Chapter II: Part 2

We should also notice the pocket ring-dial, such as that which gave occasion to the Fool in the Forest of Arden to “moral on the time:”

And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says, very wisely, “It is ten o’clock.”

This is a ring of brass, much like a miniature dog-collar, and has, moving in a groove in its circumference, a narrower ring with a boss, pierced by a small hole to admit a ray of light. The latter ring is made movable, to allow for the varying declination of the sun in the several months of the year, and the initials of these are marked in the ascending and descending scale on the larger ring, which bears also the motto:

Set me right, and use me well,
And I y^e time to you will tell.

The hours are lined and numbered on the opposite concavity. When the boss of the sliding ring is set, and the ring is suspended by the ring directly towards the sun, a ray of light passing through the hole in the boss impinges on the concave surface, and the hour is told with fair accuracy. Mr. Thomas Q. Couch, of Bodmin, thus describes this Dial in _Notes and Queries_, 3d series, No. 36. Mr. Charles Knight, in his _Pictorial Shakspeare_, has engraved a dial of this kind, as an illustration of _As you like it_.

Mr. Redmond, of Liverpool, describes the old pocket ring-dial as common in the county of Wexford some twenty-five years ago: there was hardly a farm-house where one could not be had. The same Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, 3d series, No. 39, describes a door-sill marked with the hour for every day in the year: the sill had a full southern aspect, so that when the sun shone, the time could be read as correctly as by any watch.

Another Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 38, has an ingenious pocket-dial, sold by one T. Clarke: it is merely a card, with a small plummet hanging by a thread, and a gnomon, which lies flat on the card, but, when lifted up, casts the shadow to indicate the hour of the day, and also the hours of sunrise and sunset.

In the United Service Museum, Whitehall, is a Sun-dial, with a burning-glass arranged to fire a small gun at noon; also a large Universal Dial, with a circle showing minutes; and another large Universal Dial, with horizontal plate and spirit-level.

Suppose we collect a few of the monitory inscriptions on dials in various places. Hazlitt, in a graceful paper “On a Sun-dial,” tells us that

Horas non numero nisi serenas

is the motto of a Sun-dial near Venice; and the same line is painted in huge letters over the Sun-dial in front of an old farmhouse near Farnworth, in Lancashire.

At Hebden Bridge, in Yorkshire, is this quaint motto:

Quod petis, umbra est.

Canon Bowles, in his love of the solemn subject, prescribed the following, with paraphrastic translations:

_Morning Sun._—Tempus volat.
Oh! early passenger, look up—be wise,
And think how, night and day, _time onward flies_.

_Noon._—Dum tempus habemus, operemur bonum.
Life steals away—this hour, oh! man, is lent thee.
Patient to work the work of Him who sent thee.

_Setting Sun._—Redibo, tu nunquam.
Haste, traveller, the sun is sinking now:
He shall return again, but never thou.

Over the Sun-dial on an old house in Rye:

Tempus edax rerum.[10]

Underneath it:

That solar shadow,
As it measures life, it life resembles too.

In Brading churchyard, Isle of Wight, on a Sun-dial fixed to what appears originally to have been part of a churchyard cross, is the motto:

Hora pars vitæ.

Near the porch of Milton church, Berks, is:

Our Life’s a flying Shadow; God’s the Pole,
Death, the Horizon, where our sun is set;
The Index, pointing at him, is our Soul,
Which will, through Christ, a Resurrection get.

Butler has this couplet:

True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shin’d upon.
_Hudibras_, part iii. canto 2.

Upon this Dr. Nash notes: “As the dial is invariable, and always open to the sun whenever its rays can show the time of day, though the weather is often cloudy, and obscures its lustre: so true loyalty is always ready to serve its king and country, though it often suffers great afflictions and distresses.”

There cannot be a more faithful indicator, according to Barton Booth’s song:

True as the needle to the pole,
Or as the dial to the sun.

After all, the _sun_-dial is but an occasional timekeeper; a defect which the pious Bishop Hall ingeniously illustrates in the following beautiful Meditation “On the Sight of a Dial:” “If the sun did not shine upon this dial, nobody would look at it: in a cloudy day it stands like an useless post, unheeded, unregarded; but, when once those beams break forth, every passenger runs to it, and gazes on it.

“O God, while thou hidest thy countenance from me, methinks all thy creatures pass by me with a willing neglect. Indeed, what am I without thee? And if thou have drawn in me some lines and notes of able endowments; yet, if I be not actuated by thy grace, all is, in respect of use, no better than nothing; but when thou renewest the light of thy loving countenance upon me, I find a sensible and happy change of condition: methinks all things look upon me with such cheer and observance, as if they meant to make good that word of thine, _Those that honour me, I will honour:_ now, every line and figure, which it hath pleased thee to work in me, serve for useful and profitable direction. O Lord, all the glory is thine. Give thou me light: I will give others information: both of us shall give thee praise.”

The Pyramids of Egypt, the most ancient and the most colossal structures on the earth,—the purpose and appropriation of which has been much controverted by antiquaries and men of science,—have been considered by some to have served as Sun-dials. Sir Gardner Wilkinson does not pretend to explain the real object for which these stupendous monuments were constructed, but feels persuaded that they have served for tombs, and have also been intended for astronomical purposes. “The form of the exterior might lead to many useful calculations. They stand exactly due north and south; and while the direction of the faces to the east and west might serve to fix the return of a certain period of the year, the shadow cast by the sun, or the time of its coinciding with their slope, might be observed for a similar purpose.”

