One of the most remarkable early lighthouses is the Tower of Cordouan, situated on a ledge of rocks at the mouth of the Garonne, which empties into the Bay of Biscay. It was commenced in 1584, and completed in 1610, by Louis de Foix. The ledge is about 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet broad, and is bare at low water. It is surrounded by detached rocks, upon which the sea breaks with terrific violence. There is but one place of access, which is a passage 300 feet wide, where there are no rocks, and which leads to within 600 feet of the tower. The tower was a circular cone, rising from its rocky base to a height of 162 feet. It is now shorter. The apartments of the tower are highly ornamented, consisting of four storeys, all of different orders of architecture, and adorned with busts and statues of Kings of France and heathen gods. The basement, or lower storey, appears to have been intended as a store-room; the second storey is called the “King’s apartments;” the third is a chapel; and the fourth consists of a dome supported by columns, a kind of lower lantern; above this was originally a lantern formed of a stone dome and eight columns. In the upper lantern a fire of oak wood was kept burning for about a hundred years, when, in 1717, the fire having weakened the stone supports by calcining them, the upper lantern was taken down, and the light was kept up in the lower lantern. As it did not show well there, an iron lantern was erected in 1727 above this, in the place of the old stone lantern, and coal was then used for fuel instead of wood. The following history of the Eddystone is largely derived from one of Mr. Samuel Smiles’ graphic and learned works.(52) In 1696, Mr. Henry Winstanley (a mercer and country gentleman), of Littlebury, in the county of Essex, obtained the necessary powers to erect a lighthouse on the Eddystone. That gentleman seems to have possessed a curious mechanical genius, which first displayed itself in devising sundry practical jokes for the entertainment of his guests. Smeaton tells us that in one room there lay an old slipper, which, if a kick was given it, immediately raised a ghost from the floor; in another the visitor sat down upon a chair, which suddenly threw out two arms and held him a fast prisoner; whilst, in the garden, if he sought the shelter of an arbour, and sat down upon a particular seat, he was straightway set afloat in the middle of the adjoining canal. These tricks must have rendered the house at Littlebury a somewhat exciting residence for the uninitiated guest. The amateur inventor exercised the same genius, to a certain extent, for the entertainment of the inhabitants of the metropolis, and at Hyde Park Corner he erected a variety of _jets d’eau_, known by the name of Winstanley’s Waterworks, which he exhibited at stated times at a shilling a head.