such a person - as the tale is being told of him. In all

else, he appears as a man ardent, passionate, practical,
designed for affairs and prospering in them far beyond the

average. He founded a solid business in lamps and oils, and
was the sole proprietor of a concern called the Greenside

Company's Works - `a multifarious concern it was,' writes my
cousin, Professor Swan, `of tinsmiths, coppersmiths, brass-

founders, blacksmiths, and japanners.' He was also, it seems,
a shipowner and underwriter. He built himself `a land' - Nos.

1 and 2 Baxter's Place, then no such unfashionable
neighbourhood - and died, leaving his only son in easy

circumstances, and giving to his three surviving daughters
portions of five thousand pounds and upwards. There is no

standard of success in life; but in one of its meanings, this
is to succeed.

In what we know of his opinions, he makes a figure highly
characteristic of the time. A high Tory and patriot, a

captain - so I find it in my notes - of Edinburgh Spearmen,
and on duty in the Castle during the Muir and Palmer troubles,

he bequeathed to his descendants a bloodless sword and a
somewhat violenttradition, both long preserved. The judge

who sat on Muir and Palmer, the famous Braxfield, let fall
from the bench the OBITER DICTUM - `I never liked the French

all my days, but now I hate them.' If Thomas Smith, the
Edinburgh Spearman, were in court, he must have been tempted

to applaud. The people of that land were his abhorrence; he
loathed Buonaparte like Antichrist. Towards the end he fell

into a kind of dotage; his family must entertain him with
games of tin soldiers, which he took a childish pleasure to

array and overset; but those who played with him must be upon
their guard, for if his side, which was always that of the

English against the French, should chance to be defeated,
there would be trouble in Baxter's Place. For these opinions

he may almost be said to have suffered. Baptised and brought
up in the Church of Scotland, he had, upon some conscientious

scruple, joined the communion of the Baptists. Like other
Nonconformists, these were inclined to the Liberal side in

politics, and, at least in the beginning, regarded Buonaparte
as a deliverer. From the time of his joining the Spearmen,

Thomas Smith became in consequence a bugbear to his brethren
in the faith. `They that take the sword shall perish with

the sword,' they told him; they gave him `no rest'; `his
position became intolerable'; it was plain he must choose

between his political and his religious tenets; and in the
last years of his life, about 1812, he returned to the Church

of his fathers.
August 1786 was the date of his chief advancement, when,

having designed a system of oil lights to take the place of
the primitive coal fires before in use, he was dubbed engineer

to the newly-formed Board of Northern Lighthouses. Not only
were his fortunes bettered by the appointment, but he was

introduced to a new and wider field for the exercise of his
abilities, and a new way of life highly agreeable to his

active constitution. He seems to have rejoiced in the long
journeys, and to have combined them with the practice of field

sports. `A tall, stout man coming ashore with his gun over
his arm' - so he was described to my father - the only

description that has come down to me by a light-keeper old in
the service. Nor did this change come alone. On the 9th July

of the same year, Thomas Smith had been left for the second
time a widower. As he was still but thirty-three years old,

prospering in his affairs, newly advanced in the world, and
encumbered at the time with a family of children, five in

number, it was natural that he should entertain the notion of
another wife. Expeditious in business, he was no less so in

his choice; and it was not later than June 1787 - for my
grandfather is described as still in his fifteenth year - that

he married the widow of Alan Stevenson.
The perilous experiment of bringing together two families

for once succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean
and Janet, fervent in piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were

well qualified both to appreciate and to attract the
stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to have

found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is,
perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the

tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were
under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have stamped a

strong impression on the boy of fifteen. But the cleavage of
the family was too marked, the identity of character and

interest produced between the two men on the one hand, and the
three women on the other, was too complete to have been the

result of influence alone. Particular bonds of union must
have pre-existed on each side. And there is no doubt that the

man and the boy met with common ambitions, and a common bent,
to the practice of that which had not so long before acquired

the name of civil engineering.
For the profession which is now so thronged, famous, and

influential, was then a thing of yesterday. My grandfather
had an anecdote of Smeaton, probably learned from John Clerk

of Eldin, their common friend. Smeaton was asked by the Duke
of Argyll to visit the West Highland coast for a professional

purpose. He refused, appalled, it seems, by the rough
travelling. `You can recommend some other fit person?' asked

the Duke. `No,' said Smeaton, `I'm sorry I can't.' `What!'
cried the Duke, `a profession with only one man in it! Pray,

who taught you?' `Why,' said Smeaton, `I believe I may say I
was self-taught, an't please your grace.' Smeaton, at the

date of Thomas Smith's third marriage, was yet living; and as
the one had grown to the new profession from his place at the

instrument-maker's, the other was beginning to enter it by the
way of his trade. The engineer of to-day is confronted with a

library of acquired results; tables and formulae to the value
of folios full have been calculated and recorded; and the

student finds everywhere in front of him the footprints of the
pioneers. In the eighteenth century the field was largely

unexplored; the engineer must read with his own eyes the face
of nature; he arose a volunteer, from the workshop or the

mill, to undertake works which were at once inventions and
adventures. It was not a science then - it was a living art;

and it visibly grew under the eyes and between the hands of
its practitioners.

The charm of such an occupation was strongly felt by
stepfather and stepson. It chanced that Thomas Smith was a

reformer; the superiority of his proposed lamp and reflectors
over open fires of coal secured his appointment; and no sooner

had he set his hand to the task than the interest of that
employment mastered him. The vacant stage on which he was to

act, and where all had yet to be created - the greatness of
the difficulties, the smallness of the means intrusted him -

would rouse a man of his disposition like a call to battle.
The lad introduced by marriage under his roof was of a

character to sympathise; the public usefulness of the service
would appeal to his judgment, the perpetual need for fresh

expedients stimulate his ingenuity. And there was another
attraction which, in the younger man at least, appealed to,

and perhaps first aroused, a profound and enduringsentiment
of romance: I mean the attraction of the life. The seas into

which his labours carried the new engineer were still scarce
charted, the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far

beyond the convenience of any road; the isles in which he must
sojourn were still partlysavage. He must toss much in boats;

he must often adventure on horseback by the dubious bridle-
track through unfrequented wildernesses; he must sometimes

plant his lighthouse in the very camp of wreckers; and he was
continually enforced to the vicissitudes of outdoor life. The