There is an interesting association of the Great Pyramid with the ambitious dream of one of the world’s celebrities, which may be noticed here. When Napoleon I. was in Egypt, in 1799, he rode on a camel to the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, that relic of mystic grandeur. Karl Girardet has painted this impressive visit; and the picture has been engraved by Gautier, and inscribed, “Forty Centuries look down upon him.”

Charles Mackay has written a graceful poem as a pendent to this print; in which the poet makes the young Napoleon thus invoke the colossal monuments:

Ye haughty Pyramids!
Thou Sphinx, whose eyeless lids
On my presumptuous youth seem bent in scorn!
What though thou’st stood
Coeval with the flood,
Of all earth’s monuments the earliest born,
And I so mean and small,
With armies at my call,
Am recent in thy sight as grass of yestermorn!

Yet in this soul of mine
Is strength as great as thine,
O dull-eyed Sphinx that wouldst despise me now;
Is grandeur like thine own,
O melancholy stone,
With forty centuries furrow’d on thy brow;
Deep in my heart I feel
What time shall yet reveal,
That I shall tower o’er men, as o’er these deserts thou.

The dreamer of empire proceeds, bespeaking:

Nations yet to be,
Surging from Time’s deep sea,
Shall teach their babes the name of great Napoleon.

But hear the reply of the decaying oracle:

Over the mighty chief
There came a shadow of grief.
The lips gigantic seemed to move and say,
“Know’st thou his name that bid
Arise yon Pyramid?
Know’st thou who placed me where I stand to-day?
Thy deeds are but as sand
Strewn on the heedless land:
Think, little mortal, think, and pass upon thy way!

Pass, little mortal, pass!
Grow like the vernal grass—
The autumn sickle shall destroy thy prime.
But nations shout the word
Which ne’er before they heard,
The name of glory, fearful yet sublime.
The Pharaohs are forgot,
Their works confess them not:
Pass, hero! pass,—poor straw upon the gulf of Time!”

It will be remembered how Napoleon’s disastrous Egyptian campaign ended; and how he secretly embarked for France, and read during his passage both the Bible and the Koran with great assiduity.

Among the interesting memorials of Mary Queen of Scots at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, there remains the Sun-dial placed in the centre of the palace-garden, and usually denominated “Queen Mary’s Dial.”

It is the apex of a richly-ornamented pedestal, which rests upon a
hexagonal base, consisting of three steps. The form of the
‘horologe’ is multangular; for though its principal sections are
pentagonal, yet from their terminating in pyramidal points, and
being diametrically opposed to each other, again connected by
triangular interspaces, it presents no fewer than twenty sides, on
which are placed twenty-two dials, inserted into circular,
semicircular, and triangular cavities. Between the dials are the
royal arms of Scotland, with the initials M. R., St. Andrew, St.
George, _fleurs-de-lis_, and other emblems. This memorial carries us
back nearly three centuries, when Holyrood was a palace

Where “Mary of Scotland” kept her court.

---------------------
Footnote 8:

The _Town and Country Magazine_, edited by Albert Smith.

Footnote 9:

N. T. Heineken; _Notes and Queries_, 3d series.

Footnote 10:

We remember this motto for many years beneath a large figure of Time,
executed in Coade and Seeley’s composition, and placed at the corner
of the lane leading from Westminster Bridge Road to Pedlar’s Acre.

----------------------------

THE HOUR-GLASS.

The use of the Hour-glass can be traced to ancient Greece. In Christie’s Greek Vases, one is engraved from a scarabæus of sardonyx, in the Towneley collection: it is exactly like the modern hour-glass. The first mention of it occurs in a Greek tragedian named Bato. On a bas-relief of the Mattei Palace, of the marriage of Thetis and Peleus, Morpheus holds an hour-glass; and from Athenæus it appears that persons, when going out, carried it about with them, as we do a watch. In a woodcut in Hawkins’s _History of Music_, the frame is more solid, and the glass probably slipped in and out. There is another cut of one in Boissard, held by Death, precisely of the modern form.

The hour or sand-glass is liable to the objection, that it requires a horary attendant, as is intimated in the glee:

Five times by the taper’s light
The hour-glass we have turned to-night.

But the Hour-glass is a better measurer of time than is generally imagined. The flow of the sand from one bulb to another is perfectly equable, whatever may be the quantity of sand above the aperture. The stream flows no faster when the upper bulb is almost full than when it is almost empty; the lower heap not being influenced by the pressure of the heap above.[11] Bloomfield, in one of his rural tales, “The Widow to her Hour-glass,” sings:

I’ve often watched thy streaming sand,
And seen the growing mountain rise,
And often found life’s hope to stand
On props as weak in wisdom’s eyes:
Its conic crown
Still sliding down,
Again heaped up, then down again:
The sand above more hollow grew,
Like days and years still filtering through,
And mingling joy and pain.

Ford, contemporary with Massinger, has this impressive picture of the primitive time-keeper:

Minutes are number’d by the fall of sands,
As, by an hour-glass, the span of time
Doth waste us to our graves; and we look on it.
An age of pleasures, revell’d out, comes home
At last, and ends in sorrow: but the life,
Weary of riot, numbers every sand,
Wailing in sighs, until the last drop down;
So to conclude calamity in rest: numbering wasted life.

