Inscription for a Lighthouse.

The Mumbles' Lighthouse is much frequented by visitors from Swansea during the season. Few jaunts of this character can be productive of more enjoyment than a trip from Swansea to Oystermouth Castle and the Mumbles' rocks. The road, issuing from the western extremity of Swansea, follows the shore of the bay, with the open sea on the left, and on the right a range of wooded hills; of which advantage has been taken for the site of numerous pretty villas. Some gentlemen's seats occupy the intervening level, and their plantations skirt the high-road. Of these Singleton Abbey and Woodlands are the principal. As we near the extremity of the bay the scene is indeed beautiful. Oystermouth Castle, and the pretty village of the same name, lead the visitor onwards till he reaches a broken, breezy headland, the only ascent to which is by a kind of sheep-path, which zig-zags its way to the summit of a narrow promontory terminating in two islands, and on the farther of which is situated the Mumbles' Lighthouse. It is a structure admirably adapted for the purpose to which it is devoted. To every building of this description, devoted to the preservation of human life, a profound interest is attached; and we cannot but observe at a single glance how invaluable these Lights have been, and ever must be, where the danger of shipwreck is so greatly increased by the rugged nature of a coast—here walled in by precipitous cliffs, and there scattered with rocks that appear and disappear according to the tide. The means thus happily adopted along the Welsh coast have been crowned with success; and how comfortable is it to reflect, when calmly seated at our winter hearths, that—while the "winds howl round our steady battlements," and "ships break from their moorings,"—there are friendly lights sparkling around our coasts, to cheer and direct the bewildered mariner in his course, to show him his danger, and to point out "a way to escape."

To understand the importance of lighthouses, we need only remind the reader of the published "Statement," that the number of British vessels alone, which have been annually returned as wrecked, amounts to five hundred and fifty;—namely, "three shipwrecks every two days throughout the year." The average burden of merchant-vessels is about one hundred and ten tons; and if we value old and new together at half the price of building, we have £330,000 for the worth of the whole, which, by deducting the value of sails, masts, and other materials saved from some of those stranded, may be reduced to £300,000. If we add an equal sum for the cost of the cargoes, the whole loss from shipwrecks will amount to £600,000. This statement proceeds on an old estimate from 1793 to 1829; but M'Culloch, in the supplement to his Dictionary, says that the number of ships actually lost, or driven ashore, in 1833, amounted to eight hundred. It is probable, then, that the annual lost by shipwreck is not much short of a million sterling. If one-fifth of this loss could be prevented by additional lighthouses, the saving of money would amount to a million in five years,—to say nothing of the still more important saving in human life. We are anxious—not on the score of economy only, but of humanity—to place these lamentable facts before the eyes of Government, from whose hands the mitigation at least, if not the removal, of such disasters is confidently expected.

In the rock immediately under the lighthouse is a large cavern, called Bob's Cove,—a very characteristic feature, and a chief attraction to pleasure-parties, who resort hither at low water for the sake of the view, which from this isolated point is very striking and variegated:—

Expanding to the eastward, is the beautiful curve of Swansea Bay and the distant mountains; on the westward, the broken coast of Gower; in front, the boundless expanse of ocean. The bracing sea breezes inhaled upon this exposed promontory, its elastic turf, and the magnificent prospect it everywhere commands, never fail to produce a most agreeable and salutary exhilaration, and constitute the finest medical and physical tour in the world.