Time.

	PAGE
POETRY OF TIME	1
WHAT IS TIME?	3
TIME’S BEGUILINGS	5
TIME’S GARLAND	6
TIME’S MUTATIONS	7
SIR H. DAVY ON TIME	8
TIME, PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE	9
MEASUREMENT OF TIME	12
PERIODS OF REST	15
RECKONING DISTANCE BY TIME	16
SUN-DIALS	17
THE HOUR-GLASS	27
CLOCKS AND WATCHES	29
EARLY RISING	41
ART OF EMPLOYING TIME	52
TIME AND ETERNITY	64

Life, and Length of Days.

LIFE A RIVER	65
THE SPRING-TIME OF LIFE	66
THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF LIFE	67
PASSING GENERATIONS	68
AVERAGE DURATION OF LIFE	71
PASTIMES OF CHILDHOOD RECREATIVE TO MAN	72
PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION LATE IN LIFE	73
WHAT IS MEMORY?	75
CONSOLATION IN GROWING OLD	76
LENGTH OF DAYS	79
HISTORIC TRADITIONS THROUGH FEW LINKS	82
LONGEVITY IN FAMILIES	87
FEMALE LONGEVITY	88
LONGEVITY AND DIET	92
LONGEVITY AND LOCALITIES	96
LONGEVITY OF CLASSES	102
GREAT AGES	111
THE HAPPY OLD MAN	114
PREPARATORY TO DEATH	115
DEATH BEFORE ADAM	116
FUTURE EARTHLY EXISTENCE OF THE HUMAN RACE	117

The School of Life.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?	119
TEACHING YOUNG CHILDREN	120
EDUCATION AT HOME	121
TENDERNESS OF YOUTH	122
BUSINESS OF EDUCATION	123
THE CLASSICS	124
LIBERAL EDUCATION	126
DR. ARNOLD’S SCHOOL REFORM	127
SCHOOL INDULGENCE	128
UNSOUND TEACHING	128
SELF-FORMATION	131
PRACTICAL DISCIPLINE	132
CRAMMING	132
MATHEMATICS	133
ARISTOTLE	134
GEOLOGY IN EDUCATION	135
THE BEST EDUCATION	137
ADVICE TO THE STUDENT	138
KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM	139
EDUCATION ALARMISTS	140
YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS	141
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG	141
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE	142
WHAT IS ARGUMENT?	144
HANDWRITING	145
ENGLISH STYLE	147
ART OF WRITING	149

WANT OF A PURSUIT	152
THE ENGLISH CHARACTER	153
WORTH OF ENERGY	154
TEST OF GREATNESS	156
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION	157
OFFICIAL LIFE	161
OFFICIAL QUALIFICATIONS	164
PUBLIC SPEAKING	166
OPPORTUNITY	174
MEN OF BUSINESS	174
CHARACTER THE BEST SECURITY	176
ENGINEERS AND MECHANICIANS	177
SCIENTIFIC FARMING	187
LARGE FORTUNES	188
CIVIC WORTHIES	199
WORKING AUTHORS AND ARTISTS	204
WEAR AND TEAR OF PUBLIC LIFE	217

Home Traits.

LOVE OF HOME	218
FAMILY PORTRAITS	219
HOW TO KEEP FRIENDS	220
SMALL COURTESIES	221
LASTING FRIENDSHIPS	221
TRUE TONE OF POLITE WRITING	223
PRIDE AND MEANNESS	224
HOME THOUGHTS	225

The Spirit of the Age.

PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE	227
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS	229
TIME AND IMPROVEMENT	231
EVIL INFLUENCES	232
WORLDLY MORALITY	233
SPEAKING THE TRUTH	234
RESTLESSNESS AND ENTERPRISE	235
THE PRESENT AND THE PAST	238
CIRCUMSTANCES AND GENIUS	238
OUR UNIMAGINATIVE AGE	239
MARVELS OF THE UNIVERSE	240
PHYSIOGNOMY	242
TRADE AND PHILANTHROPY	243

World-Knowledge.