How cleverly the old dramatist, Shirley, illustrates this philosopher in glass:

Let princes gather
My dust into a glass, and learn to spend
Their hour of state, that’s all they have; for when
That’s out, Time never turns the glass again.

The Hour-glass has almost entirely given place to the more useful, because to a greater extent self-acting, instrument; and it is now seldom seen except upon the table of the lecturer or private teacher, in the study of the philosopher, in the cottage of the peasant, or in the hand of the old emblematic figure of Time.[12] We still sometimes see it in the workshop of the cork-cutter. The half-minute glass is still employed on board ship; and the two and a half or three minute glass for boiling an egg with exactness.

Preaching by the Hour-glass was formerly common; and public speakers
are _timed_, in the present day, by the same means. In the
church-wardens’ books of St. Helen’s, Abingdon, date 1599, is a
charge of fourpence for an hour-glass for the pulpit; in 1564, we
find in the books of St. Katherine’s, Christ Church, Aldgate, “paid
for an hour-glass that hangeth by the pulpit when the preacher doth
make a sermon, that he may know how the hour passeth away—one
shilling;” and in the books of St. Mary’s, Lambeth, 1579 and 1615,
are similar entries. Butler, in _Hudibras_, alludes to pulpit
hour-glasses having been used by the Puritans: the preacher having
named the text, turned up the glass; and if the sermon did not last
till the sand was out, it was said by the congregation that the
preacher was lazy; but if, on the other hand, he continued much
longer, they would yawn and stretch till the discourse was finished.
At the old church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet-street, was a
large hour-glass in a silver frame, of which latter, when the
instrument was taken down, in 1723, two heads were made for the
parish staves. Hogarth, in his “Sleepy Congregation,” has introduced
an hour-glass on the west side of the pulpit. A very perfect
hour-glass is preserved in the church of St. Alban, Wood-street,
Cheapside; it is placed on the right of the reading-desk within a
frame of twisted columns and arches, supported on a spiral column:
the four sides have angels sounding trumpets; and each end has a
line of crosses _patées_ and fleurs-de-lis, somewhat resembling the
imperial crown.

---------------------
Footnote 11:

Le Jeune has painted two children watching with wonder the sand
flowing in the hour-glass.

Footnote 12:

The Hour-glass is the sign of Calvert’s Brewery, in Upper
Thames-street.

----------------------------

CLOCKS AND WATCHES.

The clock was also the horologe of our old poets, from the Latin _horologium:_

He’ll watch the horologe a double set,
If drink rock not his cradle.—_Othello_, act ii. sc. 3.

Drayton calls the cock the country horologe.

Rabelais thus capriciously ridicules the use of the clock: “The greatest loss of time that I know, is to count the hours. What good comes of it? Nor can there be any greater dotage in the world, than for one to guide and direct his course by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment and discretion.” In similar exuberance has this gay satirist said: “There is only one quarter of an hour in human life passed ill, and that is between the calling for the reckoning and paying it.”

With more serious purpose has Sir Walter Scott, in his “Lay of the Imprisoned Huntsman,” thus anathematised the clock and the dial:

I hate to learn the ebb of time
From yon dull steeple’s drowsy chime,
Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl
Inch after inch along the wall.

Richard II., in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle, soliloquises more solemnly:

Now hath Time made me his numb’ring clock:
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jade
Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is,
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs, and tears, and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.

Lucian, who died A.D. 180, refers to an instrument, mechanically constructed with water, which reported the hours by a bell. “Before the time of Jerome” (born A.D. 332), says Browne, “there were horologies that measured the hours, not only by drops of water in glasses, called _clepsydra_, but also by sand in glasses, called _clepsummia_.” It was the clepsydra to which Lucian alludes. When the water, which was constantly dripping out of the vessel, reached a certain level, it drew away, by means of a rope connected with the piston in the water-vessel, the ledge on which a weight rested; and the falling of this weight, which was attached to a bell, caused it to strike. This, perhaps, was the earliest kind of striking clock.

A public striking clock may well be termed the regulator of society: it reminds us of our engagements, and announces the hours for exertion or repose; and in the silence of night it tells us of the hours that are past, and how many remain before day.

The earliest public clock set up in England was that with three bells, which was placed in the clochard or bell-tower of the Palace at Westminster, built by Edward III. in 1365-6: the palace was then the most frequent residence of the king and his family; and the three bells were “usually rung at Coronations, Triumphs, Funeralls of Princes, and their Obits.”[13] This bell-tower stood very near to the site of the great clock-tower of the new palace; the gilding of the exterior of which cost no less than 1500_l._

A public clock is a public monitor; and the dimensions of its dial, and works, and striking-bell add much to the solemnity of its proclaiming the march of time. The great clocks in the International Exhibition of 1862 were among its colossal marvels.

The clocks of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Palace, and the Royal Exchange, are three of the largest clocks in London. The St. Paul’s hour-hands are the height of a tall man; the hour struck by this clock has been heard at midnight on the terrace of Windsor Castle; and from the telegraph station on Putney-heath the hour has been read by the St. Paul’s clock-face without the aid of a telescope: the hour-numerals are 2 feet 2½ inches in height. This clock once struck thirteen, which being heard by a sentinel, accused of being asleep at his post at that hour, was the means of saving his life; this striking thirteen was caused by the lifting-piece holding on too long.

