lamentable facts before the eyes of Government, from whose hands the mitigation at least, if not the removal, of such disasters is confidently expected. In the rock immediately under the lighthouse is a large cavern, called Bob's Cove,--a very characteristic feature, and a chief attraction to pleasure-parties, who resort hither at low water for the sake of the view, which from this isolated point is very striking and variegated:-- "Town and hamlet, sea and shore, Wooded steep and mountain hoar; Ships that stem the waters blue, All concentrate in the view." Expanding to the eastward, is the beautiful curve of Swansea Bay and the distant mountains; on the westward, the broken coast of Gower; in front, the boundless expanse of ocean. The bracing sea breezes inhaled upon this exposed promontory, its elastic turf, and the magnificent prospect it everywhere commands, never fail to produce a most agreeable and salutary exhilaration, and constitute the finest medical and physical tour in the world. [Illustration: NASS SANDS LIGHTHOUSES. (near Bristol.)] THE NASS SANDS LIGHTHOUSES.