MISCELLANEA	244
PREDICTIONS OF SUCCESS	247

Conclusion.

EASE OF MIND	250
THE LIFE OF MAN	251
THE GOOD MAN’S LIFE	253
PREDICTIONS OF FLOWERS	255
THE WORLD’S CYCLES	256
DEATH ALL-ELOQUENT	256

The conventional personification of Time, with which every one is familiar, is the figure of Saturn, god of Time, represented as an old man, holding a scythe in his hand, and a serpent with its tail in its mouth, emblematical of the revolutions of the year: sometimes he carries an hour-glass, occasionally winged; to him is attributed the invention of the scythe. He is bald, except a lock on the forehead; hence Swift says: “Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take him (as we say) by the forelock; for when it is once passed, there is no recalling it.”

The scythe occurs in Shirley’s lines, written early in the seventeenth century:

Shakspeare prefers the scythe:

The stealthiness of his flight is also told by Shakspeare:

Mayne thus quaintly describes his flight:

Gascoigne also thus paints the flight:

Shakspeare pictures him as the fell destroyer:

And Spenser brands him as

The present section partakes much of the aphoristic character, which has its recommendatory advantages.—Bacon says: “Aphorisms representing a knowledge broken do invite men to inquire further; whereas methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men as if they were at farthest.” Again: “Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.”

Coleridge is of opinion that, exclusively of the Abstract Sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of Aphorisms; and the greatest and best of men is but an Aphorism.

“Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.

“There is one way of giving freshness and importance to the most commonplace maxims,—that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being.”

Mature and sedate wisdom has been fond of summing up the results of its experience in weighty sentences. Solomon did so; the wise men of India and Greece did so; Bacon did so; Goethe in his old age took delight in doing so.

Lucretius has his philosophical view of Time, which Creech has thus Englished:

Ovid has some illustrations, which Dryden has thus translated:

The comparison to a river is more amply developed by a modern poet:

An old playwright makes him a fisher by the stream:

Horace has some lines, thus paraphrased by Oldham:

Perhaps there is no illustration in our language more impressive than Young’s noble apostrophe, commencing:

How exquisite is this beguiling of time in Paradise Lost.

How beautifully has Burns alluded to these influences, in his “Lines to Mary in Heaven:”

The Hon. W. R. H. Spencer has something akin to this in his “Lines to Lady A. Hamilton:”

Edward Moore, in one of his pleasing Songs, thus points to these charming influences:

The best lessons of life are to be learnt in his school:

How well has Shakspeare expressed this work of the great reconciler:

Elsewhere Shakspeare paints him as the universal balm:

It is notorious to philosophers, that joy and grief can hasten and delay time. Locke is of opinion that a man in great misery may so far lose his measure, as to think a minute an hour; or in joy make an hour a minute. Shakspeare’s “divers paces” of Time is too familiar for quotation here.

Time’s Garland is one of the beauties of Drayton’s “Elysium of the Muses:”

They who so stanchly oppose innovations, should remember Bacon’s words: “Every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator; and if time of course alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?”

How much time has to do with our successes is thus solemnly told by the Preacher: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”—Ecclesiastes ix. 11.

How truthfully has Dr. Johnson said: “So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time, that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty in her bloom, and, after an absence of twenty years, wonder, at our return, to find her faded. We meet those whom we left children, and can scarcely persuade ourselves to treat them as men. The traveller visits in age those countries through which he rambled in his youth, and hopes for merriment in the old place. The man of business, wearied with unsatisfactory prosperity, retires to the town of his nativity, and expects to play away the last years with the companions of his childhood, and recover youth in the fields where he once was young.”

Dr. Armstrong, the friend of Thomson, has left this solemn apostrophe on the Wrecks and Mutations of Time:

We remember a piece of stage sentiment, beginning

It was touchingly sung, but had too much of gloom and despondency for the theatre: possibly it may have reminded some of its hearers of their own delinquency.