The former church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, built by Inigo Jones, contained within the pediment a pendulum-clock, made by Richard Harris in 1641, and stated by an inscription in the vestry to be the first pendulum-clock made.[14]

The Horse Guards Clock is properly described by Mr. Denison as “a superstitiously venerated and bad clock;” it is minutely described by Mr. B. L. Vulliamy in the _Curiosities of London_, pp. 378-380.

St. James’s Palace Clock, made by Clay, clockmaker to George II., strikes the hours and quarters upon three bells; it requires to be wound up every day, and originally had but one hand. We were told by the late Mr. B. L. Vulliamy, that when the gatehouse was repaired in 1831, the clock was removed, and not put up again, on account of the roof being reported unsafe to carry the weight. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood then memorialised William IV. for the replacement of the timekeeper: the King, having ascertained its weight, shrewdly inquired how, if the tower-roof was not strong enough to carry the clock, it was safe for the number of persons occasionally seen upon it to witness processions, &c. The clock was forthwith replaced, and a minute-hand was added, with new dials: the original dials were of wainscot, in a great number of very small pieces curiously dovetailed together.

Trinity College, Cambridge, has a double-striking clock, put up by the famous Dr. Bentley; striking, as it used to be said, once for Trinity and once for his former college, St. John’s, which had no clock.

The clock of St. Clement’s Danes, in the Strand, strikes twice; the hour being first struck on a larger bell, and then repeated on a smaller one; so that if the first has been miscounted, the second may be more correctly observed.

Wren has introduced the gilt projecting dial in several of the City churches: that at St. Magnus, London Bridge, was the gift of Sir Charles Duncomb, who, it is related, when a poor boy, had once to wait upon London Bridge a considerable time for his master, whom he missed through not knowing the hour; he then vowed that if ever he became successful in the world, he would give to St. Magnus a public clock, that passengers might see the time; and this dial proves the fulfilment of his vow. It was originally ornamented with several richly gilded figures: upon a small metal shield inside the clock are engraven the donor’s arms, with this inscription: “The gift of Sir Charles Duncomb, Knight, Lord Major, and Alderman of this ward; Langley Bradley fecit, 1709.”

The former church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet-street, within memory possessed one of London’s wonders: it had a large gilt dial overhanging the street, and above it two figures of savages, life-size, carved in wood, and standing beneath a pediment, each having in his right hand a club, with which he struck the quarters upon a suspended bell, moving his head at the same time. To see the men strike was considered very attractive; and opposite St. Dunstan’s was a famous field for pickpockets, who took advantage of the gaping crowd. So it had long been; for Ned Ward, in his _London Spy_, says: “We added to the number of fools, and stood a little, making our ears do penance to please our eyes, with the conceited notion of their (the puppets’) heads and hands, which moved to and fro with as much deliberate stiffness as the two wooden horologists at St. Dunstan’s when they strike the quarters.” Cowper thus describes them in his _Table-Talk:_

When labour and when dulness, club in hand,
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan’s, stand,
Beating alternately, in measur’d time,
The clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme,
Exact and regular the sounds will be,
But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me.

These figures and the clock were put up in 1671. Among those who were struck by their oddity was the third Marquis of Hertford, born in 1777: “When a child, and a good child, his nurse, to reward him, would take him to see _the giants_ at St. Dunstan’s; and he used to say that when he grew to be a man _he would buy those giants_” (Cunningham’s _Handbook of London_). Many a child of rich parents may have used the same words; but in the present case the Marquis kept his word. When the old church of St. Dunstan was taken down, in 1830, Lord Hertford attended the second auction-sale of the materials, and purchased the clock, bells, and figures for 200_l.;_ he had them placed at the entrance to the grounds of his villa in the Regent’s Park, thence called St. Dunstan’s Villa; and here the figures do duty to the present day.

These automata remind us of the Minute-Jacks in Shakspeare’s _Timon of Athens_, generally interpreted as Jacks of the Clock-house:

You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time’s flies,
Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks.

Still, the Minute-Jacks only struck hours and quarters; and the term is rather thought to mean “fellows that watch their minutes to make their advantage, time-servers.” There is no doubt that by the “Jack that keeps the stroke,” in _Richard III._, is meant the Jack of the Clock-house.[15]

A much more noteworthy sight than the Fleet-street clock-figures is possessed by the Londoners of the present day in the Time-ball Signal upon the roof of the Electric Telegraph Office, No. 448 West Strand.

The signal consists of a zinc ball, 6 feet in diameter, supported by
a rod, which passes down the centre of a column, and carries at the
base a piston, which, in its descent, plunges into a cast-iron
air-cylinder; the escape of the air being regulated so as at
pleasure to check the momentum of the ball, and prevent concussion.
The raising of the ball, half-mast high, takes place daily at 10
minutes to 1 o’clock; at 5 minutes to 1 it is raised to the full
height; and at 1 precisely, and simultaneously with the fall of the
Time-ball at Greenwich Observatory (by which navigators correct
their chronometers), it is liberated by the galvanic current sent
from the Observatory, through a wire laid for that purpose. The same
galvanic current which liberates the Ball in the Strand moves a
needle upon the transit-clock of the Observatory, the time occupied
by the transition being about 1-3000th part of a second; and by the
unloosing of the machinery which supports the ball, less than
one-fifth part of a second. The true moment of one o’clock is
therefore indicated by the first appearance of the line of light
between the dark cross over the ball and the body of the ball
itself. There is a similar Time-ball upon the roof of a clockmaker’s
in Cornhill.

