Previous to the date of the destruction of Rudyerd’s timber building, Captain Lovet, the former lessee of the lighthouse, had died, and his interest in it had been acquired by Mr. Robert Weston and two others. Weston immediately applied to the Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society, who strongly recommended John Smeaton, then away in the north. Weston immediately wrote to him, but Smeaton, thinking apparently that it only referred to some repairs required in the building, declined to come up, unless there was to be some degree of permanency in his engagement. The answer he received was to the effect that the building was no more; that it must be rebuilt; and concluded with the words, “thou art the man to do it.” The life of Smeaton is one of the most interesting to be found among “The Lives of the Engineers.” He was born near Leeds, on the 8th of June, 1724, his father being a respectable attorney, and he received an excellent education. “Young Smeaton,” says Mr. Smiles, “was not much given to boyish sports, early displaying a thoughtfulness beyond his years. Most children are naturally fond of building up miniature fabrics, and perhaps still more so of pulling them down. But the little Smeaton seemed to have a more than ordinary love of contrivance, and that mainly for its own sake. He was never so happy as when put in possession of any cutting tool, by which he could make his little imitations of houses, pumps, and windmills. Even whilst a boy in petticoats, he was continually drawing circles and squares, and the only playthings in which he seemed to take any real pleasure were his models of things that would ‘work.’ When any carpenters or masons were employed in the neighbourhood of his father’s house, the inquisitive boy was sure to be among them, watching the men, observing how they handled their tools, and frequently asking them questions. His life-long friend, Mr. Holmes, who knew him in his youth, has related, that having one day observed some millwrights at work, shortly after, to the great alarm of his family, he was seen fixing something like a windmill on the top of his father’s barn. On another occasion, when watching some workmen fixing a pump in the village, he was so lucky as to procure from them a piece of bored pipe, which he succeeded in fashioning into a working pump that actually raised water. His odd cleverness, however, does not seem to have been appreciated; and it is told of him that amongst other boys he was known as ‘Fooly Smeaton,’ for though forward enough in putting questions to the workpeople, amongst boys of his own age he was remarkably shy, and, as they thought, stupid.” He made great progress at the Leeds Grammar School in geometry and arithmetic, still carrying on his mechanical studies at home. It happened one day that some mechanics came into the neighbourhood to erect a “fire-engine,” as the steam-engine was then called, for pumping water from the Garforth coal mines. Smeaton