392
de Monsieur le Chevalier Newton sur l'Ancienne
Chronologie des Grecs, contenant des Reponses a
toutes les Objections qui y ont été faites jusqu'à
Present." In the same year, while settled at Tubin-
gen, in Germany, he produced his Treatise on Ger-
man Coins, in the German language. It was fol-
lowed in 1761 by A Dissertation on the Doctrine and
Principles of Money, as applied to the German Coin;
and in the same year he so far made his peace with
the British government as to obtain a cornetcy in
the Royal or 1st regiment of dragoons. At the
peace of Paris, in 1763, he was tacitly permitted to
return home and resume possession of his estates.
It was in retirement at Coltness that he probably
put the last hand to his Inquiry into the Principles
of Political Economy, which was published in 1767,
in two volumes quarto. Messrs. Miller and Cadell
gave £5OO for the copyright of this work, the merits
of which were at the time a subject of considerable
dispute. It has at least the merit of having been
the first considerable work on this subject published
in Britain, being about nine years antecedent to the
work of Dr. Smith. In 1769 Sir James published,
under the assumed name of Robert Frame, Conside-
rations on the Interests of the County of Lanark,
By the interest of his friends he now obtained a
full pardon, which passed the great seal in 1771;
and in the year following he printed the Principles
of Money applied to the Present State of the Coin of
Bengal. He also wrote A Plan for Introducing an
Uniformity of Weights and Measures, which was
published after his death. He likewise published,
Observations on Seattle's Essay on Truth; Critical
Remarks on the Atheistical Falsehoods of Mirabaud's
System of Nature; and A Dissertation concerning the
Motive of Obedience to the Law of God. It is sup-
posed that the ardour and assiduity with which he
pursued his studies proved detrimental to his health.
An inflammation, commencing with a toe-nail too
nearly cut, put an end to his valuable life on the
26th of November, 1780. His remains were in-
terred in the family vault at Cambusnethan Church,
and a monument has been erected to his memory in
Westminster Abbey.
Sir James Steuart was a man of extensive and
varied powers of mind; cheerful and animated in
conversation; amiable in all the domestic relations
of life; and, unlike several other eminent men of that
age, was able to prosecute philosophical inquiries
without abandoning the faith of a Christian. His
works were published, with a memoir by his son, in
1806, occupying six volumes.
STEVENSON, ALAN, M. A., F. R. S., &c. This
amiable and talented civil engineer was the eldest
son of Robert Stevenson, whose renown is imperish-
ably connected with the Bell Rock lighthouse. Alan
was born at Edinburgh in 1807, and was educated first
at the high-school, and afterwards at the university,
where he distinguished himself as a youth of excel-
lent classical attainments. It was in the sciences,
however, connected with his future profession that
his proficiency was most remarkable as well as of
highest importance, and as a student of the class of
Professor Leslie he won the Fellowes prize for excel-
lency in natural philosophy. At college he also took
the degree of Master of Arts. After having finished
his curriculum at the university of Edinburgh, he
went to England, continued his studies there under
the direction of a clergyman, and received the degree
of Bachelor of Laws from the university of Glasgow.
In prosecuting his education, the original wish of
Alan Stevenson was to study for the church; but
living as he had done from childhood among the
maps, plans, and models of his father's profession,
and evincing an aptitude for their study, he was at
last induced to become a civil engineer. He followed
the paternal footsteps, distinguished himself by re-
markable ability in his profession, and in 1842 suc-
ceeded his father as engineer to the Commissioners
of Northern Lights. And in this responsible situa-
tion the high talents of his predecessor were nobly
replaced by one who inherited his name, and had
been reared amidst his instructions. The improve-
ments introduced by Alan Stevenson in the dioptric
system of illuminating, and the erection of numerous
lighthouses on our coasts, will long perpetuate his
professional skill, a detail of which, however, would
be too extensive for our limits. We can only find
space for his Skerryvore lighthouse, the most diffi-
cult and stupendous of all his enterprises as an
engineer.
The Skerryvore is a huge rock, the largest of a
broken reef nearly seven miles in extent, lying in an
irregular semicircular sea inclosed by the southern
extremity of the Hebrides, the rugged shores of
Argyllshire, and the northern coast of Ireland on
one side, but open on the other to the Atlantic. It
had long been a terror to the mariner, and with good
reason, for from 1790 to 1844 thirty-one vessels,
some of them of large tonnage, were enumerated
among the wrecks of the Skerryvore. On this ac-
count, after the Bell Rock edifice was completed,
the Commissioners of Northern Lights were desirous
of having a lighthouse on the Skerryvore; but from
the difficulty of its access, the almost perpetual surf
with which it is surrounded, and the smallness and
ruggedness of the surface on which the pharos could
be erected, these obstacles were considered too dan-
gerous and trying to surmount. The rock was visited
by Sir Walter Scott when he accompanied the com-
missioners in 1814; and while describing its horrors,
he thus speaks of it in his diary:—"It will be a
most desolate position for a lighthouse—the Bell
Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest
land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles'
distance. So much for the Skerry Vhor." In con-
sequence of these obstacles the commissioners de-
ferred the enterprise until 1838, when, after having
caused a survey to be taken of the spot, Alan Stev-
enson was commissioned to begin the work in good
earnest. The plan of the tower which he devised
to resist the incessant and terrible war of the ele-
ments to which it was exposed, the difficulty of
securing a foundation and erecting the superstructure,
the perils of encampment upon such a dismal rock,
and the privations encountered in a region where
sustenance was always scanty and often precarious—
these composed an amount of trial that required the
most devoted courage to encounter and overcome.
As for the scientific difficulties in the erection of the
building, and the skilful manner in which they were
met and surmounted, these can only be understood
from Mr. Stevenson's admirable Account of the
Skerryvore Lighthouse. Although he had the Eddy-
stone and Bell Rock lighthouses for his patterns,
yet there were difficulties both in the site and con-
struction of the Skerryvore pharos from which the
former two had been exempt. Step by step the
building struggled its way upward in spite of the
opposition of the elements, and the following descrip-
tion of it when completed is best given in his own
words:—"The ascent to the outside door is by a
ladder or trap of gun-metal 26 feet high. The first
apartment on the level of the entrance-door is chiefly
appropriated to the reception of iron water-tanks
capable of holding a supply of 1251 gallons. The
next story is set apart for coals, which are stowed in