At Edinburgh, also, is a Time-ball connected with a Time-gun signal, consisting of a large iron cannon, in the Half-moon Battery, at the Castle; which cannon, having been duly loaded and primed some time between twelve and one o’clock, is fired off precisely at the latter hour by an electric influence from the corrected Mean-time of the Royal Observatory, at a distance of three-quarters of a mile; which, however, first passes to another clock close to the gun, and thus affords a short fraction of a second _before_ one o’clock for the train of processes; so that the actual final flash of the exploding gun in the Castle occurs absolutely coincidently with the tick of the sixtieth second of the corrected mean-time clock in the Royal Observatory. The whole is well described by Professor Piazzi Smith, Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, in _Good Words_, 1862, part iv.

We now return to the details of the great London Clocks. Mr. Dent undertook the construction of the Royal Exchange Clock in 1843: it was required to be superior to any public clock in England, and to satisfy certain conditions proposed for the first time by the Astronomer-Royal, and such as could not be satisfied by any clock of the common construction. Mr. Dent had then no factory of his own for making large clocks, and he could not get the clock made for him; “but with the energy and genius by which that remarkable man raised himself from a tallow-chandler’s apprentice to the position of the first horologist in the world, he set up a factory for himself at a great expense, and made the clock there; and of this, the first turret-clock he had ever made, the Astronomer-Royal certified, in 1845, that it not only satisfied his conditions, but that Mr. Dent had made some judicious improvements upon his suggestions, and that he had no doubt it was the best public clock in the world.”[16] It is true to a second of time, and has a compensation-pendulum.

The Westminster Palace Clock, designed by Mr. Denison, has four dials, each 22½ feet wide: they are not the largest in the world, being considerably less than the dial at Mechlin; but there is no other clock in the world which has to work four dials of such great width, especially a clock going 8½ days. St. Paul’s Clock has only two 17-feet dials, and is wound up every day, which makes a vast difference in the power and strength required. Each pair of hands weighs above 2 cwt.: they are made of gun-metal, instead of sheet-iron or copper. The hour-sockets are iron tubes, 5 inches in diameter; the dials are of cast-iron framework, filled with opal glass, and stand out 5 feet from the main walls.

The size of public dials is often very inadequate to their height, and the distance at which they are intended to be seen. They ought to be at least one foot in diameter for every ten feet of height above the ground, and in many cases more, whenever the dial will be seen far off. Now, the clock-dials of St. Pancras, Euston-square, are but 6½ feet in diameter, though at the height of 100 feet, and therefore are much too small.

The Clock, of silver-gilt, presented by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn on the morning of their marriage, is one of the earliest chamber-clocks in the kingdom: the case is richly chased and engraved, and on the weights are the initial letters of Henry and Anne, with true-lovers’ knots. This clock was purchased at the Strawberry Hill sale in the year 1842, for 110_l._, and is now in the collection of Queen Victoria.

We may here mention that the late Duke of Sussex possessed, at Kensington Palace, an invaluable collection of the early as well as the most perfect specimens of Time-keepers, among which was “Harrison’s first Clock, the forerunner of that invaluable machine, without which the compass itself would be but an imperfect guide to the mariner.”[17]

John Harrison received for his improved chronometers, in 1749, the
Copley Medal; and, thus encouraged by the Royal Society, and by the
hope of sharing the reward of 20,000_l._ offered by Parliament for
the discovery of the longitude, Harrison produced in 1758 a
time-keeper, which was sent for trial on a voyage to Jamaica. After
161 days, the error of the instrument was only one minute five
seconds, and the maker received from the nation 5000_l._ For other
chronometers, subjected, with perfect success, to a trial in a
voyage to Barbadoes, Harrison received 10,000_l._ more. Dr. Stukeley
writes of this ingenious man: “I passed by Mr. Harrison’s house at
Barrow, that excellent genius of clock-making, who bids fair for the
golden prize for the discovery of the longitude. I saw his famous
clock last winter at Mr. George Graham’s: the sweetness of its
motion, the contrivances to take off friction, to defeat the
lengthening and shortening of the pendulum through heat and cold,
and to prevent the disturbance of motion by that of the ship, cannot
be sufficiently admired.”—_Ms. Journal._[18]

An exact measure of time is of the utmost importance to many of the sciences. Horology is indispensable to astronomy, in which the variation even of two or three seconds is of the greatest consequence. By means of a clock the Danish astronomer, Roemer, was enabled to discover that the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites took place a few seconds later than he had calculated, when the earth was in that part of its orbit the farthest from Jupiter. Speculating on the cause of this phenomenon, he calculated that light was not propagated instantaneously, but took time to reach us; and, from calculations founded on this theory, light has been discovered to dart through space with a velocity of about 192,000 miles in a second: thus, the light of the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth.

Horology has also enabled us to discover that when the wind passes one mile per hour, it is scarcely perceptible; while at the rate of one hundred miles per hour it acquires sufficient force to tear up trees, and destroy the produce of the earth. And, without the aid of a seconds-clock, it would have been scarcely possible to ascertain that a cannon-ball flies at the rate of 600 feet in a second.

The use of Chronometers in geography and navigation is well known; since it is only necessary to ascertain the exact difference in time between two places, to determine their distance east or west of each other.

