It was France, who, at the close of her great wars, took the lead in making the lighthouse the great saviour of the benighted and well nigh wrecked seamen. Provided with that great refracting lamp of Fresnel, (a lantern equal to four thousand common ones, and throwing its ruddy gleam over a dozen, or so, of leagues), it can cast, that good modern beacon, its directing and saving light, hither and thither so that strait and shoal are made visible and safe in the deep midnight as in the full broad glow of the bright noon. To the sailor, who steers by the stars, this invention gave him, as it were, a new heaven and added constellations. Planets, fixed stars, all were created anew for him, and in those newly invented constellations there was even an improvement upon the celestial lights, in the variety of color, intensity and duration, of their glow and of their flashing. To some, we gave the calm, fixed, pale and steady gleaming which sufficed for the tranquil night and the comparatively safe sea; to others, the revolving and flashing, and fierce and ruddy glow that shone to every point of the compass. These latter, like the phosphoric creatures of the deep, palpitate and flash fitfully, now gleaming and anon paling, now leaping into dazzling glow, and anon dying into deepest darkness. In the darkest and most tempestuous nights, they are ever restless as Ocean's self, and seem to give him back motion for motion, and gleam for gleam to the lurid and fitful lightnings. Let us remember that in 1826, and even as late as 1830, our seas were still terrible in their drear darkness. In all Europe there were but few lighthouses; in Africa, there was but the single one on the Cape, and, in all vast Asia there were only those of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, while the whole vast extent of South America displayed not even one. Since the latter date all nations following, imitating, even rivaling, France, have said, on every bold headland that overlooks every dangerous shoal and strait have said "Let there be light!" and every where the friendly light, gleams tranquilly, or fitfully flashes. Just here I should like you to make with me the circumnavigation of our seas from Dunkirk to Biarritz, and to take a survey of our lighthouses. But, it would occupy us too long. Calais, with her four lights of different colors, throws out her friendly warnings and hospitable imitations even to distant Dover; and the noble gulf of the Seine, between Heve and Barfleur, lights the American seaman on his otherwise perilous passage to Havre and thence to the very home, the very heart of France.