With what solemnity has our great Dramatic Bard foreshadowed Time’s waning:

His departure is again sketched in Troilus and Cressida:

Sir Walter Scott thus paints Time’s evanescence:

Cowley has this significant couplet:

Yet, what a treasure is this:

“Time is almost a human word, and change entirely a human idea: in the system of nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures, as at Rome; but even when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, nature asserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, and in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man, providing food, vitality, and beauty upon the wreck of monuments which were once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.”

As this beautiful passage was written by Sir Humphry Davy nearly three-and-thirty years since, the above use of the word progress had nothing to do with the semi-political sense in which it is now commonly employed. Nevertheless, there occur in the writings of our great chemical philosopher occasional views of the advancement of the world in knowledge, and its real authors, with which the progressists of the present day fraternise.

At the above distance, Davy wrote in the following vein: “In the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general, almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in their dynasties; and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate entirely from different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature. Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion of the people and the spirit of the age and nation. It sometimes happens that a gigantic mind possesses supreme power, and rises superior to the age in which he is born: such was Alfred in England, and Peter in Russia. Such instances are, however, very rare; and in general it is neither amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great improvers and benefactors of mankind are to be found.”—Consolations in Travel, pp. 34, 35.

Brilliant as was Davy’s own career, it had its life-struggles: his last days were embittered with sufferings, mental as well as physical; and in these moments he may have written these somewhat querulous remarks.

TIME: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

Harris, in his Hermes, in his disquisition on Time, gives the distinction between the grammatical or conventional phrase, “Present Time,” and the more philosophical and abstract “Now,” or “Instant.” Quoting Nicephorus Blemmides, Harris would define the former as follows: “Present Time is that which adjoins to the Real Now, or Instant, on either side being a limited time made up of Past and Future; and from its vicinity to that Real Now, said to be Now also itself.” Whilst upon the latter term he remarks: “As every Now or Instant always exists in Time, and without being Time is Time’s bound; the Bound of Completion to the Past, and the Bound of Commencement to the Future; and from hence we may conceive its nature or end, which is to be the medium of continuity between the Past and the Future, so as to render Time, through all its parts, one Intire and Perfect Whole.”

Thus, logically, “Time Present” must be regarded as a mathematical point, having no parts or magnitude, being simply the end of the Past, and the beginning of the Future. Thus, perishing in action and eluding the grasp of thought, it is a nonentity, of which, at best, an intangible and shadowy existence can be predicated:

And we may ask of it, with its carpe diem, its manifold attributes, and imputed influences, as the poet Young does of the King of Terrors:

It is, however, in the more conventional sense that the phrase “Present Time” is generally made use of in writing and conversation. So Johnson, in his well-known passage: “Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings,” &c. Here we have “the Present” invested with the dignity of individual existence, and compared with the Past and the Future, as having duration or extension with these; as if we should speak of a series of numbers, ascending on each side of nothing to infinity, as being divisible into negative, zero, and positive.

Among coincident forms of expression, on the part of writers who have spoken of the “Present Time” in its more precise and philosophical sense, is the following by Cowley, in a note to one of his “Pindarique Odes:” “There are two sorts of Eternity; from the Present backwards to Eternity, and from the present forwards, called by the Schoolmen Æternitas à parte ante, and Æternitas à parte post. These two make up the whole circle of Eternity, which Present Time cuts like a Diameter.”