Graham applied the motion of a Clock showing sidereal time to make a telescope point in the direction of any particular star, even when before the horizon.

Alexander Cummins made a Clock for George III. which registered the height of the barometer during every day throughout the year. This was effected by a circular card, of about 2 feet in diameter, being made to turn round once in a year. The card was divided by radii lines into 365 divisions, the months and days of the month being marked round the edge, while the usual range of the barometer was indicated in inches and tenths by circular lines described from the centre. A pencil with a fine point pressed on the card by a spring, and, held by an upright rod floating on the mercury, faithfully marked the state of the barometer; the card, being carried forward by the clock, brought each day to the pencil. Wren proposed to have a clock constructed on a similar principle, to register the position and force of the wind; which idea has been adopted.

In the Armoury of George IV. was a model of a small cannon, with a clock attached to the lock in such a manner that the trigger could be discharged at any desired time by setting the clock as an alarum.

Breguet contrived a Clock to set a Watch to time. This clock is of the size of a chamber-clock, and has a fork and support on a top to carry the watch. When the clock strikes twelve, a piece of steel like a needle rises, and entering a hole in the rim of the watch-case, comes in contact with a piece which carries the minute-hand, and by pressure makes the hand of the watch correspond with that of the clock, provided the difference be not more than twenty minutes.

The same artist constructed for George IV. a Chronometer which had two pendulums, one making the machine show mean time, the other to make it act as a metronome by beating the time for music. This pendulum was merely a small ball attached to a slight chain carried round a pulley, on the centre of which was an index, which, when brought to any of the musical measures engraved on the scale, shortened or lengthened the chain, so as to cause the pendulum to perform its oscillations in the time required, and a hammer struck on a bell the beats contained in each bar; these would be silently struck by placing a piece of wood between the hammer and the bell; the musical time was also indicated by the seconds-hand of the clock.

A certain dynamical theory of chemistry has been propounded, founded upon precipitations and decompositions taking place in a definite space. Time forms, too, the very key by which alone we can be admitted to a proper view of the archives of the ancient world. Want of time for the due development of the geological periods, for a long season, hindered men’s conceptions upon this subject from taking a sharp, clear cast of thought. Linnæus constructed a _Clock of Flora_—a dial of flowers, each opening and shutting at an appointed time.[19]

By a series of comparisons with Pendulums placed at the surface and the interior of the earth, the Astronomer-Royal has ascertained the variation of gravity in descending to the bottom of a deep mine, as the Harton coal-pit, near South Shields. By calculations from these experiments, he has found the mean density of the earth to be 6·566, the specific gravity of water being represented by unity. In other words, it has been ascertained by these experiments that if the earth’s mass possessed every where its average density, it would weigh, bulk for bulk, 6·566 times as much as water. The immediate result of the computations of the Astronomer-Royal is: supposing a clock adjusted to go true time at the top of the mine, it would gain 2¼ seconds per day at the bottom. Or it may be stated thus: that gravity is greater at the bottom of a mine than at the top by 1/19190th part.[20]

The Electric Clock is an invention of our own time. An ordinary clock consists essentially of a series of wheels acting on each other, and carrying round, as they revolve, the hands which mark the seconds, minutes, and hours. The wheels are moved by the falling of a weight, or the unwinding of a spring; and the rate at which they revolve is determined by the length of a pendulum made to oscillate by the wheels. In electric or (as they should rather be called) electro-magnetic clocks, there are neither weights nor springs; so that they never run down, and never require to be wound up. To produce motion, electricity is employed alternately to make and remake an electro-magnet, or alternately to reverse the poles of a permanent magnet, which, by lifting up and letting fall, or attracting and repelling a lever, moves the wheels.

M. Bouilly endeavoured to show that character was much influenced by Time-keepers. He describes two young persons who were allowed to select Watches for themselves: one chose a plain watch, being told that its performance could be depended on; the other, attracted by the elegance of a case, decided upon one of inferior construction. The possessor of the good Watch became remarkable for punctuality; while the other, although always in a hurry, was never in time, and discovered that, next to being too late, there is nothing worse than being too early.

The choice of a good Watch is, however, a difficult matter: none but a good workman is capable of forming a correct opinion; and a Watch must be bad indeed for an inexperienced eye to detect the errors either of the principle or its construction; even a trial of a year or two is no proof, for wear seldom takes place within that time; and while a good Watch can but go well, a bad one, by chance, may occasionally do so.

A Watch must not only be well constructed, and on a good principle, but the brass must be hard, and the steel properly tempered. The several parts must be in exact proportion, and well finished, so as to continue in motion with the least possible wear. It must also be so made that, when taken to pieces, all its parts may be replaced as firmly as before.

A bad Watch is one in which no more attention has been paid to the proportion of the parts, or durability of the material, than was necessary to make it perform for a time: it is either the production of inefficient workmen, or of those who, being limited in price, are unable to give sufficient time to perfect the work. In some instances these Watches will go well for a time; but as they wear, from friction, they require frequent repair, which cannot be effectually done.

The most useful lesson is, that low price is not exactly another word for cheapness. If you wish to possess a good Watch, apply to a maker of known honesty and ability in the art he professes, and who, therefore, should be implicitly trusted.

It has been said, that “no man ever made a true circle, or a straight line, except by chance;” and the same may be said of any machine which measured time exactly; indeed, positive accuracy can never be attained until an unchangeable material is discovered, of which the works may be constructed. These practical instructions are by Mr. Adam Thomson.

