Our Light-house Establishment. and we now have nine bell-beacons, on which the rolling sea keeps the bells perpetually resounding. The service of cannon and spar buoys, to mark channels, shoals, rocks, etc., is one of very great extent, and involves the care, repair, painting, and replacing of many thousand buoys. In Narragansett bay, for instance, the beacons and buoys number no less than eighty-eight. The inspectors bestow special care on establishing buoys in their proper places, preparing accurate descriptive lists, directing the annual cleaning, painting, and repairs, replacing those removed by fraud, carelessness, ice, or gales, and in every way insuring their being always in place, and in order. Spar buoys are so much bored by the tereds, and made foul by sea-weed, that they are fast giving place to iron ones, which are more durable and conspicuous. In 1850, a law was passed, systematizing the coloring of buoys, so that everywhere in the United States a navigator with his eyes open can read their meaning at a glance. When you are passing up the coast, or are inward bound, the buoys to be passed on your starboard hand are painted red, and have even numbers; those on your larboard are black, with odd numbers; those which may be passed on either hand have red and black stripes, and channel-way buoys have alternate black and white perpendicular stripes. These rules greatly increase the utility of buoys, and their universal adoption would be a universal advantage. Classic Rome thought it wise to be instructed, even by enemies. Commercial New York ought to esteem it a privilege to learn from friendly Liverpool how to buoy out harbor-channels, and how to conduct a life-boat service. We suppose that no better example of well-organized aids to navigation could be cited than that which has grown up under the auspices of the Liverpool Dock Company, chiefly through the able and judicious labors of its marine surveyor, Lieut. William Lord, R. N. Light-ships, buoys, etc., reveal to the nautical eye all the secrets of the Mersey and its approaches. Certainly no port is so fully entitled to the best possible system of buoyage as New York. The highways of commerce across its circumjacent waters should be plainly indicated, that he who runs may read the finger-posts, though half blind, 80 [June, that this is entirely possible; and what least, to a life-boat organization equal to We effected a much-needed reform. There In one important item, the Board has had been much complaint, that old lights light-ships removed, etc., without due were changed, new lights established, notice being given to navigators. This mishaps-as, for instance, the Galaxy, misplaced taciturnity led to various of New York, was wrecked, with a loss Barnegat light was only published in of over $50,000, because the lighting of an Egg Harbor paper! Now these notices are issued a reasonable time beforehand, are sent to and posted in all ports and offices, and are extensively our custom-houses, are sent to foreign published in leading commercial papers. The light-house lists are kept thoroughly posted up, and have been much improved in other respects. We would, however, be glad to see the style of the French list adopted; and if it be not impracticable, we should rejoice to see published under the auspices of our a complete, universal list of light-houses Board. Light-houses belong to all nations, and why should not all light-house information be thus consolidated for the general good? Might not this lead to maritime conferences, which would give more uniformity of system throughout the world, to the aids, usages, and practices of navigation? There is one economy imposed on our establishment which we think is no longer commendable. A law of 1828 still limits the annual salaries of keepers to an average of $400. This no longer suffices to command the services of men really fitted for so responsible a trust. When we remember that keepers are mostly stationed on lonely ocean out-posts, subjected to inclemencies of weather, and often called upon to expose life in saving the wrecked, an increase of pay, proportionate to the depreciation of money since 1828, seems clearly their due, and we cannot doubt that it would, in the end, prove a true economy to add at least $100 to the annual average. Inadequate compensation drives them to collateral and injurious modes of eking out a subsistence. Fishing, farming, keeping boarders, etc., by consuming time needed in the keeper's proper duties, are among the greatest enemies to a faithful keepership of lights; and we can scarcely vanquish them, or procuro the needed grade of intelligence under our venerable, and hence inadequate, rate of pay. As our lights, unlike a large proportion of foreign ones, have but one keeper, the proper care of lighting apparatus, the police, cleaning, improvement and custody of the buildings and grounds require his full services. It is of little use freely to consume oil, if the lenses, reflectors, and lanternpanes are soiled and smoked; if the lamps are out of adjustment, or badly trimmed; if the glass is frosted; if the revolving clock-work is not kept in order; or if the proper hours of lighting are not observed. The inspectors have a difficult and responsible task in ferreting out and correcting such neglects and abuses; in enforcing the economical but efficient use of supplies; in maintaining accountability, and in encouraging fidelity. They are entitled to the means for these ends, and chief among these is such a rate of pay as will secure the entire time of intelligent keepers. We hope, and we believe, that the atrocity of basing appointments and removals of keepers on political grounds is permanently corrected; and we feel sure that a detected unfaithful keeper would now be summarily and ignominiVOL. VII.