One of the most remarkable of these buildings is the Bell-Rock lighthouse, which is 'placed upon an isolated rock, called the Inchcape Rock, on the eastern coast of Scotland, about twelve miles south-west from the town of Arbroath, in Forfarshire. It was built under the superintendence of Mr. Stevenson, the engineer; and the lights were first exhibited on the night of the 12th of February, 1811. The lights with which lighthouses are furnished are (for the purpose of causing them to be distinguished from each other) either fixed or revolving; their revolutions causing them to appear and disappear to the eye of the mariner. Those of the Bell-Rock are of the latter description, and move once round in the space of six minutes: to cause them to be more easily distinguished, every other lamp has a piece of red glass placed in front of it, so that the spectator sees alternately a red and a white light: on a clear night they are perfectly visible at the distance of twenty miles. In order to produce a brilliant flame, the finest oil is burnt, and a lamp, called the French lamp, consisting of four argand burners, one within the other, is employed; a highly-polished reflector is also used, to increase its intensity. A discovery has lately been made by Lieut. Drummond, of the Royal Navy, of a method of producing a light of so dazzling a brightness as to cause any object to cast a shadow on a dark-coloured wall, at the distance of ten miles; it is called the Hydro-oxygen Lamp, and the light is produced by means of inflammable gases, on a small ball of lime, forming as it were the wick; and by employing a peculiarlyformed reflector of silver: the experiments which have already been made with this lamp render it very probable, that it will, in time, en tirely supersede the use of oil in lighthouses, although, for common purposes, it is much too powerful. The foundation of the Bell-Rock lighthouse, which is forty-two feet in diameter, is formed of large masses of stone, firmly clamped and dovetailed into each other, as well as into the rock on which it stands; and the building itself is perfectly solid to the height of between thirty and forty feet: the upper part is divided into six distinct rooms, the whole of which, with the exception of the upper room of all, are paved with stone; the lowest contains the fuel and the water-tanks; the second the oil-cisterns; the third is employed as a kitchen; the fourth as a bed-room; the fifth is fitted up as a library; and the sixth, which is entirely formed of iron, contains the lights. Two men constantly reside on the building, and a third is stationed on a high tower erected at Arbroath, and holds communication with those at the lighthouse by means of signals. As the light, in foggy weather, is not visible at any considerable distance, two large bells are hung in the building, and kept constantly ringing at these times. A high screen, or parapet, leaning outwards, is placed round the upper part of the building, to protect the glass which is placed in front of the lights from the fury of the waves. PROTESTANT CHAPEL AND BURIAL-GROUND AT CARACCAS. IT is little more than twenty years since we first had any established residents in Venezuela. From the period of the Spaniards becoming masters of that portion of the New World, its shores were closed to the rest of Europe, particularly to Protestant England; and the mutual rivalries, and religious prejudices, between our mariner-adven turers on the Atlantic Ocean and those of its Spanish Catholic terra | ceived the living Protestant with. firma, continued for many generations to augment into actual antipathy, until time, and almost an entire absence from any relative communication, sunk both parties into a reciprocal oblivion of each other. This was the state of things until the heroic fidelity of the South American Spaniards to their ancient dynasty of kings, when called upon to acknowledge a brother of the emperor of the French for their sovereign, aroused the recollection of Englishmen, and filled them with respect for the conduct of men whose existence they had nearly forgotten. Many brave Britons had gone out, and proffered their aid in the war of liberation; and when that was crowned with an apparently assured independence of the country, then the British merchant, and industrious artisan, followed the British military volunteer to the land of commercial promise. They were received with welcome, but, until within these last few years, the old wall of partition between Catholic and Protestant continued to be so determinately retained, that the Protestant settlers had neither a place for Christian worship, according to the forms of their own church, nor a spot of ground wherein to bury their dead. hospitality, seemed to deny his dead body the common right of human nature, a decent grave. A cellar floor, the pavement of thestable-yard, or at best, the garden's most hidden nook, were the only places which might afford a last bed for the remains of a friend or relative. Alas! perhaps not the last receptacle for such sacred relics! for they must be left there at the caprice of any future tenant of the premises, to dig, up, and cast they knew not where. To remedy this distressing state of things the British Consul rected his serious attention; and when the ameliorating character the Venezuelan government wary ranted the attempt, and he had obtained the sanction of his own government, he lost no time in pr posing his wishes. The result was, that he succeeded in purchasing plot of ground, conveniently