ve a few large irons,
whereby the work had been so fastened into a clink, that it could never
afterwards be disengaged, till it was cut out in the year 1756. The
lighthouse had not long been destroyed, before the Winchelsea, a
Virginiaman, laden with tobacco, for Plymouth, was wrecked on the
Eddystone rocks in the night, and every soul perished.

Smeaton, in his Narrative of the _Construction of the Eddystone
Lighthouse_, says, "Winstanley had distinguished himself in a certain
branch of mechanics, the tendency of which is to excite wonder and
surprise. He had at his house at Littlebury, in Essex, a set of
contrivances, such as the following:--Being taken into one particular room
of his house, and there observing an old slipper carelessly lying in the
middle of the floor, if, as was natural, you gave it a kick with your foot,
up started a ghost before you; if you sat down in a certain chair, a
couple of arms would immediately clasp you in, so as to render it
impossible for you to disengage yourself till your attendant set you at
liberty; and if you sat down in a certain arbour by the side of a canal,
you were forthwith sent out afloat into the middle, from whence it was
impossible for you to escape till the manager returned you to your former
place."

Mr. John Smeaton, who erected the Eddystone Lighthouse, in the years
1757-58 and 59, was born on the 28th, of May, 1724, at Ansthorpe, near
Leeds. The strength of his understanding, and the originality of his
genius, (says his biographer) appeared at an early age: his playthings
were not the playthings of children, but the tools which men employ, and
when he was a mere child he appeared to take greater pleasure in seeing
the operations of workmen, and asking them questions, than in any thing
else. Before he was six years old, he was once discovered at the top of
his father's barn, fixing up what he called a windmill of his own
construction, and at another time, while he was about the same age, he
attended some men fixing a pump, and observing them cut off a piece of a
bored part, he procured it, and actually made a pump, with which he raised
water. When he was under fifteen years of age, he made an engine for
turning, and worked several things in ivory and wood. He made all his own
tools for working in wood and metals, and he constructed a lathe, by which
he cut a perpetual screw in brass, a thing but little known, and which was
the invention of Mr. Henry Hendley of York.