-42 ously ejected, without the question of his orthodoxy once being mooted. The man who puts obstructions on a railroad is hardly more criminal than the keeper whose neglect of trust provides for and breeds shipwreck. It would be as impertinent for a keeper to plead politics in such a case, as for an indicted incendiary to urge right voting as an offset for his crime. In conclusion, we will recapitulate the main points of light-house finance. In 1825, $84,036 were expended in light-house building operations, and $83,063 in maintaining 101 lights; in 1830, in building, $43,922, and in maintenance, $151,687 for 161 lights; in 1839, $260,412 in building, and $456,639 in maintaining 242 lights. In 1847, $501,250 were appropriated for building purposes. The amount expended in building light-houses, etc., in the year ending June 30, 1853, was $325,975, and for support and maintenance of lights, $615, 638. The same items, in the year ending June 30, 1854, were respectively $556,098, and $758,354, and, for the year ending June 30, 1855, $843,686, and $1,002,124 for 471 lights. We ought here to remark that the regular charge for maintenance of lights has, since 1852, been estimated for by applying the previous rate pro rata to the old and new lights, and that, from the amounts thus determined, enough has been saved to purchase the great number of new lenses of the three smaller orders since added. The proper expenses of maintenance are actually undergoing a rapid reduction, pro rata, counting all the lights, and the limit is by no means yet reached. With the growth of the establishment, the expenditures have necessarily increased at a rapid rate. The extensive operations of repair now going on, and the numerous new constructions, greatly increase the current aggregates, but are, in fact, mainly of the character of permanent investments. It is, undoubtedly, true economy to make all the light-house structures so durable as to stanch the ceaseless outlays for repairs. This demands large present expenditures. A considerable expenditure is now being incurred for lenses; but when the 511 lights, now authorized, are thus fitted, an annual saving, of $126,562, for oil alone, will be effected. Among the most costly constructions are those on the Pacific coast, which our sudden commercial development in that region had made of primary importance. The question naturally arises, whether our light-house establishment is to grow indefinitely in the cost of maintenance, by a perpetual addition of new lights? Its answer is unmistakably indicated by the nature of the case, and by European experience. For a considerable time, France and England have been adding, relatively, very few new lights, and they have nearly reached the limit of aids which navigation along their coasts can ever need. We are still far off from this result; for, along our immense extent of coast, commerce is rapidly penetrating inlets and harbors, hitherto unfrequented. Nature has obviously shaped us for the greatest commercial nation, and, with this preeminence, we must accept the incidental burdens. Should we no further enlarge our borders, an end to the new lights needed is a clearly apprehensible result. The older portions of our coast have already approached the limit of their needs, in number, though not in quality, of lights. The remainder are still in the course of construction, and many years must pass before our entire seaboard reaches the period of simple maintenance. By virtue of the measures now in progress, various items of the cost of maintenance are undergoing a permanent curtailment at the expense of enlarged current aggregates. Let us have all our lights once supplied with Fresnel lenses, and all our lightship illuminating apparatus properly renovated, and a great permanent reduction in the cost of illumination will follow. Let our towers and keepers' dwellings once be properly and durably built, and the immense outlay for repairs will ever after be curtailed. Let our light-house foundations and grounds once be properly arranged and protected, and we shall not have a new tinker's bill after every storm. Till the entire material of the establishment is, once for all, in durable condition, we must expect maintenance to be a word suggestive of alarming amounts. Good constructions, the best apparatus, well-trained and faithful keepers, a rigid accountability, and the best possible general administration, while they are undeniably due to our immense commerce, are the only certain retrenchers of maintenance expenses, and the only conjoiners of economy and efficiency. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1855, the U. S. revenue from customs was $53,025,794. In that year our imports were $261,468,520, and our exports were $275,156,846. Our total ocean tonnage, registered and licensed, is 5,212,001 tons. In the census of 1850, our domestic manufactures for the year were valued at $1,055,595,899, and our agricultural products at $956,924,640. At least one-half of these immense aggregates may fairly be presumed to have been transported past some of our lights, beacons, and buoys, either in the coasting-trade, on the lakes, or on our lighted rivers. If the cost of a thorough system of aids to navigation should, at any time, seem to us a heavy burden, we need but look to these inconceivably grand movements of import, export, coasting, lake, river, and harbor commerce, all using these aids, fully to realize that even the pecuniary interests of navigation form much too vast a stake to be wisely ventured on any petty economies. An unsafe navigation can never be economy for us, and no amount, supposable in the case, is too much to pay for a policy of insurance on an annual commerce of fifteen hundred millions. As an argument for light-house efficiency, this consideration is overwhelming; but it affords no palliation for extravagance, reckless expenditure, or easy fiscal responsibility. Our commerce, already so immense, appears to be only beginning; its future magnitude, who can conceive? To promote its security we have already erected more than twice as many lights as illuminate the shores of the British Islands, and near one-third as many as all other nations combined. What though we should soon outnumber the aggregate of all foreign shores, this would but be a token of our continued growth. Nearly four-fifths of our national income is now levied on imports across the seas, and, of this income, less than one-thirtieth, even in this period of general renovation and growth, is applied to the construction, support, and maintenance of aids to navigation. In the future, we see nothing to fear, and much to hope from our present enlarged policy. THE WORLD OF NEW YORK. SUMMER at last! And so-just as our city squares begin to look green and warm, and just as the sky begins to smile overhead, and the delicious atmosphere converts our daily business-walk into a pleasant promenade, and the sunlight makes our homes cheery all day, and the moonlight makes the streets romantic all night-off we must go, and leave the empty town to the million or so of people who remain after "everybody has departed." What a thoroughly modern phenomenon it is, this practice of "emptying" the town! But a few years ago, you might have counted upon your fingers the families which habitually "went into the country," every summer, from any of our great cities. Real invalids used to toddle off to the Springs, or down to the sea-shore; adventurous young people made up parties to explore the Hudson, or visit the Falls; but the great multitude, and the most respectable and flourishing citizens of Boston and Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore, kept themselves as cool as they could in their city houses; darkening the windows by day, and wandering about in the moonlight by night, in search of ice-creams. Now all this has been changed. The Baltimoreans follow their orioles northwards, or vanish in the direction of the watering-places which are said to exist in the interior of Maryland and the south of Pennsylvania. Saratoga and Newport, Sharon and Rockaway, grow familiar with the flat sound of the letter a, and with the subdued toilette which marks the perfect Philadelphian. Our own citizens, like the influences of their city, disperse themselves throughout the land; elbow the Bostonians in their own Nahant; outclimb the natives up the New Hampshire hills; criticise the fortifications of Quebec, and ride tournaments, with the chivalry, at the Virginia Springs. What comes of all this wandering, is a question most fit to be asked, but not very easily to be answered. If the object of it all were health-health of mind as well as of body! But is it so? It is a good thing to escape the heat of the city; but then the city heats the spirit as well as the flesh-and it is the fever of the soul which makes the most and the worst victims and it is to be feared, that of the hurrying thousands, whom the rushing, screaming trains, and the swift-gliding steamers, bear into all the recesses of the rural world, and all the nooks of the surfbeaten shore, a goodly number carry the winter's giant with them into the summer's retreat. Mere change of air is wholesome, no doubt, but that complex creature, man, does not live by air alone; he breathes a double atmosphere; and all the pure oxygen the Newport breezes bring, will hardly chase the weariness and weakness from his heart, if the human world about him teem still with the deadly azote of an artificial society. Monotony is the mother of all manner of mischiefs; but you cannot escape from monotony by a mere change of scenes, without a change of pursuits. The growth of the spirit is dependent upon the expansion of the mind's horizon. If the same people--a people of the same sort, the same interests, or analogous interestssurround a man in June, that surrounded him in January, it is of slight importance, comparatively, whether he stands under a gray sky or a blue, in the slush of the city streets, or on the sand of the shining