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Winstanley repeated it on a lighthouse which he constructed at his own
expense, on a wild spot near Plymouth. The tower being finished, he shut
himself up in it to have it tried by the tempest. The storm came, and
carried off the lighthouse and Winstanley in it. Such excessive
adornment gave too great a hold to the hurricane, as generals too
brilliantly equipped in battle draw the enemy's fire. Besides whimsical
designs in stone, they were loaded with whimsical designs in iron,
copper, and wood. The ironwork was in relief, the woodwork stood out. On
the sides of the lighthouse there jutted out, clinging to the walls
among the arabesques, engines of every description, useful and useless,
windlasses, tackles, pulleys, counterpoises, ladders, cranes, grapnels.
On the pinnacle around the light delicately-wrought ironwork held great
iron chandeliers, in which were placed pieces of rope steeped in resin;
wicks which burned doggedly, and which no wind extinguished; and from
top to bottom the tower was covered by a complication of sea-standards,
banderoles, banners, flags, pennons, colours which rose from stage to
stage, from story to story, a medley of all hues, all shapes, all
heraldic devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the light chamber,
making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters about the blaze. That
insolent light on the brink of the abyss showed like a defiance, and
inspired shipwrecked men with a spirit of daring. But the Caskets light
was not after this fashion.
It was, at that period, merely an old barbarous lighthouse, such as
Henry I. had built it after the loss of the White Ship--a flaming pile
of wood under an iron trellis, a brazier behind a railing, a head of
hair flaming in the wind.
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