with it. The annual list
of ships wrecked and lives lost on the shores of the kingdom is
appalling enough already, as every observant reader of the newspapers
must know, but if the work of the Trinity House--the labours of the
Elder Brethren--were suspended for a single year--if the lights, fixed
and floating, were extinguished, and the buoys and beacons removed, the
writer could not express, nor could the reader conceive, the awful crash
of ruin, and the terrific cry of anguish that would sweep over the land
from end to end, like the besom of destruction.

We leave to hard-headed politicians to say what, or whether,
improvements of any kind might be made in connection with the Trinity
Corporation. We do not pretend to be competent to judge whether or not
that work might be _better_ done. All that we pretend to is a certain
amount of competency to judge, and right to assert, that it is _well_
done, and one of the easiest ways to assure one's-self of that fact is,
to go visit the lighthouses and light-vessels on the coast, and note
their perfect management; the splendid adaptation of scientific
discoveries to the ends they are designed to serve; the thoroughness,
the cleanliness, the beauty of everything connected with the _materiel_
employed; the massive solidity and apparent indestructibility of the
various structures erected and afloat; the method everywhere observable;
the perfect organisation and the steady respectability of the
light-keepers--observe and note all these things, we say, and it will be
impossible to return from the investigation without a feeling that the
management of this department of our coast service is in pre-eminently
able hands.

Nor is this to be wondered at, when we reflect that the Corporation of
Trinity House is composed chiefly (the acting part of it entirely) of
nautical men--men who have spent their youth and manhood on the sea, and
have had constantly to watch and guard against those very rocks and
shoals, and traverse those channels which it is now their duty to light
and buoy. [See note 1.]

It has been sagely remarked by some philosopher, we believe--at least it
might have been if it has not--that everything must have a beginning.
We agree with the proposition, and therefore conclude that the
Corporation of Trinity House must have had a beginning, but that
beginning would appear to be involved in those celebrated "mists of
antiquity" which unhappily obscure so much that men