Newhaven.] ?OUR LADY?S PORT OF GRACE.? 295
1815 it was changed to a revolving light, as at
present. Its elevation is 235 feet above the waterline.
On the 1st October, 1835, thereflecting light was
discontinued, and a dioptric light was put in its
place, It consists of seven annular lenses, which
circulate round a great lamp having three concentric
wicks and produce brilliant flashes once in
every minute, and of five rows of curved mirrors,
which, being fixed, serve to prolong the duration
of the flashes from the lenses. The appearance of
the new light does not, therefore, differ materially
from that of the old one-save that the flashes
which recur at the same periods, are considerably
more brilliant, and of shorter duration. In clear
weather the light is not totally eclipsed between
the flashes at a distance of four or five miles, and
it is visible at the distance of eighteen nautical
miles. . The expense of this lighthouse in 1839 was
The old light of 1803~ with all its apparatus, was
purchased by the Government of Newfoundland,
and is still in use on Cape Spear, near the Narrows
of St. John.
A467 14s. sd.
C H A P T E R XXV.
NEWHAVEN.
Cobbett on Edinburgh-Jam- IV.5 Dockyard -Hi Gift or Newhaven to Edinburgh-The Gnat Mick&Embarkation of Mary of G b
Works at Newhaven in the Sixteenth Century-The L i V k u n t Newhaven-The Feud with Preston-The Sea Fencibles-
Chain Pier-Dr. Fairbairn-The Fishwives-Superstitions.
IT may not be uninteresting to quote, the ideas
entertained of Edinburgh by an English visitor in
the first years of the nineteenth century, as he was
-in his time-considered a typical John Bull,
I now come back to this delightful and beautiful
city,? wrote William Cobbett in his RegWr.
I thought Bristol, taking in its heights and Clifton
with its rocks and river, was the finest city in the
world; but it is nothing to Edinburgh, with its
castle, its hills, its pretty little seaport detached
from it, its vale of rich land lying all around, its
lofty hills in the background, its views across the
Firth. I think little of its streets and its rows of
fine houses, though all built of stone, and though
everything in London and Bath is begary to these ;
I thing nothing of Holyrood House ; but I think a
great deal of the fine and well-ordered streets of
shops ; of the regularity which you perceive everywhere
in the management of business ; and I think
still more of the absence of that foppishness and
that affectation of carelessness and insolent assumption
of superiority in almost all the young men you
meet in the fashionable parts of the great towns in
England. I was not disappointed, for I expected
to find Edinburgh the finest city in the kingdom. . . . The people, however, still exceed the
place; here all is civility; you do not meet with
rudeness, or with the want of disposition to oblige,
even in the persons of the lowest state of life. A
fiend took me round the environs of the city ; he
had a turnpike ticket, received at the first gate,
which cleared five or six gates. It was sufficient
for him to tell the gate-keepers that he had it.
When I saw that, I said to myself, ?Nota bene:
gate keepers take people?s wordin Scotland,? a thing
I have not seen before since I left Long Island.?
Now its seaport is no longer (? detached,? but has
become an integral part of Edinburgh, and all the
vale of rich land? between it and the Forth to
Granton, Trinity, and Newhaven, is covered by a
network of fine roads and avenues, bordered by
handsome villas.
Newhaven now conjoined to Leith, and long
deemed only a considerable fishing village, lies two
miles north of Princes Street, and yet consists
chiefly of the ancient village \;hich is situated,
quoad civilia, in the parish of North Leith, and
whose inhabitants are still noted as a distinct community,
rarely intermarrying with any other class.
The male inhabitants are almost entirely fishermen,
and the women are employed in selling the produce
of their husbands? industry in the streets of the city
and suburbs. Intermarriage seems to produce
among them a peculiar cast of countenance and
physical constitution. The women, inured to outdoor
daily labour in all weathers, are robust, active,
and remarkable for their florid complexions, healthy
figures, and regular features, as for the singularity of
their costume.
In the fifteenth century this village was designated
? Our Lady?s Port of Grace,? from a chapel dedicated
to the Virgin Mary and St. James, some
portions of which still exist in the ancient or
unused burial-ground of the centre of the village.
The nearly entire west gable, with a square window
in it, can still be seen in the Vennel, a narrow