situated near the city of Caraccas, with sit express guarantee from the Presi dent and Senate of the Republic, that it should hereafter remain i violably the possession of the Bo tish Protestant residents at Caracca for a cemetery, or burial-place foț their dead. A sum of money advanced by our Government, wards the security of the spot, walls, &c., in aid of the means which the English merchants, whose dust was to mingle with them, had sub scribed. Sir Robert Ker Porter obtained the land in the summer of 1832. I was a beautiful green expanse, da a gentle slope in the valley of the The English consul, Sir Robert Ker Porter, though a civil officer, was the only representative to the British residents there, of their own church, as well as of their state. He baptized their children, per-mountain; a sequestered spot, proformed the marriage ceremony, and mising the sanctity and the rest to buried those who died amongst be sought there. He made no de them. The first two duties might lay in drawing the plan, and laying be respectably solemnized in the the foundations for the walls and hall of the consulate; but the last gates; and he planted young trees, was overwhelmed with a double of the cypress-poplar order, to af weight of affliction to the mourning ford shadowy avenues from the gates survivors; the land which had re-to the little building, erected for the performance of the funeral service, in a climate in which the bared heads of the mourners and their functionary were exposed to a vertical sun at one season, or a plunging rain at another. A little chapel, in the form of a colonnaded portico, with the symbol of the Holy Trinity cut on its stone pediment, stands at the hither end of the ground, whence the sepulchral field slopes gently down in the shape of a parallelogram. The whole is surrounded by a handsome wall, of a secure height and thickness; and the gates by which it is entered are of the Grecian porch architecture, like the chapel, only without columns. The principal gate at the lower extremity of the ground, immediately facing the chapel, is surmounted by a cross; the second gate, buttressed by a noble old tree of the country, opens on one side of the parallelogram. Sir Robert had several of his countrymen to commit to this safer sepulchre, before it became, like our English churchyards, "consecrated ground." That it might be so hallowed, was the wish, but hardly the expectation, of many a pious individual, who, in that stranger land, remembered the dear familiar homes of their childhood, the parish-bell gladsomely summoning them to the Sabbath-duties of morning and evening prayers, or solemnly tolling the passing knell of the decent funeral, moving with reverent pace to the consecrated spot of the body's rest! To have such a sanctuary, even under seclusion in the land of their distant sojourn, every heart yearned; and their indefatigable consul and friend completed the work by, in due time, obtaining this sacred object also, from the Venezuelan government. Dr. W. H. Coleridge, our Protestant Bishop of Barbadoes, was invited from that Island to perform the rite. As soon as his duties in his own wide diocese, the Leeward Islands, would permit his absence, he embarked in H. M.S. Forte, Commodore Pell, on the 27th of January, 1834, and arrived at La Guayra, the port of Caraccas, on the 22nd of February. On the evening of his reaching La Guayra, he proceeded across the mountains (a journey of twenty miles) to the city of Caraccas, and became the immediate guest, with his official attendants, of the Consul. On the 24th, his Lordship received the respect of an especial audience by General Paez, the President of the Republic of Venezuela. Similar reverence, by visits, &c., was paid to him by the other chief authorities; and on the 26th of the month, in the presence of his Excellency the President, and the Ministers of the Republic, with other great officers, civil and miltary, and of Sir Robert Ker Porter, his Majesty's Consul, with Colonel Stopford, and the Commodore and officers of H.M.S. Forte, and of the British residents, male female, young and old, and a large mixed concourse of the inhabitants of the city, the Bishop of Barbadoes (the first bishop our church ever sent to that part of our West Indian dominions,) consecrated our chapel and its burying-ground, on that once Spanish terra firma. When the bishop, with his clerical train, and the chief of the British residents, had passed on from the great gate of the cemetery, repeating the 24th Psalm, they entered the chapel, (the colonnaded front of which is quite open to the air,) and his Lordship seated himself in the episcopal chair prepared for the occasion. The Venezuelan authorities sat on his right side, and the British consul and commodore, &c., on his left. The chaplains then recited the prayers, and read the chapters in the Bible appropriated 3,000 feet above the level of the The little chapel and its ceme to the consecration of the chapel We have seen a little account of the bishop's own writing to a friend, in which he describes the place, and the adjoining scenery. We cannot but enrich our own sketch with an extract: Venezuela. The epoch is remark- Tes Fr Ca E Bo T Epitaphs. The Good and the Bad Bargain. The Temple of Jagganath. An Evening in July. Man's Insignificance. Places of Public Worship. Birds Illustrative of Providence. Daily Prayer of King Charles I. Learning and Religion. Judge Hale on Sunday. A Country Sunday. Life and its End. Kirchner and the Sceptic. Necessity of Religion. Labour. |