Who can even imagine how many ships and how many men are saved by these beneficent beacons? Light, suddenly dispelling the dense shadows of those horrible nights when the bravest lose their courage and their presence of mind, not only points the path, but clears the head and strengthens the heart. It is a great moral support to be able to say in some mortal peril, "Again! Again! Haul away my brothers, be bold! Though wind and wave are both against us, we are not alone. See, yonder! Humanity is still watching over us, and guiding us from yonder lofty tower!" The seamen of the old times, ever hugging the shore, and anxiously marking every headland, were still more in need than we are of the friendly beacon light. The Etruscans, we are told, first kept the night-fires burning upon their sacred stones; the beacon was at once an altar, a temple, a column, and a watch tower. The Celts, too, had their round towers which were beacons also; the most important of them were built on precisely those points where the friendly light could most widely flash over the dark waters; and the Romans lit up watch fires from height to height and promontory to promontory along their whole shores of the Mediterranean. The great terror of the Northern sea kings, and the perilled and trembling life of the dark middle age, put out all those guiding and saving lights. The people cared not to favor the inroad of the sea rover; the sea was an object of dread, almost of hatred. Every ship was an enemy, and, if it ran aground, was deemed lawful as well as unpitied prey. The pillage of a wreck was the gain of the noble; the _noble_ and the _wrecker_ were one! The Count de Leon, made wealthy by the fatal shoal upon his County's shore, said of that murderous rock, that it was "a precious stone, far more precious than any that glitters in a kingly crown." Even in our own time, innocently, the poor fishermen have, again and again, by those fires which they have kindled upon the beach, seduced our poor seamen into shipwreck and death. The very beacons themselves have, not seldom, played the bad part of the false hearted wrecker, alluring, only to betray; so easy is it to mistake one light for another. Now and then, that mistake, so readily made, leads to very horrible consequences.