beaches. It is because cobblers, in general, have not gone beyond their lasts, that a cobbler who does go beyond his last seems ridiculous. If all cobblers made a practice of going beyond their lasts, at convenient seasons, they would be better men, brighter talkers, and, probably, not the worse cobblers. And, certainly, if the men and women of the world would avail themselves of the genial invitations of nature, who is "at home" in so many lovely places through the pleasant season now begun; if they would throw themselves somewhat out of their habitual associations, and see new faces, and think new thoughts, and aim at new objects, they would find life considerably more rich than we fancy it will seem to them at the end of another three months of monotonous excitements and familiar adventures. From which text, we shall preach a longer sermon at another day. Those who need the sermon, to be sure, need it most now, at the beginning of the season; but precisely for that reason, we know that they will not attend to it now. It is only the bitterly repent ant who understand and appreciate the value of good advice, and few will be saints till they have learned how very dreary a thing it is to be sinners. So our revelers must run their old race-chase the old vanities-weep the old tears, and then come back to us-contrite, because disappointed, and penitent, because they have been so sadly bored-and listen to wisdom, when it is too late to be wise, and approve of exhortations which they can no longer improve! To the few, already wise, who welcome the summer as the bringer of peace and quiet, and cheerful variety, and healthful stimulus-the few who will find the pleasure they seek, and bring back the sunshine of the sky, and the beauty of a thousand scenes in their hearts and minds, we have no sermons to make. Them we cordially congratulate on the advent of this opening month of the annual villeggiatura. June has come, and in June, you know, the poets tell us "If ever, come perfect days." And what gift of God is more divine, to a wise and genial human soul, than the gift of a perfect day? We habitually undervalue the sky and the air; and few of us think how much of the good and the evil in ourselves must be traced to the atmosphere. In fact, there is not a small number of worthy persons who consider it a lowering of their human dignity, to admit that the weather has any influence on their moods. We knew such a person once: a schoolmistress of eminent gravity, who used to snub her scholars for looking solemn in November, and for smiling in May. Perhaps the school mistress was right, but we hardly think so. We lean to the belief, that Providence meant that the body of man should have some influence upon his soul; and though it may be very "creditable to be jolly under the circumstances" of a London fog, we think it is very discreditable not to be slightly intoxicated with delight, when every breath we breathe is soft and sweet, and every sight we see is gay and glancing. We pity the man who can preserve the dull equilibrium of his ordinary decorum, when heaven sends him one of our prize-days-such days as come to us in this lovely month of June, and shame the very tropics, and make dim our dreams of Italy. For though we cannot claim the highest praises for our climate, we do aver, that nowhere on earth can certain days of our year be surpassed; luminous constant days, "Charmed days, When the genius of God doth flow; Such days, when they come, are to be received as roses are, and music heard at midnight, welcomed like the sail "That brings a friend up from the underworld," with a joy that is religious in its depth, and child-like in its exuberance. Such days may well make us happy, even in the city; and, in fact, it is just possible that one may get more health out of a June day, heartily enjoyed on the Battery, or even in Broadway, than the same twenty-four hours would yield, if they were passed under the supervision of polite enemies, and in the skirmishes of social warfare, amid the loveliest scenes of all the land. In which some consolation may be found by the millions who must remain in New York after "everybody" has departed. Provided, that is, always, that our municipal authorities do not dash this and all other consolations from our lips, by inviting pestilence to come, when fashion goes. Are we to have our "days of June" one season of horror and fear, more dreadful to anticipate, more fatal in its devastations, than these terrible "days of June" which Paris shall never forget? It will not be very easy for our grandchildren (at least, let us hope so) to believe that, in the year of our Lord 1856, the citizens and the government of the first city in America, having been well and frequently advised of the imminent danger of such a plague as had wasted two sister cities, in the year before, and plunged a mighty commonwealth into mourning, took no steps to avert the impending catastrophe, but calmly succumbing to the majesty of dirt and disorder, awaited the stroke of fate with a more than Constantinopolitan composure. Is it not a crying scandal, that a people who profess to govern themselves, should not take such common precautions to protect their city from pestilence, as an imbecile old bachelor would take to save him |