Twelfth Night.

The Nass Lights were erected by the late Mr. Nelson, in 1832, under the direction of the Trinity House. The eastern, or upper Light, burns at the height of one hundred and sixty-seven feet, and the western, or lower one, at one hundred and twenty-three feet above high-water mark. They are one thousand feet apart, built of the stone of the country, and stand on Nass Point, near Dunraven Castle, Glamorganshire.

It unfortunately was not merely the dangers of the ocean to which the luckless mariner was in past times exposed upon this iron-bound coast, to them was too frequently added the infamous deceptions of the wreckers, who were accustomed to resort to the artifice of driving to and fro an ass bearing two lanterns, so as to represent a distant vessel in motion, and thus lured many a ship to destruction among the rocks and sands. Numerous are the legends of fearful interest which the older inhabitants relate descriptive of the accidents attendant upon these murderous practices, now happily only matters of history.

The erection of lighthouses, beacons, and other means for the prevention of shipwreck, is every year becoming an object of greater importance to the members of that excellent corporation, the Trinity House. Within the last thirty years, great and permanent advantages have been secured to commerce by the vigilance and activity of that body. Much, however, is still left to call aloud for the exercise of their high privilege, skill, and humanity. The navigation of our coasts is still attended in many parts with imminent danger. Rocks, and shoals, and quicksands, indeed, cannot be obliterated by the hand of man; but the perils they involve, in respect to the shipping, may be greatly diminished by increasing the number of those monitory beacons to which the eye of the mariner is so often turned with intense anxiety. The erection of the two lighthouses which here illustrate the subject, has been attended with the happiest consequences. Many a shipwreck, we will venture to say, has been prevented by a timely regard to these friendly beacons. The Bristol Channel has often been the scene of sad catastrophes in the chronicles of seafaring life; but at present the danger to the foreign and coasting-trade has been greatly obviated by those judicious measures which have emanated from the above society.

The voyage up the Bristol Channel is singularly romantic and beautiful; but the coast is exposed to all the fury of the Atlantic, and the surf against the cliffs is distinctly visible at Swansea. The steamers now keep close along shore, in a channel inside the Nass Sands, which form an extensive and dangerous bank to seaward. The contrast between the tumultuous masses of breakers over these sands, when the wind is fresh, and the calmness of the narrow channel we are traversing in security, is very striking. These sands, and another large shoal, called the Skerweathers, have been fatal to many vessels. A large West Indiaman, with a cargo of rum and other valuable produce, was lost a few years ago on a rock called the Tusca, which disappears at high-water; and in 1831, this coast was fatal to the steamer Frolic, in which all the crew and passengers, amounting to nearly eighty persons, perished. The coast near Porthcaul appears at Swansea to be the eastern extremity of the bay; but the bluff point called the Nass, about eight miles further, is literally so. The coast onwards, past the Nass-point, as observed in the admirable Engraving annexed, is almost perpendicular, so as closely to resemble a lofty wall, in which the limestone rock is disposed in horizontal strata. When the sea runs high in this quarter, the scene, as may be readily conceived, is truly terrific—

Merchant of Venice.