Carlyle, in his Essays (“Signs of the Times”), has this knowledgeful passage: “We admit that the present is an important time; as all present time necessarily is. The poorest day that passes over us is the conflux of two Eternities, and is made up of currents that issue from the remotest Past, and flow onwards into the remotest Future. We were wise, indeed, could we discover truly the signs of our own times; and, by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, then, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us for a little on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity may disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer.”^[1]

Lord Strangford has left these pathetic stanzas:

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Sir Thomas Browne, treating of Errors regarding Numbers, observes: “True it is that God made all things in number, weight, and measure; yet nothing by them, or through the efficacy of either. Indeed, our days, actions, and motions being measured by time (which is but motion measured), whatever is observable in any, falls under the account of some number; which, notwithstanding, cannot be denominated the cause of these events. So do we unjustly assign the power of action even unto time itself; nor do they speak properly who say that time consumeth all things; for time is not effective, nor are bodies destroyed by it, but from the action and passion of their elements in it; whose account it only affordeth, and, measuring out their motion, informs us in the periods and terms of their duration, rather than effecteth or physically produceth the same.”^[2]

Time can only be measured by motion: were all things inanimate or fixed, time could not be measured. A body cannot be in two places at the same instant; and if the motion of any body from one point to another were regular and equal, the divisions and subdivisions of the space thus marked over would mark portions of time.

The sun and the moon have served to divide portions of time in all ages. The rising and setting of the sun, the shortening and lengthening of the shadows of trees, and even the shadow of man himself, have marked the flight of time. The phases of the moon were used to indicate greater portions; and a certain number of full moons supplied us with the means of giving historical dates.

Fifteen geographical miles, east or west, make one minute of time. The earth turning on its axis produces the alternate succession of day and night, and in this revolution marks the smallest division of time by distances on its surface.

If each of the 360 degrees into which the circumference of the earth is divided, be subdivided into twenty-four hours, it will be found that 15 degrees pass under the sun during each hour, which proves that 15 degrees of longitude mark one hour of time: thus, as Berlin is nearly 15 degrees east of London, it is almost one o’clock when it is twelve at London.

Time, like bodies, is divisible nearly ad infinitum. A second (a mere pulsation) is divided into four or five parts, marked by the vibrations of a watch-balance; and each of these divisions is frequently required to be lessened an exact 2880th part of its momentary duration. It is, however, impossible to see this; for Mr. Babbage, speaking of a piece of mechanism which indicated the 300th part of a second, tells us that both himself and friend endeavoured to stop it twenty times successively at the same point, but could not be confident of even the 20th part of a second.

It has been said that many simple operations would astonish us, did we but know enough to be so; and this remark may not be inapplicable to those who, having a watch losing half a minute per day, wish it corrected, though they may not reflect that as half a minute is the 2880th part of 24 hours, each vibration of the balance, which is only the fifth part of a second, must be accelerated the 2880th part of its instantaneous duration; while to make a watch, losing one minute per week, go correctly, each vibration must be accelerated the 1008th part of its duration, or the 50,400th part of a second.^[3]

Among the early methods of measuring Time, we must not omit to notice Alfred’s “Time-Candles,” as they have been called. His reputed biographer, Asser, tells us that Alfred caused six tapers to be made for his daily use: each taper, containing twelve pennyweights of wax, was twelve inches long, and of proportionate breadth. The whole length was divided into twelve parts, or inches, of which three would burn for one hour, so that each taper would be consumed in four hours; and the six tapers, being lighted one after the other, lasted twenty-four hours. But the wind blowing through the windows and doors and chinks of the walls of the chapel, or through the cloth of his tent, in which they were burning, wasted these tapers, and consequently they burnt with no regularity; he therefore designed a lantern made of ox or cow horn, cut into thin plates, in which he enclosed the tapers; and thus protecting them from the wind, the period of their burning became a matter of certainty. But the genuineness of Asser’s work is doubted,—so the story is discredited. Nevertheless, there is nothing very questionable in Alfred’s reputed method; and it is curious to see that an “improvement” was patented so recently as 1859, which consists in graduating the exterior of candles, either by indentation or colouring at intervals, and equal distances apart, according to the size of the candles. The marks are to consist of hours, half-hours, and, if necessary, quarter-hours; the distance to be determined by the kind of candle used.