How beautifully has Lord Herbert of Cherbury sung “to his Watch when he could not sleep:”

Uncessant minutes, whilst you move you tell
The time that tells our life, which though it run
Never so fast or far, your new begun
Short steps shall overtake: for though life well
May ’scape his own account, it shall not yours.
You are Death’s auditors, that both divide
And sum whate’er that life inspir’d endures,
Past a beginning; and through you we bide
The doom of fate, whose unrecall’d decree
You date, bring, execute; making what’s new,
Ill, and good, old; for as we die in you,
You die in time, time in eternity.

---------------------
Footnote 13:

_Archæologia_, vol. xxxvii.

Footnote 14:

Cunningham’s _Handbook_, 2d edit. p. 386. If this inscription be
correct, it negatives the claim of Huyghens to having first applied
the pendulum to the clock, about 1657; although Justus Bergen,
mechanician to the Emperor Rodolphus, who reigned from 1576 to 1612,
is said to have attached one to a clock used by Tycho Brahe. Inigo
Jones, the architect of St. Paul’s, having been in Italy during the
time of Galileo, it is probable that he communicated what he heard of
the pendulum to Harris. Huyghens, however, violently contested for the
priority; while others claimed it for the younger Galileo, who, they
asserted, had, at his father’s suggestion, applied the pendulum to a
clock in Venice which was finished in 1649.—Adam Thomson’s _Time and
Timekeepers_, pp. 67, 68.

Footnote 15:

Nares’s _Glossary_.

Footnote 16:

_Denison on Clocks._

Footnote 17:

_Adam Thomson._

Footnote 18:

There is an odd traditionary story told of a Watch at Somerset House.
A little above the entrance-door to the Stamps and Taxes is a white
watch-face,—of which it is told, that when the wall was being built, a
workman had the misfortune to fall from the scaffolding, and was only
saved from destruction by the ribbon of his watch, which caught in a
piece of projecting work. In thankful remembrance of his wonderful
preservation, he is said to have inserted his watch into the face of
the wall. Such is the popular belief, and hundreds of persons go to
Somerset House to see this fancied memento, and hear the above tale.
But the watch-face was placed in its present position many years ago
by the Royal Society, as a meridian mark for a portable transit
instrument in one of the windows of the anteroom. Captain Smyth
assisted in mounting the instrument, and perfectly recollects the
watch-face placed against the opposite wall.

Footnote 19:

_The Relations of Science_, by J. M. Ashley.

Footnote 20:

_Letter to James Mather, Esq., South Shields._ See also _Professor
Airy’s Lecture_, 1854. Baily approximately weighed the earth by
another contrivance, described and illustrated in _Things not
generally Known_, First Series, which see.

----------------------------

EARLY RISING.

Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew-bespangling herb and tree;
Each flower has wept and bowed towards th’ east
Above an hour since, yet you are not drest;
Nay, not so much as out of bed,
When all the birds have matins said,
And sung their thankful hymns.—_Herrick._

“Up with the sun” implies, in common parlance, very early habits, of difficult attainment. But, “we rise with the sun at Christmas: it were but continuing to do so till the middle of April, and without any perceptible change we should find ourselves then rising at five o’clock; at which hour we might continue till September, and then accommodate ourselves again to the change of season, regulating always the time of retiring in the same proportion. They who require eight hours sleep would, upon such a system, go to bed at nine during four months.”

Thus wrote Southey, in his loved sojourn upon the Derwent, of which he says:

Hither I came in manhood’s active prime,
And here my head hath felt the touch of time.

In our great Public Schools, Early Rising appears to have been practised from very remote periods. A manuscript document, showing the system at Eton College about the year 1560, records that the boys rose at five to the loud call of “Surgite;” they repeated a prayer in alternate verses as they dressed themselves, and then made their beds, and each swept the part of the chamber close to his bed. They then went in a row to wash, and then to the school, where the under-master read prayers at six; then the præpositor noted absentees, and one examined the students’ faces and hands, and reported any boys that came unwashed.

The great Lord Burghley, when at St. John’s College, Cambridge, was distinguished by the regularity of his conduct, and the intensity of his application: that he might early devote several hours to study, without any hazard of interruption, he was called up by the bell-ringer every morning at four o’clock. Such was the educational basis upon which Cecil laid the foundation of his brilliant but sound reputation; and by which means, conjoined with the strong natural gift of sagacity, and a mind tinctured with piety, he acquired the esteem and confidence successively of three sovereigns, and held the situation of prime minister of England for upwards of half a century.

Of Sir Edward Coke’s laborious course of study at the Inner Temple, we have some interesting records. Every morning at three, in the winter season lighting his own fire, he read Bracton, Littleton, the Year Books, and the folio Abridgments of the Law, till the courts met at eight. He then went by water to Westminster, and heard cases argued till twelve, when pleas ceased for dinner. After a short repast in the Inner Temple Hall, he attended “readings” or lectures in the afternoon, and then resumed his private studies till five, or supper-time. This meal being ended, the _moots_ took place, when difficult questions of law were proposed and discussed,—if the weather was fine, in the garden by the river-side; if it rained, in the covered walks near the Temple Church. Finally, he shut himself up in his chamber, and worked at his common-place book, in which he inserted, under the proper heads, all the legal information he had collected during the day. When nine o’clock struck, he retired to bed, that he might have an equal portion of sleep before and after midnight.[21]

Bishop Ken, when a scholar at William of Wykeham’s College at Winchester, in the words of his fellow Wykehamist, the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles, on the glimmering and cold wintry mornings, would perhaps repeat to himself—watching the slow morning through the grated window—one of the beautiful ancient hymns composed for the scholars on the foundation:

Jam lucis ordo sydere
Deum precemur supplices,
Ut in diurnis actibus
Nos servet a nocentibus.

Now the star of morning light
Rises on the rear of night;
Suppliant to our God we pray,
From ills to guard us through this day.

Rising before the others, he had little to do except apply a candle to a large fagot, in winter, which had been already laid.

Ken composed a devotional Manual for the use of the Winchester scholars; but his most interesting compositions are those affecting and beautiful hymns which were sung by himself, and written to be sung in the chambers of the boys, before chapel in the morning, and before they lay down on their small boarded beds at night. Of Ken’s own custom of singing his hymn to the Creator at the earliest dawn, Hawkins, his biographer, relates, “that neither his (Ken’s) study might be the aggressor on his hours of instruction, nor what he judged duty prevent his improvement, he strictly accustomed himself to but one hour’s sleep, which obliged him to rise at one or two o’clock in the morning, or sometimes earlier; and he seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and cheerfulness to sing his Morning Hymn, as he used to do, to his lute, before he put on his clothes.” When he composed those delicious hymns, he was in the fresh morn of life; and who does not feel his heart in unison with that delightful season, when such a strain as this is heard?

Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run;
Shake off dull sloth, and early rise
To pay thy morning sacrifice.
* * * *
Lord, I my vows to thee renew;
Disperse my sins as morning dew.

May we not also say that when the evening hymn is heard, like the sounds that bid farewell to evening’s parting plaint, it fills the silent heart with devotion and repose?

All praise to thee, my God, this night
For all the blessings of the light;
Keep me, oh, keep me, King of kings,
Under thine own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for thy dear Son,
The ills that I this day have done;
That with the world, myself, and thee,
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

Ken died, Bishop of Bath and Wells, in 1711, in his 74th year, and was carried to his grave, in Frome churchyard, by six of the poorest men of the parish, and buried under the eastern window of the church, at _sunrise_, in reference to the words of his Morning Hymn:

Awake, my soul, and _with the sun_.

The same words are sung, to the same tune, every Sunday, by the parish children, in the church of Frome, and over the grave of him who composed the words, and sung them himself, to the same air, nearly two centuries since.

Rubens, the consummate painter, enlightened scholar, skilful diplomatist, and accomplished man of the world, was in the habit of rising very early,—in summer at four o’clock; and he made it a law of his life to begin the day by prayer. After this he went to work, and before his first meal made those beautiful sketches known by the name of _breakfast sketches_. While painting, he habitually employed a person to read to him from one of the classical authors (his favourites being Livy, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca), or from some eminent poet. This was the time when he generally received his visitors, with whom he entered willingly into conversation on a variety of topics in the most animated and agreeable manner. An hour before dinner was always devoted to recreation; which consisted either in allowing his thoughts to dwell, as they listed, on subjects connected with science or politics,—which latter interested him deeply,—or in contemplating his treasures of art. As work was his great happiness, he indulged but sparingly in the pleasures of the table, and drank but little wine. After working again till the evening, he usually mounted a spirited Andalusian horse, and rode for an hour or two. On his return home, he customarily received a few friends, principally men of learning, or artists, to partake of a frugal supper, and passed the evening in conversation. This active and regular mode of life could alone have enabled Rubens to satisfy all the demands which were made upon him as an artist; for, including copies, the engravings from works of Rubens amount to more than 1500; and the astonishing number of his works, the genuineness of which is beyond all doubt, can only be accounted for by his union of extraordinary diligence with the acknowledged fertility of his productive powers.

John Wesley, at an early age, was sent to the Charter-house, where he suffered under the tyranny which the elder boys were permitted to exercise. The boys of the higher forms were then in the practice of taking their portion of meat from the younger ones, by the law of the strongest; and during great part of the time that Wesley remained there, a small daily portion of bread was his only food. He strictly performed an injunction of his father’s, that he should run round the Charter-house playing-green, of three acres, three times every morning; and to this early practice he attributed his great length of days.

Wesley satisfied himself of the expediency of rising early by experiment, which he describes thus:

I waked every night about twelve or one, and lay awake for some
time. I readily concluded that this arose from my being longer in
bed than nature required. To be satisfied, I procured an alarum,
which waked me the next morning at seven (near an hour earlier than
I rose the day before), yet I lay awake again at night. The second
morning I rose at six; notwithstanding this I lay awake the second
night. The third morning I rose at five; nevertheless I lay awake
the third night. The fourth morning I rose at four, as I have done
ever since; and I lay awake no more. And I do not now lie awake,
taking the year round, a quarter of an hour together in a month. By
the same experiment, rising earlier and earlier every morning, may
one find out how much sleep he really wants.

But Wesley’s moderation in sleep, and his rigid constancy in rising early, admit of explanation. Mr. Bradburn, who travelled with him almost constantly for years, said that Wesley generally slept several hours in the course of the day; that he had himself seen him sleep three hours together often enough. This was chiefly in his carriage, in which he accustomed himself to sleep on his journeys as regularly, as easily, and as soundly, as if he had gone to bed.