Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/273

Rh sacred profession. Circumstances, however, soon altered this destination; for when he had finished his fifteenth year, his mother was married to Mr. Thomas Smith, a widower, originally a tinsmith in Edinburgh, but whose studies were devoted to engineering, and chiefly to the construction and improvement of lighthouses. In this department, he had the merit of substituting oil lamps with parabolic mirrors for the open coal fires that had hitherto lighted our naval beacons an improvement so justly appreciated, that after the Lighthouse Board was established in 1786, Mr. Smith was appointed its engineer.

It is easy to guess how quickly such a relationship must have changed the whole current of Mr. Stevenson's studies. No stranger who conversed with him, no phrenologist who looked at him, could have failed to perceive at once that he was born an engineer, and the new parental superintendence to which he was consigned, was well fitted to develope his latent talents in this department. Accordingly, he made such proficiency, that at the age of nineteen he was intrusted by Mr. Smith with the erection of a lighthouse, which the latter had planned for the island of Little Cumbrae, and been commissioned to con- struct by the trustees of the Clyde Navigation. This task Mr. Stevenson executed with such ability, and showed such talent in his new vocation, that soon after he was adopted by Mr. Smith as his partner in the business. In 1799 he married the eldest daughter of Mr. Smith, whom he succeeded as engineer and superintendent of lighthouses, and continued to hold this office until he resigned it in 1843.

This change of occupation, and the success that crowned it, required a correspondent change of study; and accordingly Mr. Stevenson, throwing aside his Latin, which he had only half mastered, and turning away from Greek, which he had not yet entered, began to devote himself to the exact sciences. Opportunities, indeed, there were comparatively few, on account of the active life which he had commenced at an early period; but such as he possessed he improved to the uttermost. In this way, while superintending the erection of the lighthouse at Cumbrae, he availed himself of the cessation of the work during the winter months, by attending the Andersonian Institution at Glasgow, where he studied the mathematical and mechanical sciences connected with his profession. Here, he had for his preceptor, Dr. Anderson himself, the honoured founder of the institution, of whose valuable instructions Mr. Stevenson ever afterwards retained an affectionate remembrance. He pursued the same course of improvement in his education while employed by Mr. Smith in the erection of lighthouses on the Pentland Skerries in Orkney, so that as soon as the labours of each summer were ended, the winter months found him in close attendance at the classes of the university of Edinburgh. In this way he completed, during the course of several sessions, a curriculum that comprised mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and natural history, to which he added logic, moral philosophy, and agriculture. It was the same perseverance at work which struggled for a foundation upon the living rock amidst the battling of waves and tempests, and having found it, persisted in adding stone to stone, until a stately tower was erected, and a guiding light kindled upon its summit. He thus became not only an accomplished scientific scholar, but also a student of considerable literary attainments, while he was employed the greater part of each year in contending with the stormy seas of the Orkneys, and dwelling upon their bleak islets and solitary shores. His first tour of inspection as superintendent of lighthouses, was made in 1797, for