Bishop Wilkins, in his Mathematical Magic, in the chapter relating to “such engines as did receive a regular and lasting motion from something belonging to their own frame, whether weights or springs, &c.,” quotes Pancirollus, “taken from that experiment in the multiplication of wheels mentioned in Vitruvius, where he speaks of an instrument whereby a man may know how many miles or paces he doth go in any space of time, whether or no he pass by water in a boat or ship, or by land in a chariot or coach. They have been contrived also into little pocket instruments, by which, after a man hath walked a whole day together, he may easily know how many steps he hath taken.” More curious is “the alarum, mentioned by Walchius, which, though it were but two or three inches big, yet would both wake a man and of itself light a candle for him at any set hour of the night. And those great springs, which are of so great force as to turn a mill (as some have contrived), may be easily applied to more various and difficult labours.”

Occasionally, in these old curiosities, we trace anticipations of some of the scientific marvels of the present day. Thus, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1669, visited the Royal Society at Arundel House, he was shown “a clock, whose movements are derived from the vicinity of a loadstone; and it is so adjusted as to discover the distance of countries, at sea, by the longitude.” The analogy between this clock and the electrical clock of the present day is not a little remarkable. The Journal-book of the Society for 1669 contains many allusions to “Hook’s magnetic watch going slower or faster according to the greater or less distance of the loadstone, and so moving regularly in every posture.” On the occasion of the visit of illustrious strangers, this clock and Hook’s magnetic watches were always exhibited as great curiosities.^[4]

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PERIODS OF REST.

The terrestrial day, and consequently the length of the cycle of light and darkness, being what it is, we find various parts of the constitution both of animals and vegetables which have a periodical character in their functions, corresponding to the diurnal succession of external conditions; and we find that the length of the period, as it exists in their constitution, coincides with the length of the natural day.

Man, in all nations and ages, takes his principal rest once in twenty-four hours; and the regularity of this practice seems most suitable to his health, though the duration of the time allotted to repose is extremely different in different cases. So far as we can judge, this period is of a length beneficial to the human frame, independently of the effect of external agents. In the voyages made into high northern latitudes, where the sun did not rise for three months, the crews of the ships were made to adhere, with the utmost punctuality, to the habit of retiring to rest at nine, and rising a quarter before six; and they enjoyed, under circumstances apparently the most trying, a state of salubrity quite remarkable. This shows that, according to the common constitution of such men, the cycle of twenty-fours is very commodious, though not imposed on them by external circumstances.

The succession of exertion and repose in the muscular system, of excited and dormant sensibility in the nervous, appears to be fundamentally connected with the muscular and nervous powers, whatever the nature of these may be. The necessity of these alternations is one of the measures of the intensity of these vital energies; and it would seem that we cannot, without assuming the human powers to be altered, suppose the intervals of tranquillity which they require to be much changed. This view agrees with the opinion of the most eminent physiologists. Thus, Cabanis notices the periodical and isochronous character of the desire of sleep, as well as of other appetites. He states that sleep is more easy and more salutary, in proportion as we go to rest and rise every day at the same hours; and observes that this periodicity seems to have a reference to the motions of the solar system.

Now, how should such a reference be at first established in the constitution of man, animals, and plants, and transmitted from one generation of them to another? If we suppose a wise and benevolent Creator, by whom all the parts of nature were fitted to their uses and to each other, this is what we might expect and understand. On any other supposition, such a fact appears altogether incredible and inconceivable.^[5]

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RECKONING DISTANCE BY TIME.

