For more than a century it has withstood the storm, an enduring monument to the fame of its great architect. At times, when the billows roll in from the Atlantic with more than ordinary fury, and the white-crested waters come up the Channel under the impulse of a south-west gale, the lighthouse is shrouded in spray, and its flame for a moment obscured. But the shadow passes away, and again across the wild waves it shines like a signal-star. Occasionally, when a mighty wave strikes it, the central mass of water runs up the tall, shapely column, and leaps quite over the lantern; or it beats against the masonry, as if to topple it from its foundation, and the windows rattle, and the building seems smitten with a sharp shudder. But the wind dies down, and the sea grows calm, leaving the lighthouse firmly planted on its rock. CHAPTER III. HOW JOHN SMEATON ROSE IN LIFE. John Smeaton, one of the most distinguished of British engineers, was born at Austhorpe Lodge, near Leeds, on the 8th of June 1724. [Sidenote: Smeaton's early years.] His father was a respectable attorney, who came of an old Yorkshire family; his mother, a quick-witted, firm, gentle-mannered woman, was not unworthy of such a son. He was taught at home during his earlier years, and a happy home it was. Leeds, in those days, had not attained to its present immense proportions, and Austhorpe was completely in the country, sheltered by the noble park and overhanging woods of Temple-Newsham. There was ample scope for the healthy, active boy, to indulge himself in his favourite pursuits, which had all of them a mechanical character. He was never so happy, says one of his biographers, as when put in possession of any cutting tool, by which he could make his little imitations of houses, pumps, and wind-mills. Even while still in petticoats, he was continually dividing circles and squares; and the only playthings in which he took a genuine pleasure were his working models. If any carpenters or masons chanced to be employed in the neighbourhood of Austhorpe, the boy was sure to find his way amongst them; and there he would spend hour after hour, watching the men at work, and observing how they handled their tools. Holmes tells us that, having one day taken due note of the operations of some mill-wrights, shortly afterwards, to the terror of his family, he was seen fixing a rude likeness of a wind-mill on the top of his father's barn. Another time, when watching the procedure of a party of men engaged in refixing the village pump, he was fortunate enough to obtain from them a piece of bored pipe, which he succeeded in fashioning into a working-pump that actually raised water. [Sidenote: The young mechanic.]