A great event is worthy of very special notice. We should fail in our
duty to our readers if we were to make only passing reference to this
important event in the history of our country.

That 1st of February, 1811, was the birthday of a new era, for the
influence of the Bell Rock Light on the shipping interests of the
kingdom (not merely of Scotland, by any means), was far greater than
people generally suppose.

Here is a _fact_ that may well be weighed with attention; that might
be not inappropriately inscribed in diamond letters over the lintel
of the lighthouse door. Up to the period of the building of the
lighthouse, the known history of the Bell Rock was a black record of
wreck, ruin, and death. Its unknown history, in remote ages, who
shall conceive, much less tell? _Up_ to that period, seamen dreaded
the rock and shunned it--ay, so earnestly as to meet destruction too
often in their anxious efforts to avoid it. _From_ that period the
Bell Rock has been a friendly point, a guiding star--hailed as such
by storm-tossed mariners--marked as such on the charts of all
nations. From that date not a single night for more than half a
century has passed, without its wakeful eye beaming on the waters, or
its fog-bells sounding on the air; and, best of all, _not a single
wreck has occurred on that rock from that period down to the present
day!_

Say not, good reader, that much the same may be said of all
lighthouses. In the first place, the history of many lighthouses is
by no means so happy as that of this one. In the second place, all
lighthouses are not of equal importance. Few stand on an equal