In Oriental countries, it has been the custom from the earliest ages to reckon distances by time, rather than by any direct reference to a standard of measure, as is commonly reckoned in the present day. In the Scriptures we find distances described by “a day’s journey,” “three days’ journey,” and other similar expressions. A day’s journey is supposed to have been equal to about thirty-three British statute miles, and denoted the distance that could be performed without any extraordinary fatigue by a foot-passenger; “a Sabbath day’s journey” was peculiar to the Jews, being equal to rather less than one statute mile. It may not be in exact accordance with our habits of thought, and usual forms of expression, thus to describe distances by time; yet it seems to possess some advantages. A man knowing nothing of the linear standards of measure employed in foreign countries, would receive no satisfactory information on being told that a particular city, or town, was distant from another a certain number of miles^[6] or leagues,^[7] as the case might happen to be. But if he were told that such city or town was distant from another a certain number of hours or days, there would be something in the account that would commend itself to his understanding. A sea-voyage is oftener described by reference to time than to distance. We frequently hear persons inquire how many weeks or months it will occupy to proceed to distant parts of the world, but they rarely manifest any great anxiety about the number of miles. This mode of computation seems especially applicable to steam navigation: a voyage by a steam-packet, under ordinary circumstances, being performed with such surprising regularity, that it might, with greater propriety, be described by minutes, or hours, or days, than by miles.

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SUN-DIALS.

Sun-dials are little regarded but as curiosities in these days; although the science of constructing Sun-dials, under the name of Gnomonics, was, up to a comparatively recent period, part of a mathematical course. As long as watches were scarce, and clocks not very common, the dial was an actual time-keeper. Of the mathematical works of the seventeenth century which are found on book-stalls, none are so common as those on Dialling.

Each of the old dials usually had its monitory inscription; and although the former have mostly disappeared, the mottoes have been preserved, so that all their good is not lost.

The stately city of Oxford, which Waagen declared it was worth a special journey from Germany to see, has, upon its churches and colleges, and in their lovely gardens, several dials. Christopher Wren, when a boy of fifteen at Wadham College, designed on the ceiling of a room a reflecting dial, embellished with various devices and two figures, Astronomy and Geometry, with accessories, tastefully drawn with a pen, and bearing a Latin inscription; but his more elaborate work is the large and costly dial which he erected at All Souls’ College, of which he was a Fellow.

The Rev. W. Lisle Bowles was a sincere respecter of dials. In the garden of his parsonage at Bremhill he placed a Sun-dial—a small antique twisted column, gray with age, and believed to have been the dial of the abbot of Malmesbury, and counted his hours at the adjoining lodge; for it was taken from the garden of the farmhouse, which had originally been the summer retirement of this mitred lord: it is of monastic character, but a more ornate capital has been added, which bears the date of 1688; it has the following inscription by the venerable Canon:

From beneath a venerable yew, which has seen the persecution of the loyal English clergy, you look into the adjoining churchyard of Bremhill, on an old Sun-dial, once a cross. Bowles tells us: “The cross was found broken at its foot, probably by the country iconoclasts of the day. I have brought the interesting fragment again into light, and placed it conspicuously opposite to an old Scotch fir in the churchyard, which I think it not unlikely was planted by Townson on his restoration. The accumulation of the soil of centuries had covered an ascent of four steps at the bottom of this record of silent hours. These steps have been worn in places, from the act of frequent prostration or kneeling by the forefathers of the hamlet, perhaps before the church existed.” Upon this old dial Bowles wrote one of his most touching poems, of which these are the opening verses:

Any thing that reminds us of the lapse of time should remind us also of the right employment of time in doing whatever business is required to be done.

A similar lesson is solemnly conveyed in the Scripture motto to a Sun-dial: “The night cometh, when no man can work.” Another solemn injunction is conveyed in the motto to a Sun-dial erected by Bishop Copleston in a village near which he resided: “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Ephesians iv. 26).

A more subtle motto is, “Septem sine horis;” signifying that there are in the longest day seven hours (and a trifle over) during which the Sun-dial is useless.

Upon the public buildings and in the pleasure-grounds of Old London the Sun-dial was placed as a silent monitor to those who were sailing on the busy stream of time through its crowded haunts and thoroughfares, or seeking meditation in quiet nooks and plaisances of its river mansions and garden-houses. Upon churches the dial commonly preceded the clock: Wren especially introduced the dial in his churches.

