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.