Sovereigns and statesmen may have reflected beside the palace-dials upon the fleetingness of life, and thus have learned to take better note of time. Whitehall was famous for its Sun-dials. In Privy Garden was a dial set up by Edward Gunter, professor of astronomy at Gresham College (and of which he published a description), by command of James I., in 1624. A large stone pedestal bore four dials at the four corners, and “the great horizontal concave” in the centre; besides east, west, north, and south dials at the sides. In the reign of Charles II. this dial was defaced by an intoxicated nobleman of the Court; upon which Marvell wrote:

In the court-yard facing the Banqueting-house was another curious dial, set up in 1669 by order of Charles II. It was invented by one Francis Hall, alias Lyne, a Jesuit, and professor of mathematics at Liège. This dial consisted of five stages rising in a pyramidal form, and bearing several vertical and reclining dials, globes cut into planes, and glass bowls; showing, “besides the houres of all kinds,” “many things also belonging to geography, astrology, and astronomy, by the sun’s shadow made visible to the eye.” Among the pictures were portraits of the king, the two queens, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert. Father Lyne published a description of this dial, which consists of seventy-three parts: it is illustrated with seventeen plates: the details are condensed in No. 400 of the Mirror. About 1710, William Allingham, a mathematician in Canon-row, asked 500l. to repair this dial: it was last seen by Vertue, the artist and antiquary, at Buckingham House.

The bricky towers of St. James’s palace had their Sun-dials; and in the gardens of Kensington palace and Hampton Court palace are to this day superb dials.

Upon a house-front in the Terrace, New Palace Yard, Westminster, is a Sun-dial, having the motto from Virgil, “Discite justitiam, moniti,” which had probably been inscribed upon the old clock-tower of the palace, in reference to its having been built with a fine that had been levied on the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for altering a record.

The Inns of Court, where time runs its golden sand, have retained a few of their Sun-dials. In Lincoln’s Inn, on two of the old gables, are: 1. A southern dial, restored in 1840, which shows the hours by its gnomon, from 6 A.M. to 4 P.M., and is inscribed, “Ex hoc monumento pendet æternitas.” 2. A western dial, restored in 1794 and 1848, from the different situation of its plane, only shows the hours from noon till night: inscription, “Quam redit nescitis horam.” And in Serle’s-court (now New-square), on the west side, was a dial inscribed, “Publica privatis secernite, sacra prophanis.”

Gray’s Inn has lost its Sun-dials: but in the gardens was a dial, opposite Verulam Buildings, not far from Bacon’s summer-house; and the turret of the great Hall had formerly a southern declining dial, with this motto, “Lux diei, lex Dei.”

Furnival’s Inn had its garden and dial, which disappeared when the old Inn buildings were taken down in 1818, and the Inn rebuilt.

Staple Inn had upon its Hall a well-kept dial, above a luxuriant fig-tree.

Clement’s Inn had, in its small garden, a kneeling figure supporting a dial,—one of the leaden garden embellishments common in the last century. In New Inn, adjoining, the Hall has a large vertical Sun-dial, motto: “Time and Tide tarry for no man.”

Lyon’s Inn, which had been an Inn “since 1420, or sooner,” had, in 1828, an old Sun-dial, which had lost its gnomon and most of its figures.

The Temple garden, Inner and Middle, has each a large pillar Sun-dial; the latter very handsome. There are vertical dials in various courts; but the old dial of Inner Temple terrace, with its “Begone about your business,”—in reality the reply of a testy bencher to the painter who teased him for an inscription,—disappeared in the year 1828. There remain three dials with mottoes: Temple-lane, “Pereunt et imputantur;” Essex-court, “Vestigia nulla retrorsum;” Brick-court, “Time and tide tarry for no man;” and in Pump-court and Garden-court are two dials without mottoes. Charles Lamb has this charmingly reflective passage, suggested by the Temple dials:

What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! How could the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep!