SUN=DIALS AND ROSES OF YESTERDAY DIALS AMD KOSES GARDEN DELIGHTS WHICH ARE HERE DISPLAYED IN VERY TRVTH AND ARE MOREOVER REGARDED AS EMBLEMS ALICE MORSE EAKLE NE.W TTO1LK. THE MACTVMLLAN CO 10 All f ioKfs f es e rVed P&mniV. 15 TOT tmTD STATES OF AMERICA '" " & COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped November, 1902. NortoootJ J. 8. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. COMMEMORATE HER, FIRST SVNMER WITH HER OWN GARDEN AND SVNDIAL NAY THE MOTTO OF HER DIAL BE THAT OF HER^LIfE Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. THE CHARM AND SENTIMENT OF SUN- DIALS . . . . . . i II. NOON-MARKS, SPOT-DIALS, WINDOW-DIALS 32 III. CLASSIFICATION OF SUN-DIALS . . 61 IV. THE CONSTRUCTION OF SUN-DIALS . 87 V. INGENIOSE DIALLERS .... 103 VI. PORTABLE DIALS . . . ...120 VII. THE SUN-DIAL AS AN EMBLEM . -163 VIII. SYMBOLIC DESIGNS FOR SUN-DIALS . .185 IX. PEDESTALS AND GNOMONS . . . 206 X. THE SETTING OF SUN-DIALS . . . 233 XL SUN-DIAL MOTTOES . . '. * 252 XII. THE SUN-DIAL AS A MEMORIAL . 279 XIII. PLINY SAIETH : CONCERNING ROSES AND GARLANDS . . . . . 296 XIV. ROSA SOLIS, ROSE PLATE, AND ROSEE . 305 XV. THE EMBLEM OF THE ROSE IN ENGLISH HISTORY . . . . . .318 vi Contents CHAPTER PAGE XVI. OUR GRANDMOTHERS' ROSES . 333 XVII. THE ROSICRUCIANS . . . .366 XVIII. THE SUN-DIAL OF AHAZ . . . 390 XIX. RURAL SAINTS AND PROPHETS . .411 XX. A STORY OF FOUR DIALS . . . 426 List of Illustrations Sun-dials and Roses Frontispiece PAGE Sun-dial at Glamis Castle, Scotland. Seat of the Earl of Strathmore * . / . . . . . . facing 2 Sun-dial at Balcarres Castle, Fifeshire, Scotland. Seat of the Earl of Crawford ; , . Co., London 83 Quiver-dial of Phaidros, from Athens. In British Museum. Photographed by William A. Mansell &* Co., London . 85 declining-dial at Jeypore, from model. Photographed by William A. Man sell &* Co., London .... 86 Sun-dial at Jeypore, India. From model in Victoria and List of Illustrations ix PAGE Albert Museum. Photographed by William A. Mansell &> Co., London . . '.'. . . . facing 86 Nocturnal Dial, from Ley bournes "Dialling." . . facing 88 Head of Sun-dial made for Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia. 1876. Now at Residence of Mrs . Joseph Philip Mickley, near Allentown, Pa. . . . . . .90 Centennial Sun-dial. 1876 . . . . . . . 92 Nicholas Kratzer, deviser of horologies for King Henry VI If. By Holbein -i , facing 104 Side View of Brass Portable Dial, once owned by Cardinal Wolsey. Made by Nicholas Kratzer. Now owned by Lewis Evans, Esq., Russell Farm, Watford, England . 105 Full View of Cardinal Wolsey V Dial 106 Drawing of Dial made by Nicholas Kratzer for Corpus Christi College, Oxford. From Mss. of Robert Hegge . . 107 Pillar-dial in Quadrangle of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, England . . . . * . . . . ."' . no Triangular Lodge, with Dials, Rushton, Northants, Eng- land .". , . facing 112 Elevation of Sun-dial of King Charles II in Garden at White- hall, London . . . . , . facing 116 Hexagonal Dials on King^s Dial, with Portraits of Charles II and his Queen . ... . . - . . . 118 Drawing in Fourteenth Century Mss. of Chilindre . . 122 Two Boxwood and One Ivory Shepherd" 1 s Dials. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . . . ... . . 123 Two Boxwood Pillar -dials . Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . 125 Plate for Cylinder-dial. From Fergusons " Mechanical Lec- tures on Dialling' 1 ' 1 . . . . ... . 126 Diagram of Construction of Cylinder -dial. From Ferguson's " Mechanical Lectures on Dialling" ~. . . .127 Standard of Dials, with Compass. Invented by James Fer- guson facing 128 Brass Octahedral Block of Dials . Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq . 129 Wooden Block Dial with Paper Figures. 1780. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . . . . . . . .130 Brass Equinoctial Dial. In United States National Museum 131 Armillary Sphere-dial in Garden at Brockenhurst, New Forest, England facing 132 List of Illustrations PAGE Brass Block Dial. Made in Styria, Austria. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq 133 Thevenot Sun-dial . . . . . . . . 135 Brass Universal Ring-dial, set for use. Owned by author . 136 Brass Universal Ring-dial, flat for carrying. Owned by author 137 Universal Ring-dial with Disc Axis. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq 138 Three Ring-dials ; full size of originals. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq . 139 Brass Ring-dial and Silver Dial-ring. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq 140 Universal Ring-dial with Base and Feet with Screws. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. ....... 141 Globe Window-dial. Made by F Barker &> Son, London, England 142 French Pocket-dial, with Compass. Le Maire, maker . ,143 Silver Portable Dial, French. In United States National Museum, Washington, D.C 144 Brass Portable Dial, German. In United States National Museum, Washington, D.C. . . . . .144 Brass Portable Dial, German. V.S. 1572. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq 145 Two Gilt-brass Portable Dials, German. 1578,1553. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . . . . . . .146 Ivory Portable Dial, German. In United States National Museum, Washington, D.C. . . . . . . 147 Ivory Book-dial and Octagonal Dial. 1630. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. ......... 148 Ivory Pocket-dials, German. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . 149 Ivory Book-dials. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . . .150 Lyre-shaped Horizontal and Analemmatic Dial. 1 763 . Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq 151 Brass Universal Equinoctial Dial. Made by Thomas Wright. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. \ . . . . .152 French Sun-dial 153 Brass Equinoctial Dial. Made by Augustin. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . . . . . . . . .153 Casket Dial, Italian. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. , -154 List of Illustrations xi Brass Portable Dial. Maker G. F. Brander. In United States National Museum, Washington, D .C . . . .156 Two Chinese Pocket-dials. Owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. . 157 Silver Pocket-dial, Japanese 158 Flechefs Universal Sun-dial . . . . . . .159 Bailey's Card-dial . . .. . . . .161 John S. Bailey, Dial-maker. In his Workshop . facing 162 Page from Emblems of Geoffrey Whitney. 1586 . facing 164 Sun-dial at Prestbury, England 167 Sun-dial at Adlington Hall, Cheshire, England . . .169 Sun-dial in Inner Temple Garden, London . . . -171 Obelisk-shaped Dial in Garden at Linburn House, Midlothian, Scotland. 1892. Residence of Mrs. Scott . facing 172 Sun-dial in Churchyard, Rostherne, Cheshire, England . -173 Emblem of Louise de Valdemont, Queen of Henry III of France . . . . ' . . . . .175 Washington Sun-dial, in Washington House, Little Brington, Northants, England . . ." . . . . 177 Ancient Cross at Great Brington, Northants, England . .178 Sun-dial in Rectory Garden, Great Brington, Northants, Eng- land. Home of A. L. Y. Morley, Esq 181 Sun-dial at Ophir Farm, Purchase, near White Plains, New York. Seat of Hon. Whitelaw Reid. Photographed by Curtis Bell, Esq., New York . V . . facing 186 Brass Dial-face, engraved with Lines of the Zodiac. Owned by aiithor. 1812 % . . . . .. . . 187 Seasons'* Dial. Made by John S. Bailey . , . . 188 Aztec Calendar of a Cycle . . w ; . . 191 Aztec Calendar-stone. In Museum of City of Mexico . .193 Seven Ages of Man. From Block Print in British Museum. Fourteenth Century . . . . . facing 194 Dial-face of Four Seasons. Made by F. Barker & Son, Lon- don, England 197 Sun-dial, Time and Cupid. In Garden of Belton House, Lincolnshire. Seat of Earl Brownlow . . . .198 Dial-face with Floral Design. Made by F. Barker & Son, London, England . . . . . . . . 200 Sun-dial at Friends'* Meeting-house, Germantown, Pennsyl- vania facing 202 xii List , of Illustrations Hones tone Dial-face from Saxony, with Coats of Arms. Date 1760. Owned by author ,V> 2O 4 Simple Dial in a Worcester Garden 207 Terra-cotta Pillar ... 208 Sun-dial at Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Seat of Henry T. Coates, Esq 210 Sun-dial in Haddonjield, New Jersey. In Garden of H. R. Mitchell, Esq 211 Sun-dial made from Old Tomb. Huntercombe Manor, Maiden- head, England. Residence of Hon. Mrs. E. V. Boyle . 213 The Moor. Enfield Old Park, Middlesex, England . .215 Sun-dial at Hampton Court . . . . . . .216 Sun-dial at Whatton House, near Loughborough, England . 217 Sun-dial at Harlestone House, Northants. Residence of the Duchess of Graf ton ...... facing 218 Sun-dial at Althorp House, Northants, England. Seat of Earl Spencer . . . . . . . . .219 Sun-dial removed from Admiralty Garden, Whitehall, Lon- don. Now on Grounds of Althorp House, Northants. Seat of Earl Spencer 220 Sun-dial in Rose Garden at Yaddo, Saratoga, New York. Seat of Spencer Trask, Esq. . . . . . .221 Bronze Dial-face. Made by F. Barker & Son, London. In Rose Garden at Yaddo, Saratoga, New York. Seat of Spencer Trask, Esq. . . . . . . 222 Pillar-dial at Old Place, Lindjield, Sussex, England. Seat of Charles E. Kemp, Esq. . . . . facing 222 Sun-dial of Gilbert White, Selborne, England . , -. . . 224 Sun-dial at Cranford, Germantown, Pennsylvania. Seat of Charles F. Jenkins, Esq. :*.'. : . facing 226 Gnomon of Dial, in Shape of Skeleton. Lelant Church, Corn- wall, England . . . . . , :. . - . 227 Dial-face. Deaths Head. Sheepstor Church, Dartmoor, England 228 Sun-dial. Death's Head. In Wall of Black Friars'* Burial- ground, Perth, Scotland . . - ... . . .230 Pedestals of Dials at Enfield Old House and Chiswick . .231 Sun-dial with Crimson Rambler Rose. In Garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, Waldstein, Fairfield, Connecticut. Photographed by Mrs. Wright . . . . . 236 List of Illustrations xiii PAGE Sun-dial at Avonwood Court, Haver ford, Pennsylvania. Country Seat of Charles E. Mather, Esq. . facing 238 Sun-dial in Garden of Henry Souther, Esq., Hartford, Con- necticut ... . 239 Sun-dial with Poppies in Garden of Horace Hotvard Fur ness, Esq., Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Photographed by Henry Troth -242 Sun-dial in Garden at Drumthwacket, Princeton, New Jersey. Seat of M. Taylor Pyne, Esq. . . . .245 Sun-dial in Garden of the Late Hon. William H. Seward, Auburn, New York . ." .247 Sun-dial with Iris and Ferns at Huntercombe Manor, Maiden- head, England. Residence of Hon. Mrs. E. V. Boyle facing 248 Sun-dial with Peonies at Kenmore, Fredericksburg, Virginia. Home of Betty Washington Lewis 249 Sun-dial in Garden of Stenton, the Logan Mansion, German- town, Pennsylvania. The Gift of Horace Jay Smith of Germantown, Pennsylvania, to the Society of Colonial Dames . 250 Sun-dial on Bridge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . . -253 Cross at Northampton, England. Erected by King Edward I of England in Memory of his Wife, Queen Eleanor of Castile . 255 Pillar-dial in Graveyard at Dean Row, Cheshire, England . 256 Sun-dial at Barncluith, Cadzow Forest, Scotland. From drawing by Mr. T. S. Robertson of Dundee, Scotland . 258 Vertical Dial at Sandringham, England. Residence of King Edward VII of England. Dial made by F. Barker &* Son, London . . 259 Sun-dial at Convent of Mount Saint Vincent. Formerly the Edwin Forrest Home . . ... .261 The Lodge with Sun-dial at Charlecote House, Stratford-on- Avon, England 262 Sun-dial and Garden-house at Brockenhurst Park, Hamp- shire, England 26 4 Sun-dial at Moccas Court, Herefordshire. Seat of Rev. Sir George Cornewall, Bart facing 264 Vertical Sun-dial at Germantown, Pennsylvania, . . .267 xiv List of Illustrations Sun-dial at Canon's Ashby, Northamptonshire. Seat of Sir Henry Dryden, Bart. ....... 268 Sun-dial at Ivy Lodge. Residence of Horace Jay Smith, Esq., Germantown, Pennsylvania .... facing 270 Sun-dial in Cheshire, England, in Garden of Mrs. Bell . . 272 Facet-headed Dial at Linburn House, Midlothian, Scotland. Residence of Mrs. Scott facing 274 Sun-dial at Bramhall, Cheshire, England .... 275 Sun-dial in Rose Garden at Broughton Castle, near Banbury- mylanth. Seat of Lord Algernon Gordon-Lennox . .276 Cross-dial, West Laurel Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 280 Cross-dial at Scot scraig, Scotland 281 West Side of Scotscraig Cross-dial, and Suggested Pedestal for Scot scraig Cross-dial. From drawings by Mr. T. S. Rob- ertson, Dundee, Scotland 282 West, South, and East Faces of Scotscraig Cross-dial. From drawings by Mr. T. S. Robertson, Dundee, Scotland . 283 Brass Universal Portable Cross-dial. Made by F. Barker &> Son, London, England 284 Pillar-dial, Appleby, England. Erected by Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery . .286 The Countesses Pillar. On Wayside between Brougham and Appleby. Erected by Anne Clifford, Countess of Pem- broke, Dorset, and Montgomery. 1656 .... 287 Dial-block of the Countesses Pillar 289 Sun-dial on Library Tower, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey facing 290 Dial with Dipleidoscope, Neaum Crag, Ambleside, Westmore- land, England. Erected by Albert Fleming, Esq., in Memory of his Mother 291 Sun-dial at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut . . 292 Sun-dial in Grounds of Packer Collegiate Institiite, Brooklyn, New York 293 Sun-dial in Grove Street Burying-ground, New Haven, Connecticut . . . 294 Roses at Mount Vernon-on-the-Potomac. The Home of George Washington . . . 297 Arch with the Memorial Rose, Twin Oaks, near Washington, District of Columbia 299 List of Illustrations xv The Rose Walk, Van Cortlandt Manor, Croton-on- Hudson, New York . . . . . . . facing 302 Hybrid Sweet Brier Rose . . v . . - - facing 306 Roses in California . . . * . . . 309 Rose Arches, Twin Oaks, near Washington, District of Columbia r" . ... . . . . 314 Gold of Ophir Roses 319 Roses at Gravetye Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex, England. Home of William Robinson, author of the "English Flower Garden" ... . . .. . . . 321 Rose en Soleil. Emblem of Edward fV of England . -323 Sun-dial formerly at The Mount, Astoria. Now at Bolton Priory, Pelham Manor, New York . . , : facing 324 Emblem of Richard III of England . > . :.'-.'- . 326 Emblem of Henry VII of England . . . . 327 Emblem of Katherine of Aragon, first Queen of Henry VIII of England . . . . ' . 328 Emblem of Anne Boleyn, second Queen of Henry VIII of England .......... 3 2 ^ Emblem of Jane Seymour, third Queen of Henry VIII of England . . . . 3 2 9 Emblem of Katherine Parr, sixth Queen of Henry VIII of England . * ''- .. .' . ' . . '; 33 Emblem of Queen Mary of England .... . 331 Emblem of James I of England . . . . . - . 332 June Rose . * . . .' . ; . ' . 335 Scotch Roses . ' . . . . . . . . -337 Harrison Yellow Rose, in Garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright. Photographed by Mrs. Wright .' / . . 339 Yellow Wreath Rose . . . . . / . . 340 Baltimore Belle .... . .. . . 343 Anne de Diesbach Rose 345 The White Rose .... . facing 346 Patience, the Damask Rose . 349 Bourbon Rose. From Redout? s " Les Roses." 1824 . . 353 Little Burgundy Rose. From Redout? s Les Roses." 1824 . 354 Fairy Rose ... . ... 355 Seven Sisters Rose. Photographed by Mary M. F. Paschall . 357 Hundred Leaved Rose. In Garden of Van Cortlandt Manor, Croton-on- Hudson, New York 360 xvi List of Illustrations PAGE Rose Garden at Mount Vernon-on-the-Potomac. The Home of George Washington ..... facing 362 Dial-pillar at Wimborne Minster, Dorsetshire, England. Formerly on Gable of Transept. Date 1732 . . . 369 South Dial of Pillar at IVimborne Minster, Dorsetshire . 370 Sim-dial at Talbot, near Bournemouth, England . . . 373 Market Cross with Dials, Woodstock, England. From an old print 374 Queen Eleanors Cross, Northants. From an old print. 1760 . 377 Pillar-dial at Martock, Somersetshire, England . . .381 Sun-dial at Branksea Castle, Poole Harbour, England . . 383 Lynn Market Cross, Cheshire, England 386 Market Cross at Carlisle, England. 1682 . . facing 388 Sun-dial on Eastern Gable of Sherborne Abbey . . . 388 Horologium Achaz. 1578. Photographed by Mary M. F. Paschall * facing 393 Base of Horologium Achaz. Photographed by Mary M. F. Paschall . , . . . . . , . 395 Basin of Horologium Achaz. Photographed by Mary M. F. Paschall 396 Quadrant of Christopher Schissler. 1578. In Bodleian Li- brary. Photographed by William A. Man sell fir- 9 Co., London . . . . . . . . . 399 Engraved Band on Quadrant of Christopher Schissler . .401 Inscription on Quadrant of Christopher Schissler . . . 403 Perlachthurm, Augsburg. Dial of Christopher Schissler . 405 Sun-dial Church of Our Lady, Munich 408 Sun-dial at Wroxton Abbey, Oxfordshire, England. With Four Seasons ......... 414 Dragon Gnomon . . . . . . . . .416 Hedge of Empress of China Rose .... facing 416 Chinese Pedestal for Dial 418 Sun-dial at Saffron Walden, Essex ..... 420 Sun-dial at Princeton, New Jersey 42 1 My Four Dials ......... 427 Shield-shaped Vertical Dial. Made by John S. Bailey . . 428 Sun-dial on Ely Cathedral : The Lantern .... 430 Ancient Sun-dial. Owned by author ..... 433 List of Illustrations xvii Sun-dial at Didsbury, England ...... 436 Sun-dial, showing Mean Time. Made by John S. Bailey . 437 Sun-dial in Garden of William Robinson, atithor of the " English Flower Garden" Gravely e Manor, Sussex 1 , England . . * . . . . . . . 440 Sun-dial and Porch of Church, Grateley, Hampshire, England 443 Sun-dial at Chastleton Manor, Oxfordshire, England , . 445 Foreword After the publication in 1901 of my book entitled Old Time Gardens, which contained a chapter upon Sun-dials, / received frequent letters (many of them from strangers), asking about sun-dials, their history, construction, manufacture, and cost; about sun-dials in the past, about sun-dials as existing at present, and above, all expressing a hope both for sun-dials and a sun-dial book in the future. I found that many of my friends were placing sun-dials upon pedestals in their gardens, or upon the walls of their houses, or wished to erect them as memorials, and were eager to learn of all dials. A general interest in them seemed to have risen in America, as it has ever existed in Scotland and England. As I had for many years collected sun-dials in a desultory manner and informa- tion and material in a most assiduous manner, I decided to write this book. Among the sun-dial material were books on dialling, old and new ; drawings and photographs of dials ; and, not less important, a large correspondence with dial owners, those who possessed single sun-dials and those who owned collec- tions of dials. The union of the subject of Roses with that of sun-dials has not been through any relation of one to the other, but simply a placing together of two "garden delights" to use Bacon's term, and with somewhat of the thought that as a dial standing alone in a garden was a bit bare without flowers, so it was likewise in a book. That both are things of senti- xx Foreword ment and charm, with something of that magic which in human beings we term fascination, has helped to make their association and companionship in this book a fitting and happy one. I have been aided in the illustration of this book by the thoughtfulness of friends and the generosity of strangers, who have gathered promptly and faithfully photographs of the substantial and per- manent beauty of sun-dials as they have the more transient charm of the Rose. To Lewis Evans, Esq., of Russell Farm, Watford, England, I am indebted for lavish illustration and exact information to make my chapter on Portable Dials a most important record. A. L. K Morley, Esq., of Great Brington, England, has brought the historical and beautiful sun-dials of Northamptonshire to me in great variety and number. To Messrs. F. Barker 6 Son, London, makers of mathematical instruments, and Messrs. William A. Mansell 6 Co., Lon- don, photographers, I am indebted for prompt, intelligent, and faithful assistance, which no business arrangements are ample to reward. To Horace J. Smith, Esq., and Thomson Willing, Esq., both of Germantown, Pennsylvania, I owe the full list of illustrations of sun-dials from Philadelphia and Germantown and vicinity. H. R. Mitchell, Esq., of Haddonfield, New Jer- sey, and T. S. Robertson, Esq., of Dundee, Scotland, kindly furnished to me many of the drawings and diagrams in these pages. Many have given me single photographs of their sun- dials, or glimpses of their Rose gardens, too many even to name, though I am deeply grateful to each and all. For the chapters upon both the Sun-dial and the Rose as an Emblem, for those upon the Rosicrucians and the .Sun-dial of Ahaz, / read and studied books, pamphlets, and manuscripts by scores ; and, as ever, the treasures of the American Antiquarian Society were of greatest value. In the year 1492 date memorable to Foreword xxi Americans there was printed at the monastery at Zzenna a noble volume, The New Psalter of the Virgin Mary. The border of the first page of the second part of this Psalter is a wood engraving of a splendid scrollwork of Rose branches , buds, and blossoms, of bold and almost architectural device. It was cut on oblong blocks, so it could be used in various shaped places. This fine Rose scroll has been adapted, with but slight alteration, as a border for the title-page and dedication-page of this book. The design suggests to our thought the wonderful Rose border of the Kelmscott Chaucer ; but the Rose sculpture, as it was termed, of the old monkish wood-cutter has more free- dom, and in some indefinable way more character than the much bedoubled Roses of William Morris's design. All the fine decorative capital initials which begin the chapters of this book of Sun-dials and Roses have been taken from ancient volumes, many of them being appropriately old herbals and books on husbandry. In the early printed books the capitals were designed by artists, but unfortunately their names were seldom preserved. Their work was often grotesque, and even prepos- terous, but nevertheless (or perhaps therefore) interesting, and above all the initials were always decorative. The works of Erasmus appeared in special luxury of typography, for Eras- mus was an intimate friend of Frobenius, the celebrated Basle printer. In a splendid book published in Florence in recogni- tion of Erasmus (dated 1527) is the superb series of initial letters commonly known as The Playing Boys. The A of the series is shown on page 426, and is said to be the work of Albert Durer. A fine example of an heraldic capital is the old black- letter H shown on page 23 j, from a book printed in Paris in 1514, at the printing-office of one Ascensius. Letters in white upon a darker dotted ground were much used in France, and xxii Foreword / think the gracefully drawn initial Q in this style of decora- tion shown on page 87 has a distinctly Gallic touch. For a time the pigment-box of the monk or other limner, painter, stainer, or trickster, often added color or gold to the outlines of the wood-cutter, with glowing results. Toward the close of the seventeenth century the fashion of ornamented capital initials abated. In the following century another taste in capi- talization came in ; one is shown in the letter on page 318. The chapter on the Rosicrucians has an initial bearing the mystic symbol of the society. I have taken from these antique books this lovely Rose border and fine capitals to deck this book of Sun-dials and Roses, but I cannot see my pages rejoice in the beautiful line edgings, the powde rings of gold, the margin-minia- tures with which Persian poets adorned their books of Roses, nor can I have the silken paper of flower and fruit tints that they use pale lemon-yellow, light orange, fine nut-brown, clear iris-blue, and violet, orchid, heliotrope, and lilac, and every tint of Rose, since the glare of white paper offends their eye ; nor can I send out my volumes scented with Attar of Roses and Sandal-wood, as were many Persian poems. The copies of the poems of Jami in the Oxford Library, even after four centuries, are fragrant with the original Rose perfumes. Both Sandal- wood and Attar of Roses are far too costly to be used by modern publishers. Once Sandal-wood was free in some amount in Persia to all save beggars ; even an historical author could have Sandal-wood gates to his waiting-room. But he found that the perfume so filled his brain that it diverted him from serious thoughts and composition, and made him liable to " drop into poetry" ; and he sternly had the fragrant portals removed to his harem, where bemused brains did not matter. In our own day we find a case grotesquely analogous. Walter Savage Lan- Foreword xxiii dor, when seated at his desk, fully prepared and eager to write, would be so diverted from his intent by the scent of the wood of his freshly cut lead-pencil that he would sit for hours, motionless, sniffing the Piny odor, writing nothing. But Pine or Sandal-wood, or any other fragrance, is little heeded or valued to-day ; and Attar of Roses is so blended and degraded that we scarcely know the pure Rose perfume. ALICE MORSE EARLE. October, rgos, Brooklyn, New York. Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday CHAPTER I THE CHARM AND SENTIMENT OF SUN-DIALS " A Dial is the Visible Map of Time, till Whose Invention 'twas follie in the Sun to play with a Shadow. It is the Anatomic of the Day and a Scale of Miles for the Jornie of the Sun. It is the silent Voice of Time and without it the Day were dumbe. ... It is ye Book of ye Sun on which he writes the Storie of the Day. Lastly Heaven itself is but a generall Dial, and a Dial it, in a lesser volume." Heliotropum Sciotbericum, ROBERT HEGGE, 1630. HERE are in nature some simple expressions of useful- ness which have a charm that is impossible to de- fine. This charm seems to consist in the direct, the unadorned, and unencum- bered application of shape and form to the reason of their being. They are often primitive objects, sometimes those of ancient races, where each line has been shaped out unconsciously through centuries of use, not with any thought of 2 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday beauty, but to serve distinctly and simply the pur- pose of existence. Such objects are the snow-shoe and the canoe of our North American Indians; absolutely perfect in outline, devoid of all super- fluities, impossible of improvement, they possess in full not only beauty, but the charm to which I refer. An ancient Greek lamp is another exam- ple ; this classic form of lamp was used not alone in ancient Greece, but in scores of other lands, by mediaeval races, and even in humble homes by our own contemporaries. The iron " betty-lamps " of our New England grandmothers, found still in remote New England homes, lamps with hanging chain, small oval body and protruding lip to hold a primitive wick, differ not in single detail or outline from the lamps of ancient Rome and Egypt. House- hold lamps retained this antique useful shape as long as the same domestic mediums of illumination were used, namely, household grease and oil. With the introduction of more lavish means of illumination came varied forms of presentation of artificial light, and the old simplicity of outline of the hanging lamp vanished. The sun-dial is another striking example of the charm of simplicity in form and directness in utility ; its lines and markings are the absolute mathematical expression of the information it gives ; it is set on a decorative pedestal or fixed with ornamentation on a wall simply for convenience of our sight. You may elaborate the lines of the dial-face, and decorate the mounting of the dial, but that does not add to its subtility of charm. You feel that curious inter- Sun-dial at Glamis Castle, Scotland; Seat of the Earl of Strathmore. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 3 est and " drawing unto " in the simplest sun-dial of dull metal fixed on the kitchen window-sill of the humble farm-house, just as you feel it in the won- derful dial of Glamis in old Scotland. This exquisite monumental dial, deemed by many the masterpiece of all dials, may well open the series of illustrations of sun-dials in this book. It stands on the grounds of Glamis Castle, home of tragedy, legend, and romance ; even its picture speaks to us of Macbeth, the shadowy Thane of Glamis, and of the charm and magic of Shakespeare's play. This picture of the dial is better than any descrip- tion ; but it may be noted that the twenty-four facets of the head have each three and some four dials, giving over eighty dials in all. The rampant lions each hold a fine vertical dial, one of which is elliptic in shape, nineteen inches long ; two are square, thir- teen and one-half inches in diameter ; and the fourth is rectangular and is fifteen and one-half inches long. The lions are separated by four beautiful twisted pillars carved in the spiral hollows. The height of the dial is thus divided : Height from ground to place on which the lions stand 3 ft. 7 in. Height of lions . . . . . 5 ft. 2 in. Cornice - V I ft. From top of cornice to upper part of faceted head . 3 ft. 3! in. Facet head . . . . . . . 3 ft. 5^ in. Scrolls and coronet . . ... . . 4 ft. 9 in. Total . . _ . 2 1 ft. 3 in. The width of the octagonal lower step at its base is ten feet and ten inches ; it forms thus, as may be Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday plainly seen, a grand monumental dial, fit for the majestic castle beside which it is reared. This castle is the residence of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore ; and this fine photograph was taken by Lady Maude Bowes-Lyon for this book. The dial is certainly three centuries old, as it ap- pears in a print of the castle previous to the year 1600, and was named in Earl Patrick's Book of Record of a date pre- vious to 1695. The sun-dial has for us an- other charm one that is common to all deeds and in- struments that note the pass- ing of time. In the days of childhood we gathered eagerly the downy seed-balls of the Dandelion, and as we held them aloft we blew upon them with strong young lungs, and called out : " What's the hour - o'- the- day ? " Thus do all children of all lands wherever the Dandelion blows and turns "quite Sun-dial at Balcarres Castle, Fifeshire. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 5 old and gray." Vague was the answer of the bared stem of the Dandelion to us ; and I doubt if we expected to learn from it the time. It might have answered in nearly the words of the old sun-dial motto : Hor a non numero nisi juventas. i COUNT ONLY YOUTHFUL HOURS. We ask the hour with equal intentness of the long-legged garden-spider and of the grasshopper : " Grandfather, grandfather gray, Tell us the time-o'-the-day." We had thus early in life the universal instinct of humanity, a longing to count the hours and min- utes of passing time ; and we never wearied of the trial. How full of significance also is the hour-glass, how classic its shape ; what a charm has it for the child just as it had in the childhood of life for ancient peoples. With what exquisite perfection of simplicity has Tennyson, in his In Memoriam, characterized the succession of marking the passing of Time by hour- glass, sun-dial,. and clock ! " For every grain of sand that runs And every space of shade that steals And every kiss of toothed wheels And all the courses of the sun." The sun-dial is a creature of equal sentiment and sense. Its good sense is proven by its being so perfectly satisfying, so absolute. You may deem its sphere a restricted one, its message a short one ; but it fulfils its duty, and tells its story to perfection Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday it is satisfying. And this is no small thing when we recall how few objects there are in this world, whether formed by nature or shaped by art, that are satisfy- ing. Try to name them ! the perfect, the wholly satisfying things you know ; there a few books and alas ! how few they are ; and some pic- tures I can count them fartooquickly. Roses and Fritil- laries are as abso- lutely satisfying as the sun-dial, and happily many trees. A Ural Mountain amethyst, yes, and two cocker-spaniels, friends of mine ; once in a lifetime a gown ; I suppose ar- chitects could name some buildings for this list; and some folk may have had a perfect horse ; and I know a few per- fect pieces of domestic furniture, of silver, of china. But nearly all sun-dials please us absolutely cer- tainly all simple and direct ones, and I think it well worth while to exist merely to be satisfying if noth- ing more. But the sun-dial is a thing of deep sentiment. Sun-dial at Kelburne House, Ayrshire Seat of the Earl of Glasgow. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 7 All feel the beauty and wonder of the thought that Time, that most intangible, most fleeting, most won- derful of conditions, is marked so fittingly in its passing by a shadow almost equally intangible; and that the noblest evidences of creation the stars in the heavens would be to us invisible and unknown save for their revelation through the shadow of the earth. Thus are great truths revealed to us, not by great Light but by Darkness a lesson of Life. The Quaker poet Bernard Barton felt the senti- ment of the sun-dial ; it accorded well with his temperament and his faith. Here are his noble verses : " With still more joy to thee I turn, Meet horologe for Bard to love ; Time's sweetest flight from thee I learn, Whose lore is borrowed from above. " I love in some sequestered nook Of antique garden to behold The page of thy sun-lighted book Its touching homily unfold. " On some old terrace wall to greet Thy form and sight which never cloys ; J Tis more to thought than drink or meat, To feeling than Art's costliest toys. " These seem to track the path of time By vulgar means which man has given. Thou simple, silent, and sublime But shows thy shadowy sign from Heaven." " Simple, silent, and sublime " in its silence the sun-dial is strong. There is such severity, such dignity in the noise- 8 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday less marking of the flight of Time ; no irritating tick- ing, no striking of the hours, no sounding of bells. Silently as surely, the hours pass away, and the day with even measure balances its periods till the setting sun leaves a darkness equal to the silence. " The sly shadow steals away upon the dial and the quickest eye can discover no more, but that it is gone," wrote Glanville. There is an element of mystery in this imperceptible flight, and all mystery is alluring ; you may note the swaying pendulum of the clock, or you may hear the ticking of the watch, you may see the tiny stream of sand of the hour- glass, but you can see no movement of the shadow ; " nice," said Lamb, " as an evanescent cloud or the first arrests of sleep." How vast, how wonderful is the thought of Life, of the passing of Time ! How crude, how paltry our definitions ! How petty our explanations ! Only by symbolism can these things be expressed ! In the Talmud are these fine lines : " Life is a passing shadow, says the Scripture. Is it the shadow of a tower ? of a tree ? a shadow that prevails for a while ? No, it is the shadow of a bird in his flight away flies the bird, and there is neither bird nor shadow." We cannot hold this shadow, if we would, but its passing is shown to us on the sun-dial. And on the dial-face alone does this passing seem irrevocable unceasing. You may refuse to turn the hour- glass and thus deceive yourself that Time flies not. You can cease to fill the water-clpck and let the weights of your clock run down until its hands turn The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 9 not but you cannot check the course of the sun's shadow. Wonderful as is this thought of the present of the dial, its past is more profound. " The shadow on the dial's face That steals from day to day With slow unseen, unceasing pace Moments and months and years away, This shadow which in every clime Since light and motion first began Hath held its course sublime." " Since light and motion first began " : when on the Fourth Day of the Creation, God said, u Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. "And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth ; and it was so." And the dial was so also ; the trunks of the trees were gnomons, there was light, there was motion, there were shadows, and therefore there were sun- dials. As Charles Lamb said of a dial, " Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise." Certain inanimate objects have a semi-human closeness to us. I do not by this refer to objects with which we have intimate and happy associations, such as a chair in which loved ones have sat, a desk at which we ourselves have long written ; but I fnean that an inherent quality is possessed by some objects which even at first sight makes them seem almost human. I always feel this quality in mile- io Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday stones and in old windmills ; of course we all have known deep attachment for certain books, which is natural enough, since they have spoken so plainly to us. Many musicians know this feeling for and Moot Hall, with Sun-dial, Aldeburgh, England. about their musical instruments, and workmen often have it and always should have it for their tools. Many feel this with clocks and watches, and I am deeply sensible of it in a sun-dial. Of course, in the dial, it may be partly because the dial has a The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 1 1 voice, its lines and numerals speak if it has no motto ; but it should always bear a motto or in- scription. This at once gives it a nearness to humanity; it is our kinsman, our fellow-countryman; it speaks our language. The pointing hand of the guide board gives to it a semi-human appearance ; the simple words of the mile-stone make us ever interested in it; all inscriptions draw us close to the thing inscribed. I have told often of my love of mottoes, legends, inscriptions, notes inscribed everywhere. We have an orchard seat, and such a seat among fruit trees has a fresh pleasure for every spring morn and summer day. On the yellow pine surface that forms the back of this seat, a friend has lettered in heavy ink, which we renew in blackness each spring, these lines from Wordsworth, which the poet might have written with this very orchard spread around him : " Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head With brightest sunshine round me spread Of Spring's unclouded weather; In this sequester' d nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard seat ! And flowers and birds once more to greet, My last year's friends together." Now what is the result of that inscription ? It is this : the commonplace orchard seat was made at once a different being ; it was given a voice and that voice was the voice of a friend. It did far more than to speak to us of the friend who transcribed 12 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday ' . the lines ; it brought to us Wordsworth, and his orchard seat, and then the beauties of the Lake Coun- try ; it made travellers think of the birds seen there ; and it spoke to us of many old friends who had sat with us in the orchard. Thus it is with the motto on a sun-dial ; it ever speaks, a different message perhaps to each who reads it, but an inspiring mes- sage, one sometimes of great moment. A motto of wonderful power is the few words from the New Testament, FOR THE NIGHT COM- ETH. In Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or English this motto is seen. To the thoughtful mind it ever recalls the solemn scene where the warning words were spoken, our Saviour's admonition to prepare for eternity. It spoke with infinite force to Sir Walter Scott when he read it on his dial at Abbots- ford, urging him to incessant work. The story of his dial is told in his Life by Lockhart, and the curi- ous fact that the Greek words of its inscription were incorrect. The presentment of his dial is shown on page 13 ; the photograph was not taken from the original dial, but from an exact reproduction of it in the garden at Hillside, Menand's, New York. The original dial was sadly worn and disordered when it was drawn for Mr. Douglas the publisher. He had it repaired and reset, and had this reproduc- tion made. It is exact as to lettering as well as shape, impresses having been taken from the dial. Another thought comes forcibly in the words, FOR THE NIGHT COMETH, the absolute cutting off of all power of marking the passing of time through the shadowing of the dial by night. It is an im- The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 13 Sun-dial at Hillside, Menand's, New York. Rossetti pressive thought, the death of a day. thus expressed it : " Slowly fades the sun from the wall Till day lies dead on the sun-dial." The sentiment and beauty of the sun-dial ap- pealed to and charmed many a poet. I have gath- 14 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday ered in my Common-place Book a florilege of scores, almost hundreds of verses, relating to the sun-dial. Some of these sentiments are most tender and touch- ing ; and with the spirit of most of them I can sympathize. I give the opening verses of lines written by Hugh Miller to show the notions he ^wished to express, though they convey not a single word of my thought of a sun-dial : " Gray dial-stone, I fain would know What motive placed thee here Where darkly opes the frequent grave And rests the frequent bier ; Ah, bootless creeps the dusky shade Slow o'er thy figured plain : When mortal life has passed away Time counts his hours in vain. " I think of those that raised thee here, Of those beneath thee laid, And ponder if thou wert not raised In mockery o'er the dead. Ah, never sure could mortal man, Whate're his age or clime, Thus raise in mocking o'er the dead The stone that measures time." There still stands at the old home of Hugh Miller an ornate dial-stone (it will be noted that he never says sun-dial) which he cut for amusement in a period of recovery from illness ; it is near another dial, an ancient one which he dug out of the earth when he was a boy, and which had originally been set up in the old Castle garden of Cromarty. By the side of this ancient dial Miller first saw the young girl who afterward became his wife. The Angel with Sun-dial on Cathedral, Genoa, Italy. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 15 dial-verses were written in early youth ; an age when most poets love to write upon death and gloomy moral lessons. Perhaps had he written them after he met his sweetheart, they might have been more natural. However, the chief reason why I do not like them is that they are not poetry ; they form a perfect example of Dr. Edward Everett Hale's amus- ing method given in his advice How to Write, an exercise of " capping verses." A true lover of Charles Lamb asserts that he ever finds in Lamb the best thoughts on any subject whatever it may be ; thus, upon sun-dials he would believe that the ideal sentiment was expressed by Lamb in his Essay on the Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. It is indeed inexpressibly fine in poetic feeling far beyond any poem we have ; and de- serves quotation in full by all who write on 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 reve- lations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding cor- respondence with the fountain of light ! How would 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 ! "Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand Steal from its figure, and no pace perceived. " What a dead thing is a clock, with its pondrous em- bowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like struc- ture and silent heart-language of the old dial. i6 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday u It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business use be suspended by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sun- set, of temperance and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the meas- ure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd 4 carved it out quaintly in the sun,'and turning philosopher by the very occupation, pro- vided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones." I have ever been struck with one expression of Lamb in writing of the sun-dial ; he called it " a simple altar - like struc- ture." It is partly the classic shape of the sun-dial its altar-like form which charms us; and a proof to me of the wisdom of simplicity in outline for every dial-pillar is in the fact that the simpler forms evoke the greater senti- ment. Dante's Amor. By Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 17 I find that half the folk who speak of sun-dials like to quote Austin Dobson's verses on a sun-dial, and worthy of quotation they are, and full of sentiment : " 'Tis an old dial dark with many a stain. In Summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom, Tricked in the Autumn with the yellow rain, And white in Winter like a marble tomb. And round about its gray, time-eaten brow Lean letters speak a worn and shattered row : ' I am a Shade a Shadowe too, art thou. I mark the Time. Saye ! Gossip ! Dost thou soe ? ' The last couplet has been used as a motto on several sun-dials both in England and America. On a dial at Grey Friars Churchyard, Stirling, is a similar motto : I AM A SHADOW, SO ART THOU. I MARK TIME DOST THOU? Rossetti felt deeply the significance and charm of the sun-dial. He wrote these beautiful lines : " Stands it not by the door ? Love's Hour ? Its eyes invisible Watch till the dark thin-thrown shade Be born, yea, till the journeying line be laid Upon the point that notes the spell." What mystery the presence of a dial adds to his beautiful painting of Eeata Beatrix, where a hori- zontal dial on the widow-sill marks to Beatrix the coming of her wonderful death-trance. On page i8 Sun-ciials and Roses of Yesterday 1 6. I have given a reproduction of the angel in Rossetti's beautiful pencil sketch called Dante s ^ Amor. This angel holds an ancient Saxon sun-dial. Many of the cathedrals on the Continent have carved angels on brackets or corbels holding sun- dials. A beautiful angel with s dial at Chartres is here shown ; also facing page 14 a still older carv- ing upon the Genoa ca- thedral. These figures offer wonderful suggestion for a memorial window- dial, such as is described in the succeeding chap- ter. As an object of interest and romance in a garden, the sun-dial has a strong hold on our sentiment; we have seen that artists have painted it and poets have written of it. As a mystery to childhood, a trysting-place for faithful lovers, a sad reminder to a deserted sweetheart ; Angel with Sun-dial, Cathedral, , . r ,- Charts. a sub J ect for moralizing The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 19 for the preacher, and of reminiscence to the aged gardener, its place in pictures either in print or on canvas is a permanent one. Of all spots for a garden-dial the focus of a' formal garden is the most suited ; that focus may be the centre, or where sev- eral paths converge, or in a recessed end ; but wher- ever it is, the dial should be the point of high interest. From its very nature it is (unless miserably hidden) that point of interest. The poetical suggestion of a sun-dial never could be more fully shown than in the fine picture opposite page 20 of dial and man ; for the man is the great English artist, George F. Watts, who has given to us a conception of the passing of Time and of Death which has ennobled Art, and robbed Death of its horror. And it is a beautiful thought that his dial bears the motto of the artist's life THE UTMOST FOR THE HIGHEST. I can never adequately express my gratitude for the kindly and thoughtful gift of this photograph taken solely with intent to gratify an unknown author across the seas, through the timely sending for the illustration of her book, this counterfeit presentment both of artist and dial. This dial, with its faceted head of antique design, was made for Mr. Watts at the Arts and Crafts Association of his own village a village industry where modelling in terra cotta is taught and done. Through its inherent characteristics of pictu- resqueness, symbolism, and sentiment, the day of the dial in England has been a long one ; but in our new world we have not always regarded sentiment in our surroundings, and sun-dials have been in 2O Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday retirement. In our cities they have vanished. I did not for years, until about six years ago, know a sun-dial upon a building in New York or Brooklyn, save one a stone's throw from my own home. By the side of Grace Church, in Brooklyn, there runs down to the open gardens on the beautiful Heights which overhang the wharves of the harbor, a short and quiet street called Grace Court. Dwelling- houses are built facing the north on one side of the Court, while on the other side are no houses ; and there is a fine expanse of adjoining gardens in the rear of the row of houses which face on Remsen Street an unusual expanse for city streets. In those gardens and around the church there lived in our crowded city, from early spring till midwinter, with life as free as in his native wilds, a great white cockatoo, who had escaped from some South Amer- ican ship as it lay at the wharf under the Heights. Hiding in the trees in the daytime, and perhaps in the church tower, he tapped at friendly windows at night, like a white-winged ghost, confident of the welcome and food which he always found ; some- times he screamed out harshly in angry hunger, and sometimes he spoke, as he tapped, foreign words of greeting or comment taught him by the sailor who had brought him to this port. Into one of these gardens stretches out an artistic two-storied extension of fine brick and terra-cotta walls ; and in the apex of the gable, facing the direct south, is a large bronze sun-dial of triangular shape. It can from its prominent position be plainly seen by passers-by and church attendants ; and it has George F. Watts, R.A., seated in his Garden by his Sun-dial, Limnerslease, Compton, England. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 21 been a never ceasing source of pleasure to me for many years to note how closely it corresponds to clock time. I never fail to glance at it in passing. I used to hope to see the cockatoo wisely bending over it ; and that he would croak out to me over the gardens, "What's the time-o'-the-day ? " The owner of this sun-dial when so few cared for sun-dials, and many had never seen one, was Samuel Bowne Duryea, Esq. ; and he put his fancy for sun- dials to practical use, laying one around the flag-staff at Robin's Island, tracing the analemma in colored stones, where it was an object of interest to all who saw it. It is strange that the sun-dial should have been so generally neglected ; our patriotism should have made us cherish it 'as an emblem closely connected with the early material prosperity of the United States. I have told at some length in my book en- titled Old Time Gardens, of the interesting presence of the sun-dial in our national history ; but I must refer to it again here. In the first coinage of the United States a sun-dial made frequent appearance. A design of a sun-dial was on the dollar which was cast in silver, then in bronze, then in pewter; it appeared on the copper cent and was printed on a paper note of the value of one-third of a dollar. This sun-dial bore two inscriptions, one Fugio, the other, MIND YOUR BUSINESS. The word Fugio gave a name to this currency, and the pieces were known as the "Fugio dollar," the " Fugio cent," and the " Fugio note." The cent was also called the "Franklin cent," and is so known by collectors to-day. This was through 22 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday jflj*- Franklin's connection with the coinage. The " Fugio note" is here shown, also a later use of a similar sun- dial design on a local note issued by the city of New York. It will be recalled that Franklin had known much of the postal service of Great Britain before he NE THIRO Fugio Note. became postmaster-general for the American colonies under the crown. And he had lived long in London, where on the general post-office was a sun-dial with the motto, BE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS. I have never The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 23 doubted that it was entirely Franklin's taste which supplied to our new nation the sun-dial design and the motto, MIND YOUR BUSINESS. In this form, and the one on the London post-office, and in the form, BEGONE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS, it was found on several English sun-dials. The one in the Inner Temple owed its motto to a surly reply given to a dial-maker who asked at the Temple library, as he had been instructed, for " the motto for the new sun- The Corporation of tte City of ~8evr Yorkin-anvise to paythe Bearer SIX \J CENTS 3 6 % $ New-York 26th December, 1S14 fitk" ^<* By Order of tf^poration, (&<&6Sc**.&t, ^ 6 o^v *^ , D o *. T 4 W Mercem p^, 93 Gold St ^ Six Cent Note of City of New York, dial, sir." cc Begone about your business!" was the testy answer of the only inmate of the library. And a very good motto it seemed to the dial-maker, and the Benchers also, after it was put up. In the eighteenth century dials were an article of common manufacture in America, though I think never in large numbers. Seldom do we find them named in old tradesmen's lists. I have seen fifty- eight different articles enumerated in one pewterer's list, but sun-dials were not among them. Perhaps the fact that each dial was limited in its sphere could not be used save in its own latitude hin- 24 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday dered their production. In England and on the Continent people lived in close-lying towns; in Eng- land the variation of latitude could not be vast ; but in the new world all was different. Distances were great. And those distances were chiefly in latitude, up and down the coast. Therefore, portable dials would be sought rather than fixed ones. There still exist in America, however, old soapstone moulds used for the casting of pewter sun-dials. Ellicott Sun-dial. The steatite mould of George Ellicott, of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is in good condition. He was a well-known maker of sun-dials and high case-clocks, a son, I believe, of the engineer Ellicott who did so much of the laying out of the Federal city of Washington, and the District of Columbia. Here is a pewter dial with base and gnomon in one piece made recently in this cast. It is about five inches square ; is marked " 1779 G. E." The hours are in Roman numerals and " Lat 40 " is on the side of the gnomon. I own a much-worn pewter dial The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 25 with circular base, bearing the same initials and date. It was given me by a friend who purchased it in Bucks County and paid for the tradition that it was made by Ellicott, as it undoubtedly was. I find that to many the sun-dial is an emblem and voice of some great sentiment or hope in life, or a distinct reminder of some scene or incident, often of childhood. Let me tell the story of Harriet Martineau's sun-dial as an example ; it can best be given in words from her Autobiography. She went with her sisters and brothers when she was seven years old to visit her grandfather. On the way thither the five children were amused by being told to guess what they would find standing in the mid- dle of the garden. On her arrival, rudely ignoring the happy welcome of the tearful old people, she insisted on seeing " the thing in the garden.' 1 She writes : " I could make nothing of it when I saw it. It was a large heavy stone sun-dial. It is worth this much mention for it was of immeasurable value to me. I could see its face only by raising myself on tiptoe on its step ; and there, with my eyes level on the plate, did I watch and ponder, day after day, painfully forming my first clear conceptions of Time amidst a confusion of notions of day and night, and of the seasons, and of the weather. I loved that dial with a sort of superstition, and when nearly forty years after, I built a house for myself at Ambleside, my strong wish was to have this very dial for the platform below the terrace. But it was not to be had." Another dial, however, she did have, and the story of its setting up runs thus, in her words : 26 Sun-dials and J^oses of Yesterday u A friend in London who knew my desire for a sun-dial and heard that I could not obtain the old one which had told me so important a story in my childhood, presented me with one to stand on the grass under my terrace wall and above the quarry which was already beginning to fill with shrubs and wild flowers. The design of the dial is beautiful being a copy of an ancient font ; and in grey granite, to accord with the grey-stone house above it. The motto was an important affair. A neighbour had one so perfect in its way as to eclipse a whole class, the class of Bible-sayings about the shortness of life and the flight of time, ' The Night Cometh.' In asking my friends for suggestions, I told them of this, and they agreed that we could not approach this motto in the same direction. Some good Latin ones, to which I inclined, were put aside because I was besought, for what I considered good reasons, to have nothing but English. It has always been my way to ask advice very rarely, and then to follow it. But on this occasion I preferred a motto of my own to all that were offered in English ; and Wordsworth gave it his emphatic approbation. ' Come ! Light ! Visit me ! ' stands emblaz- oned on my dial ; and it has ever been, I believe, as frequent and impressive a monitor to me as ever was any dial which bore warning of the fugacious nature of life and time." I think no one can read these fine and forceful extracts without feeling a deep interest in this dial, and I am glad to present here the artistic photograph of it sent me by Miss Martineau's niece. The sun-dial in the garden of Sir William Hum- phrey, Great Brington, Northamptonshire, has the same speaking motto, COME LIGHT ! VISIT ME. The great beauty of this dial-pedestal, and its lovely setting of tuberous Begonias is shown on page 29. Sun-dial of Harriet Martineau. The Knoll. Ambleside. England. The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 27 To me the sun-dial ever recalls two incidental scenes in my life. The first, through some curious psychological twist, is one in which a sun-dial took no part whatever ; it was the only time in my life when I felt alone in the world. To few people and but seldom is it given to feel utterly alone with nothing but the sun and the earth. Richard Jeffries, in that perfect prose poem The Story of my Heart, tells of the pantheism of the hills ; of his sense of loneness on a hilltop, that the earth held him and pressed him and spoke to him, and he felt an emotion that was as if his whole life were poured out in a prayer. It was in mid- summer that a similar sense came to me as to that strange creature, Emily Dickinson : " There came a day at summer's full Entirely for me ; I thought that such were for the saints, Where revelations be." I had driven with my father to a remote farm, and we had gone into a half-evergreen pasture to gather from the abundance of exquisite Azaleas, when my father recalled that he had left an over- garment at the empty farm-house adown the hill, and he drove back to secure it, leaving me alone flower-gathering in the rocky hill-pasture. There was not a house in sight, for an edging of fine old pine woods surrounded the pasture, and the tall tree-spires cut it off from the rest of the world and left it high on the hilltop, and the road thither was scarce more than an overgrown lane and soon 28 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday vanished into the trees. I had as I sat there wait- ing, a distinct impression, as did Jeffries, that I was alone in the world. My father would never return, I should never see mortal face again ; and I did not care to. I was so filled with the beauty of the scene, the perfume, the song of birds, above all the great heat and glow of that radiant sun of June that I was possessed with a sort of obsession ; an absolutely pagan sense of sun-worship and of the isolated com- pleteness of that beautiful moment and I felt no desire for life beyond, either in this world or the next ; though, as the old poet Vaughan said, " I felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness." All my thoughts and senses seemed emancipated. I was conscious to the keenest degree of what Shake- speare termed " my glassy essence." I cannot, of course, feel thus whenever I stand by a sun-dial ; but the dial always recalls this scene to my mind. It speaks with no uncertain voice of that after- noon when I was alone in the New England hill- pasture and in the whole world. The second scene is not so remote in my life ; it was nearly fifteen years ago that I was shown a friend's sun-dial ; one of the few garden-dials then to be found in America. I saw it on one of those strangely warm and beautiful days which we have sometimes during the first weeks in April in New England, an April which is often bleak as the first of March, and not wholly absolved from dread of snow flurries. These beautiful days of April are The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 29 like none other ; for the sun is so burning at mid- day and there is such a pervasive feeling of ten- tative greenness, though nothing is really green. I have shown this atmosphere to a wonderful degree for black and white in an illustration on Sun-dial of Sir William Humphrey, Bart., Great Brington, North- amptonshire. page 155 of my Old Time Gardens in a Lilac pic- ture entitled Opyn-tide, the Thought of Spring " Whenne that flowres think on blowen." On such a day we suddenly find that there are Ladies' Delights in bloom as well as Snowdrops, and the jo Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday quick ear catches the buzz of bees, ever welcome and happy sound after months of snow and silence in the garden. There is an old Chinese saying, " Ere Man is aware That the Spring is here The Flowers have found it out." And we can add, " The bees have found that the flowers are out." On this day in Opyn-tide we fol- lowed the loved sound of these humming bees around a Lilac corner, and there they were, sur- rounding the sun-dial, bumping against it in their heavy, benumbed first flight. And there open so wide in the hot sunshine that their glowing petals seemed fairly reflexed to the base of the stems, not only open but bent back to drink in the sunshine were scores of beautiful purple and golden and snowy Crocus blossoms, planted in affection that the sun-dial might have the first flowering of spring. There, by the sun-dial and the shining Crocus- cups, came to me a line of rare Ben Jonson's, " The World may find the Spring by following her," a line which might have been written for my mother. With such inner light did she know where flowers grew whether in garden, grove, or meadow, so constantly was her path filled with flowers, that they seemed to throng lovingly around her rather than that she went to search for them. Here was she wont to go !~ and here ! and here ! Just where these daisies, pinks, and violets, grow, The world may find the Spring by following her. And where she went, the flowers took thickest root." The Charm and Sentiment of Sun-dials 31 She ever gathered in gentle triumph the first- lings of spring, the earliest Snowdrops, the little stunted Ladies' Delights, the half-frozen spires of Scilla. And she ever spied, ere we deemed them out of the frozen ground, the first glint of yellow Crocus. So as I stood by this dial I had a picture in my heart ; the one which ever comes to me now as I stand by a garden-dial. I could see my mother's eager, bright-eyed, smiling face, as she leaned over the Crocus bed and listened to the murmurous hum of the bees as they buzzed, half-chilled, from flower to flower. " How do they know that winter is gone," she said, " when we scarce know it ourselves? Where have they been throughout the snow ? From whence do they come ? How do they know who told them that here in my garden these purple and yellow cups are opened for them ? " " Ah, far away in some serener air The eyes that loved them see a heavenly dawn," and I sigh as I turn from the sun-dial, but I read its motto : Lux et Umbra Vicissim^ sed semper Amor LIGHT AND SHADOW BY TURNS, BUT ALWAYS LOVE. CHAPTER II NOON-MARKS, SPOT-DIALS, WINDOW-DIALS "The learned line showeth the city's hour." Motto on Sun-dial in Milan. " Little sun upon the ceiling Ever moving, ever stealing Moments, minutes, hours away. May no shade forbid thy shining While the heavenly sun declining Calls us to improve the day." Motto on Ceiling- dial at Theobald's " Whilst Phoebus on me shines Then view my shades and lines." Motto on Manz Dial. WONDER whether you, my gentle reader, have ever read a book entitled Mar- garet, which was published just half a century ago. Its author was Reverend Syl- vester Judd, a New England minister of severest Puritan rearing and environment. He says in the curious " author's note " which forms a preface, that he spent in writing it over ten years ; meaning by that the hard-won hours of leisure of a decade 32 tXO c DJ ixo c W Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 33 of the life of a New England " painful preacher.'' The first part of the book offers, without doubt, the most valuable picture which exists of domestic life in a small New England community in the years that " take our country as it emerges from the Revolution," and for half a century thereafter ; not a grandly rounded picture as a whole, but a photographic presentation of details. On the sin- gular charm of the book I do not dwell, as all are not sensible of it. The author says in his fanciful "phantasmagorical" first chapter or introduction : " The child is MARGARET, of whom we have many things to say, and whom we hope to reveal more perfectly to you. So far as this book is concerned, she is for you all as much as if she were your own child ; and if you cared anything about her when you did not know her, we desire that your regards may not subside when you do know her, even if she be not your own child ; and we dedicate this memoir of her to ALL who are interested in her and care to read about her." By the engaging simplicity of this introduction a spell is thrown on many readers. The author said in a later edition that he had been called "unequal, grotesque, mermaiden, abrupt" and he was called so with truth, though I scarcely am sure what his adjective " mermaiden " means ; the book is certainly whimsical and capricious, for the last part portrays as unnatural a picture of life as the first two parts are true. It is all quaint, however, in the truest sense of that (of late) overworked term. The book always seems to me to have been composed under a certain 34 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday inspiration, an obsession of some spirit of the past. Of course the fact that it was ten years in the writing thereof would not carry out my theory; we always think of true inspiration in the form of a tour de force. As a valuable depository of ancient words, phrases, usages, and things, of terms and expressions of colo- nial days, it should be studied page by page and line upon line, by every historical writer, whether of the drama or of definitions in the dictionary, to which, indeed, it has contributed much valuable evidence. I turn naturally to Margaret to find whether sun- dials were in common use in New England after the Revolution ; here is a bit of a scene in an opening chapter, entitled, "Work and Beauty; an Impres- sion of the Real," it is but a simple asking of the time-o'-the-day : u The child Margaret sits in the door of her house on a low stool with a small wheel, winding spools, ' quilling * for her mother, who, in a room near by, is mounted in a loom, weaving and smoking ; the fumes of her pipe min- gling with the whizz of the shuttle and the jarring of the lathe and the clattering of treadles. From a windle the thread is conducted to the quills, and buzz, buzz, goes Margaret's wheel, while a gray squirrel, squatted on her shoulder, inspects the operation with profound gravity. u ' Look up the chimney, child,' says the mother, ' and see what time it is.' u ' I don't know how,' replies Margaret. u ' I suppose we must get the Master to learn you your a b c's in this matter,' rejoined the mother. c When the sun gets in one nick, it is ten o'clock ; when it reaches the stone that bouges out there, it is dinner time. How many quills have you done ? ' Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 35 " 'The basket is full, and the box besides. Chilion said I might go and sail with him.' " ' We have a great deal to do. Miss Gisborne's flannel is promised the last of the week, and it must be drawn in to- morrow. I want you to clean the skans ; there is a bunch of lucks down cellar, bring them up ; get some plantain and dandelion on the smooth for greens ; you must pick over these beans, put some kindlers under the pot, then you may go.' ' Now ! There is a half page of plainest descrip- tion of the simplest home-life ; yet almost every line, certainly every sentence, contains a word or phrase, or refers to a deed as obsolete and as abso- lutely incomprehensible to a New England country child to-day, as would be a sun-dial to him, or as was the time-marking of the open chimney-place to Margaret. I venture to assert, also, that half of my readers will possess a like ignorance. Nowhere throughout the book is a sun-dial referred to ; and to me this proof is absolute of their rarity. If there had been a sun-dial, Margaret would certainly have run to it. Nor in the extraordinary Boston to which Margaret fled in her shadowed girlhood was there a sun-dial in the Wiswell garden ; nor was there one in the wholly artificial garden and surprising home created for her as a wife. One of the simplest devices by which the midday hour was made known to dwellers in rural homes earlier than Margaret's day was a noon-mark. The dweller in town or village had the noon bell from the church steeple, but on nearly every farm-house was a noon-mark, usually by a frequented door or window. 36 Sun-dials and, Roses of Yesterday I have seen them many a time on the threshold of a barn, at the kitchen doorstep, or outside the pantry. Country folk grew very skilful in telling the relative time from a noon-mark. I knew one old woman who, by her kitchen noon-mark, could tell the hours from ten to four without a variation of four minutes, which is in general all that would be ex- pected from a watch from a woman's watch. Noon-marks have been set in the form of a line of colored pebbles in well-laid earth or cement at the base of some stationary pole or flagstaff. We have them in several of our "Homes" or refuges for life-wrecked sailors and life-beaten soldiers. To whatever country we wander we find among all uncivilized peoples this vertical pole fixed in the ground as a primitive gnomon. In India and other Asiatic lands the natives are wise in reading the hours of this simple dial, making it serve as an exact chronometer. The Labrador Indians when on the hunt stalk on in advance of the train with their arms ; while the women, heavily laden with provi- sions and means of shelter drag along slowly after. When the lords and masters begin to think of food-time, or wish in any way to leave some guide as to their progress for the squaws, they thrust an upright stick or spear in the snow, and draw in the snow the exact line of the shadow then cast. The women, toiling painfully along, note the spear, and the progress of the shadow, and know closely the difference of time. They know, too, whether they dare to linger for a few minutes' rest, or if they must hastily catch stick or spear and wearily hurry on. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 37 . In Upper Egypt the hours for work on a water- wheel are still fixed by primitive sun-dials which are scarce more than noon-marks. One of these sun-dials is made by extending a maize or dhurra stalk north and south on two forked uprights. At the side are set in the earth pegs which evenly divide the space between the sunrise and sunset shadows of this dhurra stalk. In the other dial the gnomon is a vertical stick. Often the pegs are nearly covered by the soil, so firmly are they pressed in, in order to avoid being moved by the feet of cattle or men. The space between two pegs is called an alka from an Arabic root meaning to hang or hitch on. The harnessing of a bullock to a water-wheel is merely the hitching on of a loop of harness over a hook. To the question, What do you do when the shadow reaches this peg P the answer always came, " We hitch on another bullock." These sun-dials are con- structed entirely upon observation, with no scientific knowledge. An English scientist was once asked by the celebrated Sheik Daig, as a test of his learning, to construct a sun-dial. While the Englishman was making full explanations of latitudes, horizontal planes, etc., the Sheik abruptly interrupted by thrust- ing his spear in the ground and marking therefrom on the ground the exact lines of shadow which would fall at certain hours of prayer. Though this primitive time-teller still is used, there are no ancient Egyptian sun-dials known ; nor is it anywhere stated in ancient writings that the Egyptians used their obelisks as gnomons. At Settle in Yorkshire, England, rises a hill 38 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Natural Sun-dial at Settle, Yorkshire, England. called Castleberg. Until about a hundred years ago a great mass of rock on that hill formed a natural sun-dial. It is shown rather crudely on this page in a reproduction of an old engraving, given in Smith's Old Yorkshire. It is thus described in the letters of Bishop Pococke, written in 1750, and now edited for the Camden Society : u Crossing the Ribble, we came in a quarter of a mile to Settle, a little town situated under a high rocky hill ; on the lower part of which, four stones being placed, they serve as a sun-dial to the country for three or four miles southward, as they know what hour of the morn it is the shadow comes to them from nine to twelve." Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 39 The stones have disappeared, but the memory of the sun-dial still lingers as well as the drawings and engravings of it. Many " natural " sun-dials exist. In Ireland as late as 1813 very few persons owned clocks and watches, and each settlement had some natural dial by which the nine watches of the day were shown by the sun's passage over certain moun- tain-peaks, or over set pyramids of stones if the natural formations did not afford a suitable object as a marking place. In Norway similar modes have been used to mark the time. Simpler shadow-marks are known to many dwellers in isolated homes ; and I well recall the deploration I heard some years ago in a New England village because a certain great pine tree which had cast a much-consulted noon- mark had fallen in a storm. Since the year 1792 an obelisk has stood in the Piazza Monte Citorio at Rome. It has had a varied history, having been lost to sight for many years. Its entire service in casting a noon-mark, after it was first brought from Egypt, is thus told by old Pliny : " As for that Obelisk that stands as a gnomon in Mars Field, Augustus Caesar devised a wonderfull means that it should serve to mark out the noontide, with the length of day and night according to the Shadowes which the Sun doth yeeld by it ; for hee placed underneath at the foot of the said Obelisk, according to the bignes and height thereof, a pavement of broad stone, wherein a man might know the fixt hour at mid-day, when the shadow was equal to the Obelisk ; and how little by little according to certain Rules (which are lines of brasse inlaid within the said stone) the days of increase or decrease." 4O Sun-dials and ; Roses of Yesterday Many noon-marks in foreign edifices are interest- ing; one at the church of St. Petronio, Bologna, is 220 feet in length and was traced in 1653. Another is at St. Sulpice in Paris. At Salisbury Cathedral a perpendicular'meridian line has been marked on the north boundary wall of the Close. The spire of the cathedral serves as a gnomon and throws its shadow at noon. The word Meredies is engraved inside the line. When the city of Albany had as a mayor a man of parts, Hon. John Boyd Thatcher, he caused to be placed in front of the City Hall a carefully traced brass noon-mark, or, more properly speaking, a meridian line. This serves to invite a vast number of inquiries and to elicit some surprising answers; one being that it " marked the end of a telephone " ; another that it marked the boundary of an Indian grant ; another from a boy who said in all serious- ness that the mayor put it in for the boys to take " cat slides " on a cat-slide being, I must explain to those who know not, a bit of clean ice on a city street whereon a boy yes, and a man, too can by a slight run have impetus to slide swiftly and happily on one or both feet to the very end. The brass meridian line serves so well this purpose, it cannot be wondered that the boy assumed it to be its only reason for being. I would like to see these fine brass meridan lines much more frequent than we do on the floor of broad vestibules, of open porches, of large plazas, of paved terraces ; wherever the clear sun rays can shine and prove the use of the noon-mark ; and in Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 41 one place I should like to see a noon-mark which would be of world-wide importance at Wash- ington. I beg to call the attention of the Government of the United States and the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, to an opportunity of easily making the finest sun-dial in the entire world, or if not that, the finest noon-mark. The Washington Monument, with its superb shaft 555 feet in height, most glorious of all gnomons, traces unmarked day by day its wonderful parabolic path on the green- sward around it. What a beautiful sight it would be if the Government would order the tracing of its analemma and mark the hours with beds of flowers ! What an instructive and inspiring object it would be to all who visit that great Monument ; there might arise from its inspiration some thought- ful youth, another Ferguson or Wren, to add to the list of the great mathematicians of the world. If a sun-dial is not traced, a meridan line positively should be set ; a line of stone or white marble, a noon-mark in the grass. This would not equal the dial, but would be better than the unmarked round of to-day. We had the meridian line in Washington surveyed and marked in noble fashion when the City and District were first laid out ; and the most interesting meridian line in the whole world should naturally be to Americans this famous national meridian line of the United States ; but it has fared at our hands as though it were an object of obloquy instead of pride. 42 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday On the 1 5th of April in 1791 there was laid with solemn and elaborate Masonic ceremonial the corner- stone of the District of Columbia ; now half-for- gotten and hidden from view, this mighty symbol of our vast nation forms part of the foundation wall of the lighthouse at Jones Point near Alexan- dria, Virginia. The ten miles of the District were marked during the following year with mile- stones, which bore num- bers, and on the District side the words, "Juris- diction of the United States," on the other the names of the surrounding states, dates, etc. These stones are known in their neighborhood as " Juris- diction Stones/' As it was then the custom of great nations to reckon lon g itude from their own capitals, and a bad system it was, our Revolutionary ancestors promptly proposed that the new nation should have its meridian line. On L'En- fant's plan for the Federal city appears a mark for an historic column (now the site of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park), and from this column all distances through the continent were to be calcu- lated. But when Ellicott, another engineer, laid off Drawing of the Meridian Stone of various the United States of America. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 43 the streets, avenues, and " appropriations," as they were called, he began by drawing a true meridian line through the " Congress House," or Capitol. But the Meridian Hill known to old Washing- tonians is not at the Capitol, but north of the White House, at the head of Sixteenth Street, so there is another meridian to consider. In a letter (now in the State Department) written to President Jefferson by Nicholas King, it appears that King laid out a meridian line along Sixteenth Street in 1804. The letter is given by Mr. Marcus Baker in his inter- esting article, " Surveys and Maps of the District of Columbia." An obelisk was planted on the top of a hill north of the president's house ; and two stones were set near the site of the Washington Monument. This obelisk is gone and the site un- marked. Another was set near the Capitol and called the Capitol Stone ; this is also vanished and the site unmarked. Another stone, known as the Jefferson Stone, was also set. The site of this is known. Admiral Porter had a house at the head of Six- teenth Street ; on the southern lawn stood a low sandstone block on which was placed a brass sun- dial. This has been called the Meridian Stone; it was removed and is now doing service as a carriage step at the corner of R and Fourteenth streets. This was not, so Mr. Baker infers, the original stone. The true meridian stone, set in 1804, stood where placed until some time in the seventies, when Merid- ian Hill was graded down. The stone was carried to the District building and thrown in a rubbish heap. 44 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Later, when Lieutenant Hoxie was on duty, it was sent to the Reform School and set up as a hitching post. It is about four feet in height and was origi- nally square in section and slightly tapering. It bore the inscription lettered thus : Longitude West from Greenwich 76 56' 5 " The corners have been cut off, and this lettering only remains : ' " est om enwi There are many ways of making a noon-mark. A very unscientific but very satisfactory one is this : On either April 15, June 15, September i, or De- cember 24, the four days of the year when the sun and the clock are exactly together, secure a watch or clock, known to be exact by some standard time. Then on the surface where you desire to draw your noon-mark cast a straight shadow at twelve by your watch, and mark it definitely. Another way ; is on any clear night, hang (out-of-doors) two plumb-lines in such a position that on sighting from one to the other the North Star will be in exact range. Drive two stakes exactly in the place of the two plumb- lines, and when the shadow at noon of one stake Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 45 extends precisely to the other stake, that shadow-line makes an accurate noon-mark. An interesting noon-mark has been for many years at Durham Cathedral, England, and is shown in a curious manner. About ten feet from the floor a thin piece of stone having in it a circular hole Sun-dial at Elm Hirst, Wilmslow, England. about an inch in diameter is inserted in a window. Through this opening shine the rays of the sun, throwing a bright spot of light, which at noon falls on the meridian line. This contrivance at Dur- ham Cathedral forms one of a class called spot- dials, or when evidenced from reflected light, " re- flective-dials." Such was the dial made by Sir Isaac Newton when a boy. He painted a dial- face on the ceiling of his room, and the spot of 46 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday light was cast upon the hour lines by means of a bit of mirror fixed horizontally in the window ledge. This was in the house of his grandmother, Mrs. Ayscough. The plaster ceiling with the marks of the hours, etc., is still preserved in the new house which was built on the site of the house wherein this "ceiling-dial" or "reflective-dial" was originally made. I own a number of old books on dialling, and I find these ceiling-dials a "favorite conceit" of the old diallers ; one of them says : " I confesse k is *i pleasant thing to behold how Art hath taught the Sunne to trace out those Lines and Parallels by Re- flection from a Glasse, which his direct beames can never shine upon." In Ley bourne's Dialling (my copy is a vast folio of the year 1700) many rules 1 * and designs are given. One of his window-dials I copy facing this page. In his rules many curious and antiquated terms appear, such as " quarrys " and "quarrels" of glass; the "jaums of a jetty window," the cheek-posts," etc. By such rules as these was young Newton allured to try his skill. Leybourne's rules for making win- dow-dials and reflective-dials are very clear and easy to understand. An extraordinary ceiling-dial was made by Sir Christopher Wren when but a mere boy; it must be recalled that dialling was then a part, not only of an advanced education, but also of a plainer everyday schooling. Wren had translated, in 1647, Ought- red's Geometrical Dialling into Latin, when he was fourteen, and it had been published ; and he had Window-dial, Leybourne's Dialling. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 47 thus acquired a knowledge both of mathematics to make this ceiling-dial, and of Latin for the inscrip- tion, which, translated, reads thus : " Chr. Wren : One who was content to depict upon this narrow ceiling the pattern of the sky, obtained from Phoe- bus the gift of a rival of his rays, an image upon a mirror; that would pass over this heaven with borrowed light and make an effigy of his yearly course. 1648 years after the time wherein in very truth Man was made God from a Virgin's womb, and in the i6th year of (the maker's) youthful age." In this inscription the dates are formed by chrono- grams the capitalization of certain letters in the last lines of the inscription ; this was one of the fashionable fancies in inscriptions of that day. I have referred more fully to Wren and his interesting teacher in my chapter on " Ingeniose Diallers." This ceiling-dial was but one of the " universally curious " works of what Evelyn called that " pro- digious young scholar M r Ch r Wren." Evelyn saw at Oxford "a variety of shadows, dyals, pro- spective and many other artificial, mathematical, and magical curiosities, a way-wiser, a thermometer, a monstrous magnet, and other sections, a ballance on a demi-arch " these the work of Wren and his teacher. A way-wiser was an instrument known now as an odometer or perambulator the Latin derivatives having replaced the simple old word, meaning a something to make you wise or knowing of the way you have fared. A way-wiser seems to have been for many years a sort of plaything of scientists and 48 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday the scientific work of dilettantes. It has also been of practical use. Our own Franklin laid out our pre-Revolutionary post-roads with one attached to a comfortable chaise in which he rode, followed by carts bearing mile-stones. It has been more for- mally used in the preparation of our state maps and other important topographical work. In 1657 Evelyn saw Colonel Blount's way-wiser, which was attached to a coach, which " exactly measured the miles and showed them by an index as we went on." This way-wiser could measure up to one thousand miles. It was deemed a wonderful instrument and a rare one ; but to-day along the roads so leisurely surveyed by Franklin, nearly every bicycle that flashes past his still-standing mile-stones bears a cyclometer a modern and cheap way-wiser, beside which Colonel Blount's machine stands in the same relation as a sun-dial to a Waterbury watch. A very interesting spot-dial was made by using a lens or sun-glass. In a garden in Cheshire, at Elm Hirst, Wilmslow (page 45), is a lens-dial on which is the appropriate motto: "WHATSOEVER DOTH MAKE MANIFEST is LIGHT" (Ephesians v. 13). Another use of a magnifying glass in a dial is shown in what are known as cannon-dials ; these are found in several European towns. One is given on page 49 which was made for the Sultan of Morocco by Messrs F. Barker & Son of London. It is a beautiful instrument, being made of fine brass inlaid with white metal, and is an accurate timekeeper. In these cannon-dials the glass is so fixed that at exact noon the concentrated rays of the sun ignites the Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 49 Cannon-dial of Sultan of Morocco. powder in a touchhole and fires the cannon. Small sun-dials have been made after this pattern. There is an interesting and unusual lens-dial at Frankford Arsenal near Philadelphia, which is mounted on the muzzle of an old iron cannon set vertically in that part of the arsenal grounds on which faces the government cartridge factory. It is shown on page 50. This ingenious lens dial was designed and placed in its present position by the late Captain William Prince, Ordnance Department U. S. Army, in the year 1874. The mounting is an unusually satisfactory one, for not only is it in good taste, being suited to the surroundings, but also of 50 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday positive stability, warranting a perfect spirit-level for the dial-face, which is of much importance for the rather delicate contrivance which the dial dis- plays for marking accurate time. It is protected against special stress of wear and weather by a hinged iron cap or cover. The dial consists of a triangular gnomon mounted on a circular plate. The plate has Roman numerals for the hours, and exact tables of corrections to be made for true local time. The gnomon has a special feature for in- dicating the corrected time at noon ; this is by means of a lens so mounted in its inclined edge as to project an image of the sun on to the annular surface of an opening through the gnomon. On this annular surface is inscribed a fig- ure 8 loop of two equidistant lines between which the image of the sun appears at local noon in some part of the loop, varying with the time of the year. Unfortunately this contrivance does not show in the illustration. A similar arrangement may be found on a sun-dial at Monaco, where one is gravely told that it is "the only perfect sun-dial in the world." Cannon-dial at Arsenal, Frank- ford, Pennsylvania. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 51 There is something very suggestive of sentiment in the thought that in a spot-dial you tell the hour by a mark of light instead of shadow ; and such a* dial needs a special motto. Several mottoes are given in Leadbetter's treatise called Mecbanick Dialling, 1756. Their being in the same metre gives them the appearance of being machine poetry, written for or by Leadbetter for these spot-dials. SEE THE LITTLE DAY-STAR MOVING LIFE AND TIME ARE WORTH IMPROVING SEIZE THE MOMENTS WHILE THEY STAY SEIZE AND USE THEM LEST YOU LOSE THEM AND LAMENT THE WASTED DAY. Another reads : SHINING SPOT FOREVER SHINING BRIGHTEST HOURS HAVE NO ABIDING USE THY GOLDEN MOMENTS WELL LIFE IS WASTING DEATH IS HASTING DEATH CONSIGNS TO HEAVEN OR HELL. In France a dial wherein the hour is shown by a ray of light is called Cadran a La Capucine. On such a dial in a Franciscan convent are these verses : Pourquoi sur ce cadran solaire Ne voit-on point r ombre ordinaire? C'est que consacrant dans ce lieu Tons notre temps a louer dieu. II faut pour le marquer lu plus noble maniere C'est d'emprunter au del un rayon de lumiere. 52 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday WHY DO YOU NOT SEE THE USUAL SHADOW ON THIS SUN-DIAL ? IT IS BECAUSE IN THIS PLACE ALL OUR TIME IS CONSECRATED TO PRAISING GOD. WE DESIRE TO MARK IT IN THE NOBLEST MANNER, AND THAT IS BY BORROWING A RAY OF LIGHT FROM HEAVEN. The shadow of the gnomon may be cast upon a window, and can thus be seen from within the house. This is called a refractive dialling, or a window- dial ; and in thus viewing it from within doors, the shadow will appear to go round as do the hands of a clock, while in an ordinary vertical dial the reverse motion is seen. These are sometimes of stained glass, and in Eng- land have been placed in churches. A fine one is shown on page 53, it is leaded into a window at Kersal Cell, near Manchester, England ; the home of John Byrom, who wrote " Christians Awake ! " I don't know why these nearly all have a fly painted on them perhaps as a remote pun that the hours fly. The window-dial at Lambeth Palace, one at the pri- vate chapel at Berkeley Castle, both have the fly. Another has both a fly and a butterfly the latter being the emblem of immortality. The motto, Dum spectas fugio, is a favorite motto for these window-dials : WHILE THOU LOOKEST i FLY. Arthur Young, in his Six Peeks' Tours, tells of two window-dials at the Rectory, North-hill, Bed- fordshire. He says that the fly had the wings painted on one side of the glass, and the body and legs on the other, so to deceive fully the spectator. The date was 1664. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 53 The ancient Greeks wrote of measuring the day by the course of a shadow, and speak of a six-foot shadow, a ten-foot shadow. It has been suggested Window-dial at Kersal Cell, Manchester, England. that this was each man's own shadow as thrown on the ground ; long in the morning and at night, and short at midday, and that he measured it with his own foot, as did the Malays in Madagascar. The early successors of the noon-mark, such as the water-clock or clepsydra, were known to many 54 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday /** nations in some form, though it is told that the clepsydra was invented 2636 B.C. by a Chinese scientist. Duke Chan, who is alleged to be the in- ventor of the compass about 1130 B.C., was the first to employ the clepsydra as a timepiece. Chinese poetry, even the most ancient, abounds in graceful and sentimental allusions to the clepsydra. A waiting wife complains of the leaden foot of time in the form of verse called a " stop-short " : " It seems that the Clepsydra Has been filled up with the Sea To make the long, long nights appear An endless time to me. " The incense-stick is burnt to ash, The water-clock is stilled, The midnight breeze blows sharply by, And all around is chilled." Even by 1851 only one clepsydra was in official use ; it was in the watch-tower of the city of Canton ; my sister saw it there, still in use, in the year 1899. It consisted of four copper jars on a flight of steps, the top of each reaching to the bottom of the next in succession; small troughs connected them all. The largest jar held about ninety-three pints of water. A wooden index was set in the lower jar and rose as it filled with water. It was set at five in the morning and five in the afternoon. When the half-day was ended, the water from the lower jar was ladled back into the upper one by two watchmen, who also beat the twelve watches of the day on drums. The Chinese do not number the hours ; they simply name these twelve divisions and desig- Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 55 nate each with a sign. This clepsydra is so rude a contrivance that it hardly seems fit for a race so civilized as the Chinese. These Cantonese folk would be far out in their time-reckoning if they depended on this ancient clepsydra and their time- sticks, which are sold by the man who has charge of this " copper-jar-dropper," as it is called. These are referred to in the second stop-short quoted above : " The incense-stick is burnt to ash." These time-sticks were made of sawdust (usually of a cer- tain wood), a slight mixture of glue, rolled into even cylinders two feet long, and divided into hours. They consumed without flame, and burnt up in half a day. They are like the time-candles of other countries, and share the interest always inspired by every time-keeper. I remember well the fascination which King Alfred's " candle-clocks " had for me in my childhood ; as told in a little book of anecdotes of English kings and princes. I recall well making candle-clocks from common wax candles, and our disappointment when they would not burn four hours precisely, as did the king's. A burning candle was used in England and France in many special cases to mark a short extent of time ; as an auction " by inch of candle," wherein the last bidder as the flame expired was the successful one. Servants also were bidden for and paupers " boarded out " by inch of candle. The ancient clepsydra was sometimes extremely ornamental, the copper jars being made in the shape of dragons and other figures, and the index was also ornamented. Another clepsydra was shaped like a 56 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday I ' ^ bird ; the water fell from its beak and was received in a vessel on a balance. Another water-clock was a perforated copper vessel which was placed in a tub of water and rilled gradually and sunk every hour. The Malays in their proas use a similar rude water-clock made of a perforated cocoanut shell. A more complicated machine which represented the motions of the heavenly bodies was run by falling water ; it was a huge hollow globe perforated on its surface so as to afford, when lighted from within, a representation of the starry sky at night. The Liliw.ati y a profound mathematical treatise of the twelfth century, was written by an Indian astrono- mer, who was " grievously baffled " of the marriage of his daughter named Liliwati. It was predicted that she should die unmarried; but the'father de- termined to avert that disgrace. He found from astrologers a lucky hour, and secured a bridegroom. But the hour passed without being noted on the clepsydra, for a pearl from the girl's bridal dress fell into the bowl and closed the opening ; and the bride- groom departed. The father consoled his daughter by writing this wonderful book which would trans- mit her name better than could any children. It is translated into English and published by a Calcutta firm, and is of great interest and research. Clocks and watches are much cherished in China ; ancient ones of very antiquated appearance are con- stantly seen in use ; some of these are like the " Nu- remburg eggs." As Chinese gentlemen carry two watches and are particular to have them harmonize, clock and watch menders find constant employment. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 57 For their watch-making skill the Chinese are said to be indebted to the teachings of the Jesuit missions. The European water-clock of the seventeenth cen- tury is described in Kirchner's Ars Umbrae et Lucis ; and in the form there presented is almost universally attributed to the Jesuits. Pewter clepsydras were made in considerable numbers in France. I am informed that a picturesque water-clock or "hour-bowl," shaped like the Chinese water-bowl, is still found in remote parts of India; picturesque as absolutely simple things can be, and generally are. A globular copper bottle or bowl has a hole in the bottom. The water runs slowly through the little orifice until the bowl is empty, when a waiting atten- dant strikes the empty vessel a resounding blow with a hammer; then he refills it, and hangs it up to drip again. Of course this has to be made of an exact size proper to measure an hour. It is told that in some Oriental countries a stone is flung in the bowl and thus resounding strikes the hour. The opening stanza of Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam in the original edition ran thus : " Awake, for Morning in the bowl of Night Has flung the stone that puts the Stars to flight ; And lo ! the hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's turret in a noose of light." I should be convinced that these stirring lines referred to an emblematic use of the ancient Oriental time-bowl, save for one thing : they were not written by the old Persian at all, but were wholly Fitz- gerald's thought and words ; and help to prove, 58 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday ' ' . * what we all know, that this is a case when the trans- lation is far greater than the original. Sand-glasses, or hour-glasses, were first made about the year 330 A.D. There are other dials of the ancients which fascinate the antiquary, wind-dials or anem- oscopes, in which the courses of the winds were marked on a dial connected with a weather-vane. They have been found in Pompeii and in Rome. The most famous was known as The Tower of the Winds, an octagonal horologium which was one of the wonders and beauties of ancient Athens. It is pic- tured opposite this page. The bronze Triton which served as a weather-vane has vanished, but eight sculptures remain. These bold flying figures repre- sent the winds, and under each was once a sun-dial. There was also a water-clock. As the tower was forty feet in height and twenty-seven in diameter, it formed a striking object. Boreas, the North wind, blew on a conch-shell ; the South wind poured rain from a water-jar ; Zephyrus carried a mantle filled with flowers. This Tower of the Winds is the oldest known construction for observing the winds, but a similar pillar covered with copper was at Constantinople ; both of these towers had weather-vanes. For a time it would seem that only important buildings, chiefly churches, carried vanes. In France in the twelfth century none but noblemen could have weather- vanes, and for a time no noblemen save those who had planted their standards on some rampart at the storming of a town or citadel. These vanes then bore the knight's arms. On the Bayeux Tapestry Tower of the Winds, Athens. Noon-marks, Spot-dials, Window-dials 59 ships appear, and these have vanes on the masts. Anemoscopes, to show the duration of the wind, and anemometers, to measure its force, have been invented in many shapes ; one resembled a wind-mill. Both instruments were in use in England in Queen Anne's time. They were fixed in coffee-houses where mer- chants and ship-owners congregated, and where winds and weather formed a constant and natural topic of conversation. It is probable that clocks may have been regarded with suspicious eye by the distrustful and supersti- tious pedants of the day when they were first made. Everything unusual, and above all everything clever, was adjudged to be akin to witchcraft until it was proved not to be. The very first naming of a clock (so-asserted), in 1449, * s by one Dr. Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, and he says : " In all Holie Scripture it is not expressid by bidding counselling or witnessing or by any ensaumbling of per- soon . . . that men schulde mak and vse clockis forto knowe the houris of the dai and nygt, for thow in Scrip- ture mensionn is maad of orologis schewing the houris of the dai by schadow maad by the sunne in a circle ; certes nevere saue in late daies was any clok tellyng the houris of the dai and nyghte by peise and by stroke," etc., etc. I suppose there were old fogies in that century as ever since, who declared that the clocks were a nuisance, that they were kept awake by the striking ; and that the Evil One must have had his hand in them ; that they were an unnecessary expense, being naturally, in the beginning, a constant outlay for re- 60 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * ~* pairs ; that they would encourage the young folks sitting up late, would waste candles and fire, that the good old ways and the good old sun-dials and noon- marks were good enough for them, and ought to be for their children. Clock or Automobile ! it doesn't matter much which ; it is only a difference in dates and as regarded in comparison with other things. CHAPTER III CLASSIFICATION OF SUN-DIALS " In which very many sorts of Dialls are Conteined, by which be- sides the houres.of all kinds diversely express' d. Amongst which very many Dialls, especially the Most Curious are new Inventions hitherto Divulg'd to none. All these Particulars are Shortly yett Clearly sett forth for the common, good." Title fage of The Explication of The Dial! Set up in the King's Garden, An. 1669. FATHER FRANCIS HALL. F DIALS we may form two classes, portable and fixed. Portable dials have in this book a special chapter ; as do also noon-marks or meridian lines and spot-dials, ceiling- dials, and window-dials which are not in one sense separate objects. Other dials will be classed according to the divisions of Messrs. Ross and McGibbon, as formulated in their volume on Scottish sun-dials in their book of several volumes, entitled The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland. The sun-dials of Scotland are the finest in the world, and this noble book is worthy its sub- ject. About two hundred Scottish sun-dials are described in it, and thus a clear idea is given of the 61 62 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday art of dial-making of the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, as practised in Scotland. I am glad to adopt in general the simple and lucid classification of sun-dials as arranged by these two skilled and learned architects, and to use somewhat their words in describing the classes. The first division is into two great classes, the attached and the detached ; the former being, as the name would imply, displayed upon the walls of some building, and often of slight importance in the general scheme of the edifice ; while the second class, dials standing on their own special pedestals, are often of much monumental importance. The attached dials are divided into six classes : 1. Single-faced dials. O 2. Dials with two faces placed generally on cor- ners of buildings. 3. Dials with two or more faces projected on corbels. 4. Terminal dials. 5. Dials on market and other crosses. 6. Horizontal attached dial. In the first class the dials of a single face, of stone, wood, or metal, are usually affixed to the surface of a building, or they may be carved or painted on the wall itself; but sometimes, when the wall of the house does not face exactly as desired, these are canted out a bit from the house at one edge. That at Foun- tainhall, East Lothian, is thus placed at a slight angle that the dial may face due south. Examples of these single wall dials are many throughout this book : they are a favorite dial for Classification of Sun-dials church decoration and use, and are found on many of the cathedrals and churches of the old and the new world, where they form the very best and most appropriate ornamentation a church can have ; even Grace Church, and Dial, Merchantsville, N. J. a simple modern one such as this . on Grace Church, Merchants- ville, New Jersey, adds much to the beauty of a church edifice. I A vertical dial is, in one respect, much better fitted for a public building than a horizontal dial, for the latter through careless or mischievous hand- ling often becomes so shaken as to be useless as a timekeeper. A fine horizontal dial, with an unusual and beautiful gnomon, shaped like an angel's wing, 64 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * ' * . was set but a few years ago as a memorial of a son to his mother, in the churchyard of All Saints' Church, Worcester, Massachusetts. Even this firmly set and carefully made bronze dial-face has been pulled and twisted by boyish visitors to the racking of the gnomon. A vertical wall-dial would have been out of mischief. On those interesting old buildings moot-halls are found some of the most ancient dials. A moot-hall was a building with a room for public debate or a court, a town-hall. In early English history we : find that a moot or meeting was con- stantly being held, and a court formed which had special powers. A town-moot was a' ( meeting of the town ; there was also the hundred-moot, a meeting of the hundred; and a folk-moot, a muster of all the people far and wide. The form of holding the court was the same in all ; the priests proclaimed silence, appointed speakers on either side of the controversy who told their tales, while groups of freemen assented or dissented, shaking their spears and clanking their shields ; sometimes witnesses were called; and finally everything was positively settled by shouts of Aye and Nay. Moot-halls still stand in ancient and stagnant towns ; one in Alderburgh is shown on page 10 a lonely building erected about the year 1 500. The dial is not so old, I think, for the motto, Horas non numero nisi, serenas, seems hardly suited to a moot-hall of that year. It has a second motto also, Pereunt et imputantur. A favorite position for vertical church-dials is over a door. The fine dial shown facing this page Sun-dial over Porch of Eyam Church. Classification of Sun-dials 65 is over the south porch of the church at Eyam, Derbyshire. It has upon it the lines of the Tropic of Capricorn, the Tropic of Cancer, and the Equi- noctial plainly marked and lettered ; also the names of various cities and places, Mexico, Panama, Quebec, Bermuda, London, Rome, Constantinople, Mecca, Calcutta, and Surat, showing their difference of time ; also the mottoes Induce Animum Sapientem TAKE TO THYSELF A WISE WORD; and Ut Umbra sic Vita; the date 1775, and the names, Wm. Lee, Thomas Fraggatt, Church Wardens. Surrounded by ancient elms and sycamores stands this venerable church, celebrated both for the singular Runic cross in its yard, and for the pathetic story of its heroic rector, Mompesson. In July, 1665, the plague was brought to Eyam in a box of tailor's cloths and patterns. It spread immediately and every house soon had its victims. Mompesson inspired the villagers with a wonderful spirit of self-abnegation, so that they cut themselves off from the rest of the world, in order to stop the spread of the pestilence. Not a soul left the place, and supplies were brought in from outposts. Pest-houses were established, but even winter did not subdue the disease ; and in the spring Mompesson, knowing well the danger of any assembling within the church, preached to his heroic people from a projecting rock in the cleft in the dale, a rock still known as " The Pulpit." Out of a village of three hundred and fifty inhabitants but ninety survived. His own wife died in August, and is buried in the churchyard. Many others were buried in the fields, and one little enclosure is shown 66 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday which holds seven of one family, who died in seven days. A very interesting and ancient sun-dial is on the south porch of Lewannick Church, and with the Cresset stone standing on the left of the porch, is deemed somewhat of a curiosity. This church was Sun-dial on Chimney, Petersfield. about five miles from Lanceston, but has just been destroyed by fire. Sun-dials were placed on many symbolical or sig- nificant structures. Among these is the curious old triangular Lodge at Rushton, Northamptonshire, a monument of the deep Trinitarian belief of Sir Thomas Tresham, a skilled architect of Elizabeth's day. Its walls are covered with pious emblems and inscriptions. This lodge has three walls, three gables on each wall. On the central gable of each is a sun-dial ; on the first is the word Respicite ; on the Cresset Stone and Dial on Lewannick Church, Lanceston, England. Classification of Sun-dials second, Non Mibi ; on the third, Sole Labor avi, 1 593. " MARK YE, NOT FOR MYSELF ALONE HAVE I TOILED." The trefoil also is expressive. An appropriate and well-designed modern setting for vertical dials upon dwelling-houses, and one I always like if not placed too high, is upon an external chimney. On page 66 is given a dial at Petersfield thus placed, and it may plainly be seen how well it suits its position. On this page is shown the vertical sun-dial at Oak Woods in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, once the home of the old phi- losopher, Rowland G. Hazard, and now the home of his grandchil- dren. Another fine ver- tical dial, upon page 68, was set in 1891 on the old stone wall which marked the northern boundary of the grounds of the Santa Barbara Mission, California, in a place where many passers-by see and use it. The inscription reads : Wall-dial at Oak Woods, Peace Dale, Rhode Island ; residence of Rowland G. Hazard, Esq. "The dial was made, inscribed, and set by Rowland Hazard of Peace Dale, Rhode Island, in a part of the Sta. Barbara Mission Wall, built 1786, standing on his land." The words Fidem docet of the noble motto are illumined with sunlight, as if prophetic. 68 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * i * < . j* Lux dei vltfs vlam monstrat Sed umbra horam atque fidem docet. THE LIGHT OF GOD SHOWETH THE WAY OF LIFE, BUT THE SHADOW BOTH TELLETH THE HOUR AND TEACH- ETH THE FAITH. The picture speaks to me many words besides those of its motto. It makes me think of the aged philosopher, Rowland G. Hazard, the most Sun-dial at Santa Barbara Mission, California. Classification of Sun-dials 69 interesting person I ever knew, the friend of other philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill, and the author of such profound books as Man a Creative First Cause,, Freedom of Mind in Willing; and I think of his sturdy race, some of whom were giants in the land ; I recall the noble life of his son, who set up the dial ; and I think of the philosopher's grand- daughter, the president of Wellesley College, and her great work. Then I look at the picture, and the tropical foliage of the Cactus plant symbolizes to me folk of vastly different type the native Mexicans and Californians, halting in the welcome shadow of the old wall, and reading with ease the Latin verses in their softened Spanish accent. I see the many Chinese wanderers to that shore, chattering the time of the day for the sun's shadow speaks in their tongue as well as in Latin. I see Father Junipero and his barefooted and cowled Franciscan friars patiently teaching their trying converts the Indians. I see behind the wall the Mission garden with its wells and cisterns, its dense Pepper trees, its Daturas and Roses; and Latin and Spanish, Asiatic, Indian, and Yankee races all blend in the spirit of this useful, beautiful sun-dial. On page 70 is given an historical example of the second class, dials with two faces, set at the corner of houses. These are on the house in Edinburgh known as John Knox's house. On the corner of the house is carved a figure of the prophet Moses, kneeling and pointing with his right hand to a figure overhead, namely, the sun in glory, on which is carved the name of God in three tongues. Beneath yo Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday this figure were two sun-dials supported on iron brackets, which represented flames of fire. A good John Knox's House, Edinburgh, Scotland. example of these corner dials is shown facing page 72, a view of Mr. Thursby's house at Lower Harle- Classification of Sun-dials 71 stone, Northamptonshire. This is a charming Eng- lish home picture ; the cheerful house, the creeping vines and flowers, the tame pea-hen, and the sun- dials, why, even the printed words peacocks and sun-dials give a picture of English country life ! The house is about a hundred years old, and in 1891 the dials were nearly obliterated and the gnomons gone, but the dials have now been restored. The south- east dial is inscribed, THE HOUR is AT HAND ; the SOUthweSt, WATCH AND PRAY. I have never seen in America a vertical dial of the third class, namely, on a corbel, though the latter forms a most effective piece of architectural decoration as well as a useful one. On Heriot's hospital in Edinburgh are eleven corbel dials, the finest attached dials of this type in Scotland ; they are supported on carved brackets. Some of these brackets are cupids' heads with wings, others demons' heads and wings, one an elephant's head. Terminal dials, the fourth class, form the apex of a gable, buttress, .or some other portion of an edifice. They were a favorite decoration in Scotland ; thus the church at Costorphine, Midlothian, has seven of these dials forming the finials- of buttresses. On the eaves of gables, even of humble cottages, they were much used, and over the lichgates of churches formed a most appropriate finial. The fifth-class dials on market and other crosses might well have been transferred to the class of detached dials, since the cross is often scarce more than a pillar to hold the dial. Many of the early 72 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * ' market crosses and churchyard crosses of the seven- teenth century bore sun-dials, and the earliest Eng- lish sun-dial is of this type. These crosses varied from the simple village cross bearing a block with dials to the superbly ornamental market crosses of many Scotch and English towns, and many good examples will be shown in the pages of this book. Near the Scotch border, in Cumberland, stands the little town of Bewcastle. It is in what has been ever a rather wild and desolate district, though it is supposed to have been a Roman station during the building" of the famous wall. A view of the church- yard is given facing page 32. I think it the loneliest scene that I ever beheld in which there are ample signs of both life and death. In it may be seen what is one of the most interesting ancient monu- ments in Great Britain ; it affords the earliest Eng- lish sepulchral inscription, the earliest piece of English literature, and of special note to us, the earliest English sun-dial. It is a beautiful monument, too, a monolith four- teen and a half feet high, originally the shaft of a fine cross which added two and a half feet to its height. The cross blew down about three hundred years ago, and was sent to a collector of antiquities, Lord William Howard, for preservation ; but its whereabouts is now unknown. The carvings on this shaft are very fine and pleasing, and, curious indeed, are in close relation to Byzantine art. It bears many runes, and on the south face is the sun- dial surrounded by carved bands and leaves, in such Classification of Sun-dials 73 a manner that the dial is proved part of the origi- nal design, not a later addition. The date of this sun-dial is 670 A.D., for the inscriptions have been deciphered and translated thus by the Bishop of Bristol : "This thin sign of victory HwaetredWothgar Olwfwolthu set up after Alchfrith once King and son of Oswy. Pray for the high sin of his soul." The date is given as the first year of the reign of King Ecgfrith. Other names appear on the shaft, & & r i i l C i- 1- L names of princes who served the cause or rLnglisn Christianity in the seventh century. Oswy and Alchfrith were also Christians. The sun-dial, which is within a third of the top of the shaft, is divided into four spaces according to the octaval system of time measurement of the Angles. These four spaces are divided each into three spaces, making thus the twelve divisions of the day of the Romans. The gnomon was doubt- less set horizontally, and could not have afforded a very acurate time-keeping, save for the noon-hour. The loneliness of Bewcastle has aided in the pres- ervation of this beautiful monument, and many simple ancient customs also lingered long. Among them was the whittle-gate, part of the payment of both schoolmaster and parson, and by which they found a home. The master lived in turn for two or three weeks at a time at the home of each of his scholars. As the houses were often scantily fur- nished, he carried his own knife or whittle for table use. Sometimes the parish gave the parson his 74 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday whittle. We brought to America the custom of whittle-gate ; it has lingered to the present day in remote country communities where the schoolmaster " boards around " ; and we brought the word whittle, too, and applied it in such fashion that it serves to indicate a significant characteristic of native New Englanders. Opposite this page is shown one of the three ancient dials of this class which are standing at Elmley, Worcestershire. One is at the meeting of two roads, a cubical dial on the shaft of an old cross. The second is in the churchyard at Elmley Castle ; it is a cube with many hollowed-out dials, in some of which the gnomons remain. The third, here shown, is erected on the base of an old cross; the founda- tion is of several courses of masonry rising nearly three feet, and above them a stone so much like dial number two that antiquaries believe they origi- nally formed a single dial. Besides the singular scooped-'out depressions, this has also a shield bear- ing the arms of Savage, borne by the lord of the manor, which was granted by Henry VIII. This ancient block is surmounted by another, more modern, bearing four vertical dials. The sixth class, horizontal attached dials, such as those fastened on window-sills or the parapets of bridges, are comparatively few in number and of no great distinction. I have several, captured from old window-ledges in New England. Detached dials are divided into four classes : 1. Obelisk-shaped dials. 3. Facet-headed dials. 2. Lectern-shaped dials. 4. Horizontal dials. Antique Sun-dial in Churchyard, Elmley Castle, Worcestershire, England. Classification of Sun-dials 75 Naturally an exact line cannot be drawn between these to separate wholly each class ; for a lectern- headed dial may have a pedestal somewhat obelisk- shaped, and the horizontal dial often runs into the other shapes ; but the classification is as explicit as is possible. The term obelisk-shaped is perhaps as good a descriptive word for the first class of dials as any single word could be ; though the word obelisk conveys in general the thought of a plain shaft like the Egyptian obelisks. Obelisk-shape in a sun-dial, however, indicates a square shaft, supporting a bulg- ing capital, and that surmounted by a tapering finial. Let me illustrate by referring to page 6 as an example; this is the sun-dial at Kelburne House, Ayrshire, and has all three characteristics. The shaft and the capital are divided into compartments which are hollowed out with " sinkings," which may be triangular, star-shaped, club-shaped, shell-shaped, shield-shaped, cross-shaped, liver-shaped, lozenge- shaped, circular, heart-shaped, and other geometrical figures. In these the sharp edge of the figure casts a shadow on the sunken cups ; or a metal gnomon might be set thereon. Sometimes the hour lines are finely delineated. The bulging capital should be octagonal and have dial-faces on each of the eight sides, which dials might be sunken ; and it could have also reclining and proclining dials (which should not be sunken), as has this one of Kelburne House. It will be noted that where the square shaft meets the octagonal pillar the triangular pieces are cut out, giving effective shadows and odd out- 76 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday lines. The tapering finial may have dial-faces but never sunken ones. The north side of the dial was usually left free for dates, initials, and inscriptions. This Kelburne dial is surmounted by a wrought-iron vane which encloses the monogram of the Earl of Glasgow and his wife; and it is dated 1707. The entire height of this is eight feet six and one-half inches without the steps at the base. These obelisk- shaped dials are usually set upon a platform or pedestal of steps, often of a circular or octagonal form ; but a similar dial at Kelburne House is set in a basin of water, like a fountain basin an unusual and inappropriate placing. It will be known that when these dials were made of soft sandstone, as were so many in Scotland and England, the various shaped sinkings would quickly be worn so that they were of slight value as time- keepers, and the great number of dial-faces was confusing; so I ever regard the obelisk-shaped dial as a thing of beauty and dignity rather than as a precise timekeeper. Modern dials for fine gardens have often been made partly in the obelisk-shape ; there is a beautiful one of these at Linburn House, which is shown on a later page. The descriptive name of lectern-dial has been given to a sun-dial set upon a shaft which was never cut into dial-faces, but had a dial-head cut in a peculiar shape, so it resembled a music-stand or lectern. They were comparatively common in England and Scotland, though they were in gen- eral very complicated in their cutting, having sev- eral dial-faces, and being hollowed out, bevelled, and Classification of Sun-dials 77 shaped in ways exceedingly difficult to describe and often most varied in each sun-dial. As an attempt at description, it may be said that a block of stone rests on the top of the standard somewhat as a book rests on a lectern ; this block (the dial-stone) is cut into a shape somewhat resem- bling a Greek cross with semi- circular depressions carved out of, the four arms of the cross in such a way as to leave eight points or horns. Let this queerly cut cross be set well up on the face of the lectern ; and have the circular de- pression at the top edge of the cross continued down the sloping back of the dial in a semicylin- drical, trough- shaped opening. The shape is so sin- gular, so compli- cated, and, to / $*- wf^pg^^ Careless observer, SO Lectern-headed Dial at Gray House, near .. Dundee, Scotland. unnecessarily com- plex and unnatural, that many speculations have arisen as to the reason for these forms. They were called Masonic dials and may have had some Ma- sonic significance. An ingenious suggestion of ex- 78 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday planation is given through an article in the Magazine of Art) November, 1891, entitled " The Mystery of Holbein's Ambassadors." In this picture, part of which is reproduced opposite this page, is a table upon which are displayed several sun-dials and curious astronomical instruments. One of the last-named was " The Torquetum of Apian," by means of which the position of the sun, moon, or stars could be indicated at any hour. It is shaped like these lec- tern-dials and may have afforded the model for them. Though this form seems so forced and so contorted for its purpose as a dial, it was nevertheless used for many costly dials, which well illustrate the mag- nificent ideas'of the seventeenth century in regard to the architectural accessories and furnishings of gar- dens, pleasure grounds, and parks of that date. The superb dials of Dundas Castle, of Neidpath Castle, of Mid Calder House, of Ladyland's House, show types of these costly dials ; and the most elaborate of all is at Woodhouselee, Midlothian, carved ex- quisitely in the hollows of the shaft with the Thistle and the Rose. On page 77 is given a drawing of ,._ the sun-dial at Gray House, near Dundee. In this the ancient lectern-head has . been set on modern steps. In a general way the cross-dials seen in church- yards and graveyards may be deemed of the class of lectern-dials ; though they bear slight resem- blance to the elaborate Scotch dials. The third class, that of facet-headed dials, may be described as consisting of a pedestal, baluster-shaped, bearing a spherical-shaped stone cut in a variety of iv. Classification of Sun-dials 79 facets on which sun-dials are formed, cup-shaped, heart-shaped, or flat. This sphere or head is usually attached to the pedestal by a small pivot or bar. Queen Mary's Dial, Holyrood Castle. This shape perhaps affords to us the most beau- tiful of ancient and modern dials. One of the most interesting of all facet-headed dials, and one from which mat\y others have been shaped, is called 8o Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * -* Queen Mary's Dial at Holyrood Castle, Scot- land, see page 79. It is said to have been the gift of Charles I to his Queen Henrietta Maria, and was a costly token ; for in the accounts of the Master of Works it is shown that the sum of ^408, 155. 6d. was paid to the mason and his servants for " hewing of the diyell," and 66 i^s. $d. to a limner for gilding and engraving the dial. The dial stands with its base ten feet three inches high, and after lying for a long time in an apparently ruined condition, was repaired and reset by order of Queen Victoria. The facets of the dial-head have sinkings of many shapes, heart-shaped, cup-shaped, triangular, square, and the gnomons have many forms, one a grotesque face profile, another a Thistle. The dial also bears the Royal Arms and the initials of Charles and his queen. It has been copied, with some alterations and adaptations, in many garden dials, several of which are shown in these pages. A superb dial of the facet-headed type is at Mount Melville, Fifeshire. It rivals the wonderful dial at Glamis Castle. A beautiful photograph of it has^een given me by Miss Balfour-Melville, and is shown in this book. There are in all seventy dials on this grand structure, twenty-five of which are on the facet-head. This head is about eighteen inches in diameter, set without a pivot on a block beneath which is eleven inches square ; this has three cup- shaped dials. On the shaft are rows of dials : plain dials, oblong-shaped sunken dials, heart-shaped dials, cup-hollows, and cylinder-shaped hollows. A block of stone in the form known as an icosa- Sun-dial at Mount Melville, Scotland. Classification of Sun-dials 81 hedron, having twenty faces, each being an equilateral triangle, is sometimes seen with a dial on each face. This facet-headed block is set on a pillar and forms a wonderful ornament for the garden. Horizontal dials are subdivided into two classes, but I deem such division superfluous. It is said by Messrs. McGibbon and Ross that horizontal dials on pedestals are so numerous in Scotland that a list of them would include the name of every parish in Scotland ; they must number hundreds. As no two are precisely alike, they would form a fine series of examples. I have studied the pedestals with great interest, since nearly all the garden-dials set up in America are of this class. There are, of course, many forms of dials of which I have not spoken, among them the earliest dials in England ; on old churches mysterious little rayed circles like the face of a sun-dial appear, which are often found in most out-of-the-way places, high up on the wall or underneath shelves. These are commonly called Saxon dials, and they strongly resem- ble " sun-circles " found on pre-historic remains, and are held by many scientists to be either sun-circles or luck-circles. There is usually a little hole in the centre of the rays, but of too shallow incision to hold a gnomon. The rays vary in number ; some dials had sixteen. At Aldborough is a beautiful dial carved with the swastika or fylfot, resembling the sun-wheels of Danish relics of the Bronze Age. It is said that there is hardly an unrestored church in Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, or Leicester- shire but has these circles or imitation dials on its 82 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday walls. On this page is given one of these rayed circles, which is on the porch of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton. Its lines are most distinct. In an interesting paper called Squints and Dials, Sir Henry Dryden says that those Saxon Dial on Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton. " Saxon dials " which were cut only breast high or where the central hole could not have held a gnomon, or where the rays are irregular, must be regarded with suspicion. I may define a squint for two rea- sons : first, for the information of American readers to whom the term is generally unfamiliar ; and sec- ond, because they have so often been carefully Classification of Sun-dials 83 pointed out to travellers in England as sun-dials. A squint is an oblique opening through the wal ! of an old church, cut in such a manner and for the express purpose of permitting a person in a transept Model of Proclining Dial, Jeypore. or side aisle to see the high altar at the time of the elevation of the host. The ordinary position of a squint is on either side of the chancel arch ; but wherever they are, they always open to give a view of the altar. They are in general about three feet high and two feet wide, but at Minster Lovell, 84 Sun-diak ,and Rjpses of Yesterday Oxfordshire, they form narrow arches twelve feet in height. The word hagioscope has also been given them, also squincb which is incorrect. Vitruvius Pollio Marcus, a famous Roman archi- tect and engineer under Caesar and Augustus, wrote a treatise on architecture, the only surviving Roman treatise on the subject. In it he names with very meagre and sapless description thirteen different kinds of sun-dials and gives the names of their inventors. During the careful archaeological excava- tions of the past century many of these types have been found. I shall not attempt to explain or describe the thirteen types nor give illustrations of the hemispherum and hemicycle which were the earliest forms. These are never made to-day save in what our grandfathers would term " a rare conceit." In the Leyden Museum, the British Museum, the Louvre, examples may be studied. They are in general imperfect and very simple in original shape and decoration, except in one or two cases. Those who wish to learn of the antique dials of Greece and Rome and of other rare forms of English and Continental dials should read Mrs. Gatty's Book of Sun-dials, or its enlargment by Mrs. Eden. " How I love those large still books," said Tenny- son of one of Richardson's novels. Such a book is Mrs. Gatty's Book of Sun-dials. Like the sun-dial itself it seems associated with refined and serene things : the ivy-grown wall of the village church, the solemn graveyard, the ancient market square, the Rose walk, and Yew hedge, all of a day removed from present bustle and rush. Classification of Sun-dials 85 The most celebrated antique dials are those on the Tower of the Winds, referred to in the preced- ing chapter. It is impossible to give a date to these dials, but archaeologists suggest that they are what are called quiver-dials by Vitruvius, wherein the lines, diverging from a common centre, resemble some- what a sheaf of arrows tossed from a quiver. A Quiver-dial of Phaidros. dial of similar type is depicted here, the fine marble dial of Phaidros, which was brought from Athens by Lord Elgin, and is now in the Inscription Room in the British Museum. It bears a Greek inscription meaning, " Phaidros, son of Zoilos, a Paenian, made this." Phaidros was an architect who lived in the second or third century A.D. Varied and curious in shape are the dials of Ori- ental lands. Sun-dials are placed on all the princi- pal mosques in Constantinople. On many of them, 86 Sun-diab> and Rpses of Yesterday Model of Reclining Dial, Jeypore. in addition to the lines necessary to indicate the course of the sun, there is a line drawn pointing to Mecca, whither the faces of the faithful must be turned while praying. The superb dials of Delhi and Jeypore, con- structed in 1724 by Rajah Jey Singh, are beyond description. They were built of vast size, of solid masonry and marble. The length of the hypothe- nuse of the gnomon was one hundred and eighteen feet. Photographs of the models of the sun-dials in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensing- ton, have been taken specially for this book. CHAPTER IV THE CONSTRUCTION OF SUN-DIALS " Here have wee then the Art of Numbring TIME by SHADOWES after the most Methodical! Compendious and Perspicuous Manner compleatly and demonstratively delivered for all Planes both by Lines and Numbers. The WORTH of this Work will be best valued by those who after sad wanderings have at length sate down wearied, with the obscure and toylsome Labyrinths of others." Sciograpbia, or The Art of Sbadoives, JOHN WELLS, ESQUIRE, 1635. UOTING from a mathematical treatise, we define dialling or gnomonics as treating of the construction of any instru- ment, portable or fixed, which determines the divisions of the day by the motion of a shadow of some object on which the sun's rays fall. A short definition of differ- ent mechanical forms of sun-dials, and of a few of the terms used in dialling, will be necessary for the full understanding of this chapter, and of any rules for the construction of dials. Dials are portable and fixed. The former are described in another chapter. The term fixed dial is applied to any dial fastened in a permanent position. 87 88 Sun-di.als and Roses of Yesterday The dial may be horizontal or vertical, or inclining, which latter means fixed in any sloping position, fixed on any place that is not horizontal or verti- cal. A declining dial is one which does not face exactly either north, south, east, or west. A proclining dial is one whose plane is not vertical, but leans forward at the top ; a reclining dial is the opposite, where its plane slopes backward. A refrac- tive dial uses refracted light ; such are the window- dials described in another chapter. A reflective dial is one in which the time is indicated by a spot of light thrown by a bit of mirror ; such are spot-dials. A cylindrical dial is one drawn on a cylindrical sur- face, usually a half-cylinder ; these are found on lectern-shaped dials. A globe-dial, star-dial, and a cross-dial are in the forms indicated by their names. A quadrantal dial is in the shape of a quadrant, usually in portable form. An equinoctial dial is one whose plane is perpendicular to the earth's axis. The expression to rectify a sun-dial means simply to prepare a dial for an observation ; to orient a dial is to place it properly in regard to the points of the compass. A nocturnal dial shows the time by the moon's shadow, or by some mechanical device. A very quaint nocturnal dial from Leybourne's Dialling is here reproduced. For the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876, there was made and set up an interesting sun- dial, having in all sixteen dial-faces. Among them were many of the unusual dials just named. This dial is an instrument of great scientific value, and Nocturnal Dial. From Leybourne's Dialling. The Construction of Sun-dials 89 has been preserved through the thought and care of the late Commander Joseph Philip Mickley, who had it placed upon the lawn of his home near Allen- town, Pennsylvania, and caretully adjusted and re- stored. Mrs. Mickley has given me two photographs of this interesting dial ; they are shown on pages 90 and 92. The dial gives the time at many of the principal cities of this globe. The elementary astronomical facts upon which dialling is founded are the two motions of the earth, diurnal and annual. The correct way of expressing the two motions is, of course, that the earth turns on its axis uniformly from west to east in twenty- four hours, and is carried around the sun in one year at a nearly uniform rate ; but in dialling the explanations are easier if the idea of the ancients is adopted, the apparent motion, which is that the sun and stars revolve around the earth's axis once a day, the sun lagging a little behind the stars until its day is four minutes longer, and then back again. This retardation of the sun makes the time as measured by a sun-dial somewhat irregular, and a dial or clock which marks uniform time agrees exactly with a sun-dial but four days a year. These are April 15, June 15, September i, and December 24. Clock time is called mean time ; sun-dial time is apparent time ; and the difference between them is equation of time. This will explain the term used in calendars and almanacs, " clock-fast," " clock- slow." Atmospheric refraction brings in another error in dialling, since it alters the apparent position of the 90 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday sun, but this effect is very small and need not be considered in a sun-dial, which is, after all, so sel- dom accurate throughout the year. The teaching of mathematics in everyday schools, after centuries of surprisingly little change, in the latter half of the nineteenth century became greatly Dial-head of Centennial Dial. altered. Ordinary school-books and very common- place pupils show that in the early part of that century navigation, land-surveying, and dialling were universally taught. Now, few of the young who go down upon the sea in ships know much of the mathematical side of their calling. When every boy wanted to go to sea, and many did go and be- The Construction of Sun-dials 91 came ship's captains as soon as they came of age, the study of navigation meant something. The pub- lication of ordnance maps, with many other in- fluences, has set aside the practical and theoretical study of land-surveying. The study of dialling vanished still earlier, with the multiplication of church clocks and watches. We find Thomas Jefferson amusing himself dur- ing an illness in calculating dials, as told in a letter to Mr. Clay. " POPLAR FOREST, August 23, 1811. "DEAR SIR: While here, and much confined to the house by my rheumatism, I have amused myself with cal- culating the hour lines of an horizontal dial for the latitude of this place, which I find to be 37 22' 26". The calcu- lations are for every five minutes of time, and are always exact to within less than half a second of a degree. As I do not know that anybody here has taken this trouble be- fore, I have supposed a copy would be acceptable to you. It may be good exercise for Master Cyrus to make you a dial by them. He will need nothing but a protractor, or a line of chords and dividers. A dial of size, say of from twelve inches to two feet square, is the cheapest and most accurate measure of time for general use, and would I sup- pose be more common if every one possessed the proper horary lines for his own latitude. Williamsburg being very nearly in the parallel of the Poplar Forest, the calculations now sent would serve for all the counties in the line be- tween that place and this, for your own place, New Lon- don, and Lynchburg in this neighborhood. Slate, as being less affected by the sun, is preferable to wood or metal, and needs but a saw and plane to prepare it, and a knife point to mark the lines and figures. If worth the trouble, you 92 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday will, of course, use the paper enclosed ; if not, some of your neighbors may wish to do it, and the effect to be of some use to you will strengthen the assurances of my great esteem and respect." Centennial Sun-dial. The Construction of Sun-dials 93 Many boys even in that century studied dialling at school not so many in America, for we had our cheap Connecticut clocks so early in our his- tory, and used them so widely ; but in Great Britain dialling was taught, especially in Scotland. Burns says in an autobiographical letter, that he was sent to a noted school " to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, etc." Hugh Wilson at the same time not only learned dialling, but practised it, and one of his dials still may be seen at Fenwick, near Fal- kirk. The art of dial-making seems to have been the mode at certain times in various localities. Perhaps some man of note or influence awakened a special interest in the vicinity of his residence. Sometimes a gravestone cutter with a pretty taste for novelties turned his tools to dial-making on dull winter days. The student was not haled on by old mathemati- cal treatises with any thought of its being an easy task to make a sun-dial. He was warned that he must have " skill in spheriques, together with the laws of Motion of the great Luminaries; he must be absolute in all Circular Affections, as Declina- tions, Right and Oblique Ascentions, Altitudes, Amplitudes, Azimuths, Culminations, Arches Diur- nal, Ascendent, Descendent, etc." All these are not simple of speech nor simple of knowledge to beginners, even if they were entitled, Easy Rules for Dialling ; Young Men s Aid in Gnomonics. Still, somehow, men of ordinary education, such as stone- masons and men with scant mathematical knowledge, used to be able to make precisely perfect sun-dials from these common rules. I must confess frankly 94 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday I find it difficult to understand many of the rules which I have seen, and I have had as good an edu- cation in mathematics as have women in general, and as have many men, having studied thoroughly and with great interest algebra and geometry, and hav- ing proved myself one of so capable a class in trigo- nometry that our enthusiastic teacher led his class of girls well on into the knowledge of land-survey- ing. It does not lessen the value of the education received when I state that this teacher of these girl- mathematicians was a good-looking young man who had been graduated but a year or two from Harvard. In spite of the antiquated diction, I like the rules in Leybourne's Dialling better than more modern rules, but Leybourne's book is rare ; and even the fine rules for dial-making given in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which seem to me perfectly clear and easy of comprehension, have been stigmatized to me within a week as " blind, confused things." As some will read this book wfio will care for sun- dials, and perhaps will like to construct one, but can- not understand the application of any rules such as those of Leadbeater or Ferguson, I will give plain rules for making a horizontal dial, worded by H. R. Mitchell, Esq., of Philadelphia, though he disclaims all originality in their construction and phrasing. They seem to me perfect in their simplicity and exactness of information, and with the attached Fig- ures i, 2, and 3, must be readily understood; and when these are grasped, I am sure the rules for ver- tical dials, given in the Encyclopedia Britannica, will at once seem clear and applicable. The Construction of Sun-dials 95 RULES FOR MAKING A HORIZONTAL DlAL To lay out the lines for a Horizontal Sun-dial in its simplest form, we will first make the Stile or Gnomon. Figure I. Lay off the horizontal base line, then with a Protractor ascer- tain the angle which must be the same as the Latitude of the place, say for New York it is about 40 44'. Start- ing from the point 5, mark the angle with a _. D ^ Figure 1. line BL, and draw also the perpendicular line AC at right angles to the base AE. This gives you the triangular Gnomon in its simplest form ; they are generally cut away at the back in a fanciful out- line, as indicated by the dotted lines, always leaving the line EC untouched, for its line is the shadow line. Then the angle ABC will be correct for this Latitude. For the Face of the Dial draw the line AE, and then the line CD, at right angles to AE. The points C and D will bj your six o'clock points. At the intersection of these lines, E, draw a circle, the radius of which will be equal to the length of the line EC in Figure I. Then another circle inside, the radius of which will be equal to the length of the line AE in Figure I. Now the outside circle, A to D and A to C, divide in two equal parts, and then subdivide each of these parts into three, so as to make twelve equal parts, indicated by ooooo ; and do the same with the inner circle, indicated by zzzzz. Now with a rule draw lines parallel to CD, from each 96 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday of the points of division, 0, in the two upper quarter circles, then draw lines parallel to AB from each point, z, on the inner circle. Marking the points of intersection, then from the central point, , draw lines through these various intersections, and where these lines cross, the circles will be your hour points. k- -^otfeT fTP^J- - -k k xS. ,' --k -k Figure 2. In drawing the figures for the hours, they should have the same inclination as the lines radiating from E. The half and quarter hours should be made in the same way, by dividing the distances between the points on the outer and inner circle, and where the lines from E intersect, will give you the marks for the halves and quarters. The minutes, if you choose to put them, can be spaced off with the eye ; The Construction of Sun-dials 97 the lower circles can be figured in just the same way as the upper, extending the hour marks to, say, 4 A.M. and 8 P.M., but for any ordinary practical use 6 o'clock in the morning and 6 o'clock in the evening covers all that is needed. Figure 3. In laying out a Dial in this way, no allowance has been made for the width or thickness of the Stile or Gnomon ; if a thin Gnomon, say, Jg of an inch, is used, it is hardly nec- essary to make any allowance ; but if you want to use a heavy Gnomon, say, -fy or ^ inch thick, then instead of one line AB, there must be two parallel lines the same distance apart as the width of the Gnomon, and instead of striking 98 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday the circle from the central point E, two semicircles must be made with the centres where the line CD intersects the two parallel lines, or what is probably an easier method would be to cut the draft into two equal parts along the line AB, and place between them a strip of paper just the width of the proposed Gnomon. As the hour lines about the middle of the day are closer together than those earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon, it makes a much better Dial to shift the centre toward the 12 o'clock mark, and draw a new circle from this point, and the lines radiating from E can be extended to this new circle, and the Stile or Gnomon will have to be increased in proportion ; but the point must not be moved, it must always be on the line between the two 6 o'clocks, as shown in Figure 3. In setting the Dial, care should be taken that it is always perfectly level, that the Gnomon does not incline to either right or left, and should point to the true north (not the magnetic). If this Dial is properly made and set, and its time cor- rected by the time equation (which you will find in the United States Nautical Almanac), it can be depended upon as an accurate timekeeper. I have been asked for still simpler rules for use by folk of very slight education ; among others, the negroes of the South, not the negroes of the better schools, but those who know simply a little arith- metic and a little geography ; the geography need be only enough to tell the dial-maker the latitude of his home, which I assume to be the spot where he is to place the dial. Take a piece of pine board a half-inch thick and four- teen inches square. This will do to make a twelve-inch The Construction' of Sun-dials dial. Paint it with several coats of good oil-paint. Make the gnomon from another piece of board half an inch thick and six inches square. To shape the gnomon draw lines on Figure 4, from corner to corner, like AE and CD which make E the centre. Then draw the line GF passing through E, mak- ing this line parallel to lines AC and ED. Of course the angle CAF is a right angle of 90 degrees, and the line AE, being half of it, makes EAF an angle of 45 degrees. It should be easy to find other angles by dividing these spaces equally. A very easy way is to divide it into divi- i sions of 100 and these subdivide into 50, and so on as shown in Fig- ure 5. Let us make a gno- mon for Tuskegee, Ala- bama. The latitude of Tuskegee is about 32 J degrees. The dotted line HI is drawn on the an- Base F Figure 4. oo sa gle of 32! degrees, and the figure HIJ forms the proper shape for a gnomon for a sun-dial to be used at Tuskegee. Now turn to Figure 6. On the large square of board find as nearly as possible the ioo Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday centre and draw from it three semicircles marked E, F, and G. The outer circle, , is to have a radius of 6 inches, the next circle, /", a radius of 5| inches, and the circle G a radius of 5 inches. Then draw three similar semicircles having D for a centre. C and D must be I 7 ] inches apart. Between the circles E and F you can draw in small marks the lines for the hours, half-hours, quarters, and minutes, while between FG you will draw the large hour figures which can be plainly seen. The Construction of Sun-dials 101 The outside circle E will be about I2| inches in diameter. The middle circle /"will be about 1 1 J inches in diameter. The inside circle G will be about 10 inches in diameter. We now must set the triangular gnomon HIJ of Figure 5 in its proper place. Place it on the dial-face so the point H is at xx. J will then reach the circle G, and that point G should be numbered XII, the noon hour. Draw a straight line yyzz, across the dial-face run- ning through xx (where the point of the gnomon meets the face). This line yyz and zzx are the 6 o'clock morn- ing and evening hours. Fasten the gnomon firmly in place by screws from under- neath, or in any way you prefer. And then place your dial-face in absolutely horizontal position, and with the gnomon pointing exactly north. Put in the other hour lines by using a good watch keeping correct time, and making the line of the gnomon at precisely I, 2, 3 o'clock, etc. Of course these hours can be carefully calculated, but this set of rules is not given for persons capable of such precise calculations. And certainly no excuse is necessary for availing oneself of the easier method obtained through consulting a watch when the En- cyclopedia Britannica, in its elaborate rules for dial- making, advises the same thing in certain cases. There should also be allowance made for equation of time, if the dial-maker knows how to do so. But without these perfecting details this sun-dial will be found an excellent timekeeper. While every detail of a sun-dial must be exact, 1 wish to draw special attention to the importance of the precise shaping and setting of the gnomon ; IO2 . Sun-diaJs^ and Roses of Yesterday ,- for great ignorance about the gnomon is dis- played even by architects. Upon a house which stands in a neighborhood filled with mathematical interest, near the home of Godfrey, the inventor of the seaman's quadrant, not far from the influence of Franklin, lover of dials, and under the magic spell of the sun-dial of Ahaz, and, moreover, in the only locality in the United States where sun-dials can be found in any number upon this house is erected a fine dial-face, which even at first glance looks unnatural to you ; then you note quickly that the gnomon is a brass or iron bar standing at right angles to the dial-face, upon which are marked correctly lines and numerals for a ver- tical dial for that latitude. Though this dial with its absurd stick of a gnomon had been erected for some years, I persisted in inquiring until I learned that the dial had been made in London, and on its way hither the gnomon was lost ; so the house archi- tect " made a new one," and the man added : " It doesn't matter, anyway ; it doesn't keep any time, it's only an ornament. I am told that a sun-dia v is never right within sixteen minutes." CHAPTER V INGENIOSE DIALLERS "In this glorious reign, as likewise in the century which has passed, there are to the honor and pleasure of the King and the glory of God in all his works, as seen in the sunne and his mo- tions, many ingeniose diallers." Matbematick Rules by I. N. GENTN, 1646. " Methinks it were a happy life To carve out dials quaintly, point by point." j Henry PI, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. |S CLOCKS and watches be- came more general they were doubtless often imper- fect and harassing in their workmanship. Dutch and German horologers had been warmly welcomed to England, and throughout Europe, but Shakespeare gives a striking example of the carelessness of their work in his taunt : " I seek a wife ! A woman, that is like a German clock, Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, And never going aright ! " The most celebrated dial and clock maker who came to England was Nicholas Kratzer. In a letter 103 IO4 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday written in English to Cardinal Wolsey from Lucca in 1520, he is called "an Allemagne," a "deviser of the King's horologies," and it was stated that he was "ready to go to England." He was born in Munich, educated in the university of Cologne and other German universities, and became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in July, 1517. Under the command of Henry VIII he studied astronomy there, and wrote two scientific books which are still preserved in the College Library. Kratzer and Holbein were both men of merry spirit, and both sojourners in a strange land, soon were arcades ambo ; and the portrait of the dialler here copied (now in the Louvre) was painted by the German artist, and is deemed by many his finest work. In it "Master Nicholas" leans contemplatively over a table with a chamfered scale inscribed : Imago ad vivum effigem expressa Nicolai Kratzer, 1528. Kratzer lived into the reign of Edward VI. At his death many of his papers went to the hands of the astrologer, Dr. Dee, who was an excellent astron- omer and dialler. Holbein also was interested in clock and dial making. He designed a time-meter as a gift for the king, which had on its summit a clock driven by wheel-work ; below were forenoon and afternoon sun-dials, and still lower a clepsydra. The most interesting English portable dial in existence is now owned by Lewis Evans, Esq., of Russell Farm, Watford, England. It was once the property of Cardinal Wolsey ; and it is without doubt the only existing dial made by Kratzer ; in Nicholas Kratzer, Deviser of Horologies to King Henry VIII of England. Ingeniose Diallers 105 design and workmanship it is worthy that great master. On this page and page 106 are shown a side and a front view of this exquisite dial. The instru- ment consists of nine dials arranged on a hollow block of gilt brass, 3^ inches high, 2^ inches wide, and i^- inches thick. The shape of each side plate (as shown in the fig- i ures) is (in general) octagonal set upon a base shaped some- what like the lower half of an equilateral triangle. Seven of the dials are on the side plates or faces which connect these two octagonal plates. There are, therefore, four vertical dials north, south, east, and west dials an "upper polar dial," an " inferior polar dial," an "upper equinoctial dial," an "inferior equinoctial dial," and on top a horizontal dial, and a depressed circle which once contained a compass. The tiny gnomons are all formed of thin triangular metal plates. On the lower part of each of the side plates are engraved shields. One (shown in the illustration) bears the arms of Wolsey : sable on a cross engrailed argent, a lion passant purpure between four leopards* heads azure; on a chief or a Lancaster Rose between two choughs. On the other shield is a representa- tion of the arms of the cathedral church of York. Wolsey was made Bishop of York in 1518, and Side View of Cardinal Wolseys Dial. 106 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday died in 1530, so the dial must have been made in those inclusive years. Soon after Kratzer was made a Fellow of Corpus Christi he " was made by Cardinal Wolsey his Mathematick Reader." And in the garden of his college this famous " deviser of horologies " put up for King Henry VIII a dial, which has long since vanished. But a careful drawing of it exists in a manuscript by one Hegge, which is now in the College Library ; and this drawing is reproduced on page 107 of this book. It bears an extraordi- nary resemblance to the Wolsey dial owned by Mr. Evans, both in general shape and in position of the dials. And the arms of the church of Winchester are shown in the draw- ing placed as the arms of the church of York are on the portable dial. Mr. Evans also notes the similarity Full View of Cardinal Wolsey's Dial. Q f the i nc li nat ion and type of the numerals, the arrangement in narrow circles of the hour numbers, and the resemblance in shape of the gnomons. Both dials resemble a wood-cut in the first book on dialling that was ever printed, a treatise by one Munster ; and the portrait of Kratzer by Holbein, facing page 104 of this book. Ingeniose Diallers 107 also shows the great dialler with a similar block of dials in his hand. All this cer- tainly proves the as- sertion that it is the most remarkable por- table dial in existence, and cordial thanks are due to Mr. Evans for giving knowledge and sight of it to us all. Hegge describes Kratzer's dial at Cor- pus Christi thus : " In this beautiful Alter (on w c h Art has sacrificed such Varietie of Invention to the De- itie of the Sun) are twelve Gnomons, the Sun's fellow travellers, who like farr distant In- habitants, dwell some under ye Aequinoctiall, some under the Poles, some in more temparat Climats; some upon Plains in Piano ; some upon the Mountains in Convexo ; and some in the Vallies in Concavo. Here you may see the Aequinoctiall Dial the Mother of ye rest, who hath the horizons of the parallel Sphere for her dubble Province, which suffer by course and Drawing of Kratzer's Dial, in Manu- script of Robert Hegge. io8 Sun-diaJs and Roses of Yesterday half-years night : There the polar Dial wing'd with the Lateral Meridian. Here you may behold the two fac'd Vertical dial which shakes hands with both Poles. There the Convex dial elevated in triumph upon 4 iron Arches. Here, lastly, the Concave Dial which shews the Sun at noone the hemisphere of Night. In other dials neighboring Clocks betray their Errours ; but in this Consort of Dials in- formed with one Soul of Art, they move all with one Motion, and unite with their Stiles the prayse of their artificer." There is something most touching and stirring in this poetical tribute of one dial-maker to another ! Who would think that a treatise on the sombre science of gnomonics could show such an outburst of sentiment and enthusiasm ? It is genuine praise, too, the adoring veneration of one craftsman for the skilled hand of a master. The phrase " Consort of Dials informed with one Soul of Art" is an un- usual one, and a most felicitous one ; it is a beauti- fully exact term, too, to describe Kratzer's wonderful dials. I wish I could read Robert Hegge's whole treatise ; he has won my full respect. There was infinitely more enthusiasm on such subjects then than nowadays; all sciences were new; diversions for men of mind, for men of parts, were few, and science study served as pleasant occupation ; dialling was a science closely allied in the minds of nearly all to astrology as well as astronomy. All had an interest, and nearly every one had a profound belief, in astrology ; it influenced many sciences besides that of medicine, and was a favorite study. It occupied with many persons of leisure the place that a study of literature has to-day with the added Ingeniose Diallers 109 zest ever clinging to aught mystic ; dialling shared in the zest and in the magic. A belief in the occult influence of the stars and suns and planets upon daily life was universal. Even the few scoffers who dared doubt the validity of a horoscope still heeded the influence of the planets in the humble things of life, in all farm- work and domestic labor especially. Medicine and astrology were so allied that the soberest dispensa- tories and medical treatises mingled their rules and influences just as freely as did the old woman who gathered herbs in the full-o'-the-moon. The dial- maker had, therefore, a certain honor cast upon his work because it was allied to still deeper thoughts and beliefs. In Loggan's Views of the English Universities many English sun-dials are shown as they appeared in 1688. Among them is a pillar which stood on the churchyard wall of St. Mary's at Oxford. This pillar bore a cubical stone with dials on four sides, and was crowned by a pyramid surmounted by a ball. This pillar with dials was the work of Nicholas Kratzer ; and a full description of it is given in his manuscript De Horologis, with the inscriptions which were cut in the stone and written on placards. These were curiously frank, even to the extent of telling that the dial-maker was a heavy drinker. The sun-dial is gone, but there still stands in the quadrangle of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a similar column dated 1581. It is shown in this book on page no. It is taller and more elegant, but there is the same cubical block with dials sur- no Sun-dials- and Roses of Yesterday mounted by a pyramid. This is crowned with a pelican on a globe, the crest of the college. Four coats of arms are carved on the cube : those of the Sun-dial in Quadrangle of Corpus Christi College, England. founder of the college, Bishop Fox ; the royal arms ; the arms of the college ; and the arms of Bishop Oldham. On the column is a perpetual calendar and a motto, Hor as Omnes Complect a. On the pyramid are in Latin mottoes adapted from the Vulgate : THERE IS LAID UP A CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. THANKS BE TO GOD ; THE GRACE OF GOD WITH ME ; I EMBRACE ALL HOURS ; I HAVE 'PLACED GOD AS MY HELPER. This dial was constructed by Charles Turn- bull, a member of the college, and his initials are Ingeniose Diallers in cut on it. A good and full description of it is in Fowler's History of Corpus Chris ti College. It is said that the dial pillar was deemed " inconvenient " when the quadrangle was used as a drilling ground in times of threatened invasion, but happily it escaped being razed. This dial has been frequently copied, in whole and in part. The beautiful cross in the market-place in Carlisle has some of its fea- tures. A view from an old print of Carlisle is shown in the chapter on the Rosicrucians. English horologers vied with the German mathe- maticians in skilful workmanship. We read that John Poynet, another man of admirable learning, presented Henry VIII with a horologium, which, says Fuller, " I might English dial, clock, or watch, save that it is epitheted Sciotericum." This " ob- served the shadow of the sun/' showed, in addition to the hour of the day, the day of the month, change of moon, ebb and flow of sea, etc. Fuller says severely of such mysteries, " Men never were more curious to divide nor more careless to employ their time than now." We have some excellent pictures of the dial- makers of the seventeenth century written for us by Fuller and by their contemporary, that equally entertaining old fellow, Aubrey. Dial-makers were much esteemed and much feared, and "were well content to be so." Aubrey says, " In those darke times astrologer, mathematician, and conjurer were accounted the same things." The Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Oxford, who made the fine circular dial on the H2 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday college library, did not hesitate to secure for himself the name of a conjurer by a system of tricks with a confederate. William Oughtred, the teacher of many " ingeniose schollars," including Sir Christopher Wren, wrote in 1578 a book entitled Horologiograpbia Geometric a > which Wren translated into Latin when he was but fourteen years old. Let me quote from Aubrey's lively account of him : " Oughtred was a little man ; had black haire and black eies with a great deal of spirit. His witt was always work- ing. He would draw lines and diagrams in the dust. His son Ben told he did use to lye a-bed till eleaven or twelve o'clock, with his doublet on. Studyed late at night ; went not to bed until 1 1 o'clock ; had his tinder box by him ; and on the top of his bed staffe he had his inke-horne fixt. He slept but little. Sometimes he went not to bed at all in two or three nights, and would not to come downe to meales till he had found the quasitum. Severall great mathematicians came over into England on purpose to be acquainted with him. His country neighbours knew there must be some extraordinary thing within him he was so visited by foreigners. He did not like any save those who tugged and took paines to worke out questions. He taught all free. He could not endure to see a scholar write an ill hand ; he taught them all presently to mend their hands. " He wrote a very elegant hand, and drew his schemes most neatly as they had been cut in copper. He was an astrologer, and very lucky in giving his judgments in nativities : he would say, that he did not understand the reason why it should be so ; but so it would happen : he did believe some genius or spirit did help. The country people did believe that he could conjure, and 'tis like enough Triangular Lodge with Sun-dials, Rushton, Northamptonshire. -- Ingeniose Diallers 113 that he might be well enough contented to have them think so. " He was a great lover of Chymistry and told Jno. Evelyn not above a yeare before he dyed, if he were five younger he doubted not to find the philosopher's stone. The olde gentleman was a great lover of Heraldry. His wife was a penurious woman, and would not allow him to burne candle after supper, by which means many a good notion is lost, many a probleme unsolved. Mr. Hanshaw, his scholar, when he was there, bought candle, which was a great comfort to the old man. His son Ben was confi- dent he understood magique." The old dial-maker died of joy for the coming in of the king. Son Ben is a distinct character, and takes his departure from history, " putting on his considering cap, which was never like his father's, with much adoe to find the place where lie his father's bones ; for truly his grief was so great that he could not remember the place." The chronicler says dryly, " Now I should have thought it would have made him remember it the better." In. reading the biographies of men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we note that their skill in dialling is ever made the subject of much praise. Thus Aubrey writes of one Edward Halley : " As a boy he studied Arithmetique and was very per- fect in the Coelestial Globe. He studyed Geometry, and at 1 6 could make a Dyall and then he said he thought him- self a brave fellow. When at the age of 19 he solved this useful probleme, never done before, viz. : From 3 distances given from the Sun and Angles between to find the Orbe, for which his name will ever be famous. At 1678 he H4 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday added a Spectacle-glasse to the Shadow-vane of the lesser Arche of the sea-Quadrant (or back-staffe) which is of great use, for that spot of light will be manifest when you cannot see any Shadow. He presented his Planisphere with a short description to her Majesty who was very well pleased with it ; but got nothing but prayse" Aubrey refers to the wonderful dials of Wren, and also relates of Robert Hooke, the inventor of pendulum watches, about the year 1680, that when but a boy, he made a dial on a round trencher with- out any mathematical instruction, which was not remarkable, after all, for a man who invented thirty different ways of flying. A great number of mathematical works of about this date exist in various public and private libraries ; these are often in manuscript, for the market was overstocked. Fuller remarks in his Worthies of England^ " I never did spring such a covye of mathematicians all at once, as I met with at this time." The interest in sun-dials in England must have been vastly spurred on by the never flagging, zest of King Charles I for them in every form. It was one of the touching stories which I read in my child- hood that he ever carried a silver pocket-dial which he gave on the night preceding his execution to his attendant Herbert as a last gift to his son, the Duke of York. I wonder what was the title of that book which I so loved, which gave anecdotes of the English kings, princes, and princesses ! There were sev- eral of King Charles in it, and they helped to make him the idol of my childhood, a regard I cannot Ingeniose Diallers 115 even now divest myself of, though years of mature reading have forced upon me other tales than the sad and romantic ones of that little picture-book. I had not the slightest notion what a dial was ; but since it was associated with the king's dying, I had a wild fancy that it was something, a silver box that contained poison to steal the old motto-jest a die-all. One of the most superb dials ever erected in England was the one in the king's garden at Whitehall, set up for King Charles II. I have a description of this magnificent and singular dial in Leybourne's Tractates, but a minute account is in a book written by the maker of the dial, Rev. Father Francis Hall, of the Society of Jesus. A copy of this latter rare volume was lent to me by Mr. Lewis Evans. A briefer account may be seen in The New Universal Magazine of January, 1756. The title of Father Hall's book may be given in full, as being most explanatory : An expli- cation of the Dial/ Sett Up in the Kings Garden at London in 1669. In Which Very Many Sorts of Dyalls are Conteined ; by which besides the Houres of All Kinds diversely expressed^ many things also belonging to Geography ', Astrology ', and Astronomy are by the Sunnes Shadow made visible to the eye. Amongst Which) Very Many Dialls, Especially the Most Curious , are New Inventions, Hitherto Divulged to None. All these Particulars are Shortly yett Clearly sett forth for the common good. By the Reverend Father Francis Hall (otherwise Line] of the Society of Jesus, Professor of Mathematicks. The book has sixty-nine inter- n6 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday esting illustrations. The Elevation of this dial from Leybourne here copied is equal to a de- scription, but some of the curious details may be pointed out. The dial stood on a "Pillar" or " Piedestall " of stone, being in six parts, set in the general form of a " Pyramis." The lower table was about forty inches in diameter, and had twenty dials set around the edge, all covered with glass. Some of these showed the hour after the Jewish, some the Babylonian, some of the Italian fashion. The gnomon of each was a. lion's paw or a unicorn's horn. On the upper part of this table were eight reclining dials ; these were curious. One showed the time by the shade of the style falling on the hour lines, the next by the shade of the hour line falling on the style, the third had no shadow. Of the four faceted globes attached to this table, one had several dials " belonging to Geography," the second several dials " belonging to Astronomy," another to Astrology. There were also four globes with dials attached by iron arms. The second table was thirty inches in diameter. This had sixteen dials on the circumference; these differed from those first named, in that the former were drawn on the back of the pieces of glass that protected them, while these sixteen were on the stone. These showed " the different manner of Rising of the Stars to Witt ; the Cosmicall, the Cronycall, and the Heliaeall." The styles of these dials were little stars painted on the inside of the glass cover. This table had eight reclining dials, four of which were of mirrors which reflected the Elevation of Dial of King Charles II at Whitehall. Ingeniose Diallers 117 shadows on dials placed above on the third table. There were four arms with globes attached. The third piece of the dial was a sort of globe cut in twenty-six faces. Some of these faces were cov- ered with glass which served as windows, letting the observer look at dials within the globe. From this four iron branches held each a glass globe painted within in such a manner that they also served as dials. The fourth part or table, twenty inches in diame- ter, was cut on the edge into twelve semicylindrical concave dials, of which the style was a Flower de Luce. The four glass globes on this all were inge- niously varied. The fifth part, a globe twelve inches in diameter, was cut in faces of which fourteen bore each a dial. The sixth part was a glass globe seven inches in diameter, held by bands of iron and surmounted by a cross. This very bald outline conveys no idea of the ingenuity displayed in these many dials, which num- bered nearly three hundred, and were of seventy- three different kinds ; the four globes attached by iron arms to the lower table were marked each, Per Ignem, Per Aquam, Per Aeram^ Per Terram. The first bowl, filled with water, showed the hour by the heat of the converged rays. The second bowl, also filled with water, threw a little circle of light on the true hour. The third globe, filled with air, exhibited " two little pictures of the sun like two stars," and thereby marked the hour. The fourth globe had " a geographicall description of the whole earth upon the inward superficies of the Bowie." 1 1 8 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday ' The four great globes standing upright on the lower table were very singular ; each bore thirty-two dials, of which twelve were pentagons ; and they served to show "supper time," "sleeping time," etc., of scores of points all over the world. The globes attached by iron branches to the second table bore Hexagonal Dials on King Charles Dial. the titles, PER STYLUM SINE UMBRA, PER UMBRAM SINE STYLO, PER STYLUM ET UMBRA, and SINE STYLO VEL UMBRA, which indicated their character. Through the little peep-holes of the largest globes could be seen pictures, including portraits of the king and queen, queen mother, Duke of York, Prince Ru- pert, etc. This old book with its curious wording and illus- trations has raised a world of fancies and dreams in my mind. I can see the gay and thoughtless courtiers, and the equally volatile and careless king, Ingeniose Diallers 119 bending eagerly over this dial, while Charles pointed out to Nell Gwynne, perhaps, the various singular contrivances which formed the dial-faces, and trans- lated to her the scores of Latin mottoes ; for each dial of the hundreds, big and little, had some motto or inscription. It seems a pendant to the pages of Pepys, a presentment of the court life the diarist so truly loved. And how quickly it all vanished ! like the graphic scene of the king's gay court, and his sudden death, so strikingly told by John Evelyn. So quickly had this wonderful dial disappeared that Leybourne could write, " Thus have I given a brief account of this now demolished Dial, which account and figure to- gether may give some light to the ingenious Practi- tioner to invent infinite Varieties of this Kind." CHAPTER VI PORTABLE DIALS ' And then he drew a dial from his poke And looking on it with lack-lustre eyes Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock.' ' As You Like It, ACT II, Sc. vii, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. |Y SHAKESPEARE'S day many pocket-dials were in use in Europe ; the ring-dial and shepherd's-dial were common ; the compass-dial less so. The name poke-dial, given to them in old poems and plays, brings a pleasant study of the words poke, pouch, pocket, purse. The Latin words portarium and solarium are also employed for these pocket- dials. Other references are made in the pages of Shakespeare to pocket-dials, among them the shep- herd's-dial, as in j Henry VI. " Oh God, methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain, To sit upon a hill as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly point by point; Thereby to see the minutes how they run, 1 20 Portable Sun-dials How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live." Let me tell the history of this poke-dial, and give rules for making it, so that, as do still the shepherds in the Pyrenees, any one may " carve it out quaintly point by point." A shepherd at Beam made this philosophical answer last summer to an American who jested with him over the antiquated timepiece he was carving : " No human being can certainly dare to know the time of the day as well as the sun, since without him there would be no time ; so we go directly to the sun when we wish to know what time it is." This dial is known by many names old and new : chilindre, cylinder, calendar, kalendar, column-dial, pillar-dial, shepherd's-dial, Pyrenean dial. Treatises on these chilindres are extant which were written in the thirteenth century. Warton gives as a note to Lydgate : " Kalendar, Chilindre, cylinder, a kind of pocket sun-dial." Chaucer says in his Shiftman's Tale, " By my chil- indre it is prime of daye," which was the end of the first hour after sunrise. These cylinders are small columns of ivory or wood having at the top a kind of stopper or lid with a ring at the top, and with a gnomon- hinged upon the side of the stopper. The cylinder is divided into month spaces on the circumference. When in use, the stopper was taken out and the gnomon turned around, so it hung over the desired 122 Sun-dials' and Roses of Yesterday month space or line. Then the dial was hung up on the ring, so it hung exactly vertical with the pointer extended toward the sun. It could be set on a horizontal plane, but a slight deviation so affected it that it was far better to hang it up. The (Topn? \ \ \\ \ \\ \\ \\ Drawing in 14th Century Mss. of a Chilindre. shadow fell on the curved hour lines and showed the time. Homan in his Vulgaria gave in i$zo a very terse description of these dials, calling them " in- struments like a hanging pillar with a tunge hanging out to know ye tyme of day." On this page is given a drawing from a four- Portable Sun-dials 123 teenth century treatise on the Chilindre which is now preserved in the Arundel Mss. It is called in it the " travellers'-dial" ; full and precise directions are given, as for the wood to be used, which should be " very solid, imporous, equal, and without knots." Two Boxwood and One Ivory Shepherd's-dials. The markings and lines are carefully shown with exact directions for making them. The gnomon is called in this treatise a style or indicator, and could be made of copper, of silver with a bit of lead melted on it ; it worked on a pin fastened in the lid 124 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday In the museum at Naples is the oldest portable dial known, and it is an adaptation of the chilindre. It was found at the excavations made in Hercula- neum in 1759. It is of bronze shaped like a ham, Two Boxwood Pillar-dials. and on the flat sides are the lines and letters that prove it to be a sun-dial. Its date must be before A.D. 79. It was to be suspended by a ring and had a tail-piece which must have been the gnomon. Portable Sun-dials 125 A most interesting type of cylinder-dials is known in India, where the dials are set in staves 4^ to 5^ feet long, which pilgrims carry with them to Benares. These are called Ashadah^ the name of the month when these pilgrimages are usually made, it is the latter half of June and first half of July. These pil- grim staves are eight-sided, carved with numerals to show the half hours from sunrise to sunset. On page 123 is given an interesting group of chilindres, owned by Mr. Evans. Number i is a shepherd's-dial, of boxwood, jf inches high, |- of an inch in diameter. The figures and month initials were stamped on it, and then filled in with some red pigment. This was bought in 1899 at Argeles, near Lourdes, where these dials are still sold for use. Number 2 is a wooden column-dial 5 inches high, covered with printed paper varnished. Made for latitude 49 by Henry P^obert, horologer au Palais Royal, N 164^ Paris. Its probable date is 1800. Number 3 is a column-dial of ivory 4^ inches high ; marked J. Le Tellier ^Dieppe. Date about 1780. On page 124 are shown a column-dial 4^ inches high, -J inch diameter, probably German ; made about 1650; also a shorter boxwood pillar-dial, which once belonged to Mr. Lewis's great-grandfather, Lewis Evans, F.R.S., and which may have been made by him. Its date is about 1780; it is 3^- inches high, J of an inch in diameter. I give here on pages 1 26 and 1 27 two plates on the making of a cylinder-dial from Ferguson's Mechani- cal Lectures on Dialling. These plates show how to construct a cylinder-dial for the latitude of London. 126 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Plate I, on this page, was 8 inches long and 7^ inches deep, and was to be pasted around a cylin- der 6.60 inches long below the movable top, and 2.24 inches in diameter. The cylinder should be hol- low to hold the style when not in use ; the style when fixed must be at an exact right angle to the cylinder, and be placed at top of the line A B of the Plate I, I. Plate for Cylinder-dials. where the parallels of the sun's altitude begin. The length of the style (or distance of point C from the cylinder) must be equal to the radius aA of the quadrant in Plate I. The rules for the construction run thus : Draw the right line aAB parallel to the top of the paper, and with any convenient opening of the compasses set one foot in the end of the line at a as a centre, and Portable Sun-dials 127 with the other foot describe the arc AE. Divide it into ninety degrees. Draw the right line AC at right angles to aAB, touching the quadrant at point A. Then from the centre a draw right lines through as many degrees of the quadrant as are equal to the sun's altitude at noon on Diagram of Construction of Cylinder-dial. the longest day of the year at the place for which the dial is to serve. (At London it is sixty-two degrees.) Cor- tinue these right lines till they meet the tangent line AC. Then from each point of meeting draw a straight line (at right angles to AC} across the paper (sixty-two in this place) ail being parallel to line AE. These lines will be 128 Sun-dkls and Roses of Yesterday parallels to the sun's altitude, in whole degrees, from sunrise to sunset, on all the days of the year. These sixty-two lines or parallels must be drawn to the line BD, which must be parallel to AC, and must be as far from it as the intended circumference of the cylinder. Divide the lines AC and BD by parallel lines into twelve equal parts for the twelve signs of the ecliptic ; and place the character of the twelve signs in the divisions as indicated, which is, beginning with Capricorn and ending with Pisces. Divide these spaces again by parallel Jines in halves and in quarters if they can be distinct. At the top of this drawing make a scale of the months and days, and place it so that the days may stand over the sun's plane for each of them in the signs of the Ecliptic. The sun's place for every day of the year may be found in any Ephemeris (or almanac). Compute the sun's altitude for every hour when the sun is in the beginning, middle, and end of each sign of the ecliptic. And in the upright parallel lines at the beginning and middle of each sign make marks for these computed altitudes among the horizontal parallels of altitude, reckoning them downward according to the numeral figures set to them at the right hand answering to the like divisions of the quadrant at the left. And through these marks draw the curve hour lines and set the hours to them, as in the figures on Plate I, reckoning the forenoon hours downward and the after- noon hours upward. The sun's altitude should also be computed for the half hours. The quarter lines may be drawn by the eye. Cut ofF the paper at line AC, also at line BD, also cut close to the top and bottom horizontal lines. It is then fit to paste on the cylinder. I have given these rules in full not only that any curious reader may amuse himself by making a shep- herd's-dial, but to show the wording of the clearest of these old-time mathematical treatises. The drawing Standard of Dials, with Compass. From Ferguson's Lectures, Portable Sun-dials 129 of the lines for a cylinder-dial for the latitude of London were engraved on a sheet of strong paper and sold in large numbers. The story of James Ferguson, the " self-taught astronomer," the author of these rules, and his con- nection with dial-making is interesting. He was a thoughtful boy, ever occupied in watching the stars Brass Octahedral Block of Dials. while he served as a shepherd, and drawing what he called star-papers. His intelligence and application gained the interest of a gentleman's butler named Cantley, who, when the lad was sixteen years old, taught him to make sun-dials. Cantley must have been a remarkable butler, for he was a first-class 130 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday mathematician, a master of every musical instrument save the harp ; knew Latin, French, and Greek ; " let blood extremely well, and could even prescribe as a physician upon urgent occasion." We wonder a bit how the family fared whom he served. He was painting a dial on the schoolhouse wall when Ferguson saw him, and soon taught the eager farm- laddie algebra, astronomy, and dialling. With work- ing in a mill, painting portraits, drawing designs for embroidery, making clocks and dials, Ferguson soon was as busy as Cantley. The years passed, and suddenly Ferguson had made his name as a writer, lecturer, and inventor in gno- monics. He invented in 1766 a " Universal Dialling Cylin- der," by the use of which all kinds of sun-dials could be easily calculated and made. These he made and sold, as he did orreries, cometariums, astro- nomical clocks, and sun-dials. He had a mechanical rather than a mathematical mind ; and it may uphold us in our mechanical rather than mathematical modes of constructing sun-dials to know that Ferguson never was able to understand Euclid, and his constant method of satisfying him- self of the truth of any problem was by measure- ment with a scale and pair of compasses, not by mathematical demonstration. Ferguson made many Wooden Block Dial, with Paper Figures; 1780. Portable Sun-dials dials of various kinds to use in his lectures on dial- ling. An interesting one of his inventions is shown on a succeeding page. The astrolabe was well known in Persia, Arabia, and India at an early day. Originally the word was Brass Equinoctial Dial. applied rather vaguely to any flat circular instrument used for observation of the stars ; then it was re- stricted to the kind called the astrolabe planisphere, I will not describe an astrolabe, as reference to any scientific dictionary or cyclopaedia will afford an exact description. With various contrivances to use Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday as a gnomon, they served as portable dials for many centuries ; such was the astrolabe of Chaucer. I suppose no one to-day ever reads Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, or Bread and Milk for Babes, save the painful editor, Rev. Mr. Skeat. But a su- perficial glance at his rendering of it shows a very gentle and pleasing trait of our beloved poet ; a side of his character not unexpected to those who love his works, but in some way unexpected in its power of moving your sentiment. We are bidden to be- lieve that the English of that and the two succeeding centuries showed much severity to their children ; but the absolute memorials which we have of inter- course between parents and children do not, to me, prove the assertion. Chaucer was pleased and proud of the progress of his little son in mathematics, which, with " the Lan- guages," formed the substance of schooling in that day. He had previously given the child a small astrolabe as a reward, and the child wished to learn about it ; and as Latin treatises were hard to com- prehend, the father wrote one suited to the child's mind. Here are his own words : " Litell Lowys my son, I have perceived well by certain evidences thine abilitie to lerne sciencez touching nombres and proporcions ; and as well, I consider thy bisi preyer in special to lern the tretis of the Astrelabie. Than, for as much as a philosofre seith, he wrappeth him in his friend that condescendeth to the rightful preirs of his friend, there- for have I given thee a sufficient astralabie for owr orizonte [horizon] compared after the latitude of Oxenford upon which by inditecon of this litel tretis, I propose to teach a Armillary Sphere Dial at Brockenhurst, New Forest, England. Portable Sun-dials 133 certain nombre of conclusions apporteying to this instru- ment." His conclusions are interesting : that the astrolabe was the most noble of instruments ; that they were too little known ; and that all treatises upon them were " too hard to thy tendre age of X years to con- ceive." " I wil showe litle reules & naked words in Englissh since Latyn he kanstow yet but smal, my litle son. " And I pray trewly every discreet person that redith this litle tretis to have my rude endyting excused, and my su- Brass Block Dial made in Styria, Austria, 1691. perfluietes of words for two causes. In the first for that curious enditing & hard sentence is ful hevy atones for swich a child to lern. & the second cause is this ; that sothly me seemeth better to write unto a child twice a good sentence than he for-get it once." 134 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday After all this declaration of his determination to write simple rules, it is a disappointment to read the rules themselves. I cannot see how any child of ten could have possibly understood them, even a fifteenth century child. The description of the astrolabe is, however, very clear. There is shown and described on pages 105 and 106 the most interesting English portable dial known. It was made by Nicholas Kratzer for Cardinal Wol- sey, and is now owned by Lewis Evans, Esq. In the latest edition of Mrs. Gatty's (now Mrs. Eden's) Book of Sun-dials is a valued addition, a chap- ter upon Portable Sun-dials, written by Mr. Evans. Certainly no one else could be so well fitted to write on this subject as he, since he possesses the finest collection of portable dials in the world. His work on Mrs. Gatty's book has been equalled by his kindness to me in my writing of portable dials in this book, both in furnishing me with illustrations and in giving me the history of special examples. We have in America at the National Museum at Washington, D.C., a small but good collection, of which the best are displayed in this book, through the kindness of various members of the staff at the Smithsonian Institution, who had special photo- graphs taken for me. Mr. Evans owns over 450 port- able sun-dials besides astrolabes and like instruments. He turned to collecting dials, since they seemed to be the only thing that was not being collected in his family. Among the objects are British, Greek, and Roman coins, flint and bronze implements, etch- ings, china, posey-rings, stamps, bank notes, shells Portable Sun-dials land, fresh water, and sea shells, butterflies, moths, birds' eggs, fossils, etc. His elder brother, Arthur John Evans, F.R.S., is the head of the famous Ash- molean Museum at Oxford, and collects all such objects, and in addition Greek and other engraved gems. The taste for collecting rarely runs in a family ; few sons care for the collections of their fathers, so the extent and vehemence of this family trait is surprising. Mr. Evans has the finest library on the subject of dialling that has ever been gotten to- gether. Over four hundred books and pamphlets upon dial- ling ; these in many languages. His interleaved copy of Mrs. Gatty's Book of Sun-dials must be a wonderfully interesting thing. There is another collection of dials in Eng- land, owned by a Mr. Fry of Bristol. Mr. Kent, the artist, has a collection of garden-dials at Hay- ward's Heath. The British Museum has the best public collection of portable dials; the Victoria and Albert Museum at Kensington has also a few dials. The best col- lection in Germany is at the Physical Museum at Dresden, and the German Museum at Nuremberg; in Italy, the Galileo Room of the Institute of the Thevenot Sun-dial. 136 Sun-dials and Jloses of Yesterday Studii Superior! in Florence, and the College Romano at Rome. There are a few dials in the Musee Cluny, also one fine private collection in Paris. I know no Brass Universal Ring-dial, set for Use ; owned by Author. private collection of portable dials in America save the few I own. Readers of this book owe to Mr. Evans a debt of cordial thanks ; for through his generosity I am enabled to make this chapter the most fully illus- Portable Sun-dials trated chapter on portable dials ever printed in Eng- lish, or I believe in any 'language ; and illustrated, too, with the rarest and most beautiful examples of their kind. Many are unique; and all would be beyond any possi- bility of examina- tion and compari- son, save for his thoughtfulness and kindness. An ancient form of portable dial was called the ring-dial ; it is old as Shake- speare's day. These varied greatly in size. Mr. Evans has seen but one English ring -dial small enough for a finger ring; though he has them of the size proper to use on a watch fob or as a seal. These were from i^ inches to i\ inches in diameter and were made in large numbers in Sheffield throughout the eighteenth century. In this form they were simply a flat ring with the hour lines drawn diagonally across the narrow surface of the ring. Through a tiny hole drilled in one side the sun's rays sent a shining spot of light upon the hour lines. Brass Universal Ring-dial, Flat for carrying ; owned by Author. 138 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday On page 136 is shown, full size, a " universal ring- dial," owned by the author. This is a very good example of a common form of this dial, which was greatly used in England in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries. It is, as may be seen in the illus- tration, a kind of armillary sphere showing the circles of the equator and the meridian together with the polar axis (the bar across the centre), which is marked with the names of the months and has on it a sliding gnomon with a tiny hole in the centre. The whole is pivoted to- gether in such a manner that it can be flattened out (and is thus shown on page 137) and can be car- ried conveniently in the pocket. The meridian ring is marked with de- grees, and the suspending clip is movable so it can 'be placed in proper position according to the latitude. When in use, it is held up by the ring and turned until a little line of light falling through the hole in the gnomon strikes on the centre line of the hour circle, and thus tells the correct time. This hour circle is marked with two sets of nume- rals, one for forenoon and one for afternoon. The gnomon must of course be carefully set to the Universal Ring-dial, with Disc Axis. Portable Sun-dials 139 position proper for the month of the year, as shown on the table of months marked on the axis. Another form of ring-dial is on the opposite page. Three full-sized figures of interesting ring-dials owned by Mr. Evans is given on this page. One Three Brass Ring-dials. is a brass ring-dial 2^ inches in diameter, made about 1760 by Proctor, and inscribed: Set me Right Use me Well And I Time tell Number 2 is a smaller brass ring i|- inches in diameter, called a seal-dial. This is an English dial dating about 1560. The seal has the initials A. P. and an oak branch. Number 3 is a German dial, date, 1698, differing from the ring-dial care- fully described, in that it has no sliding ring, but has two holes opposite each other, one for use in 140 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday winter, one in summer. On this page is shown an English signet ring of silver, of about 1620. The crest is a dog. The dial is less than an inch in diameter. Its companion is a brass ring-dial, either Swiss or German ; i-^- inches in diam- eter, and the ring is |- of an inch wide. This dif- fers also from the common type in having only one set of hour lines, stamped on an extra piece of brass, curved, within the ring. Posies suitable Brass Ring-dial and Silver Dial-ring. for rings were deemed also well fitted as mottoes for ring-dials. Mr. Evans has in his collection dials with these familiar old lines : " A Ring is Round and Has No End So is My Love Unto My Friend.'* " The Love is True : That I O V As True to Me : Then C V B." " As Time and Hours Pass Away So Doth The Life of Man Decay." In Exeter Museum is a ring-dial with the motto which I have seen on an old stoneware Georgius Rex jug : Portable Sun-dials 141 "If My Master Use Me Well I'll Try All Others To Excell." "A Stitch in Time Saves Nine" would seem incongruous for a dial, had I not also seen it on a tea-pot. Mottoes are, however, comparatively rare on ring- dials, for there was scant space for such engraving, especially when a list of large cities with their sev- eral latitudes was given. This form of ring-dial has been used in an en- larged size, but of same general shape, fixed on a block to stand on a window-sill or table; one with base and adjustable screws is shown on this page. Modern ones, such as the one on page 142, are now sold in London at the shop of F. Bar- ker & Son, Clerkenwell Road. Larger still, in one case with rings a yard in diameter, this form of dial has been seen as a garden-dial. One such, symbolizing the earth, is borne on the head of an Atlas of stone at Oakley Park in Shropshire. A very beautiful adap- tation of this form is seen in the garden-dial at Universal Ring-dial, with Base and Feet with Screws. 142 Sun-dials and .Roses of Yesterday Brockenhurst, New Forest, shown on a later page. Another is at Clumber, the home of the Duke of Newcastle, and still another at Holland House. The shadow of the nodule on the axis falls on the inside of the circular band, which is elaborately lettered and numbered, often in gold. This great armillary sphere, seen against the green background of trees in a beautiful garden, is a most noble sight. I have always longed to have in my library a splendid great revolving globe, such as are seen in our higher schools ; equally do I covet one of these sun-dials patterned upon the armillary sphere. An equally delightful mathe- matical instrument, one which makes us know the beauty of numbers, Globe Window-dial. F. Barker & Q f pure mat hematics, is Son, London. o i T j a Sunshine Recorder; a sun-dial which records every second of sunshine. Their beautiful great clear globes are a joy to behold, and have all the mysterious charm of a Chinese crys- tal globe. They are costly, for they are perfect things of exquisite workmanship. One from the firm of Portable Sun-dials 143 F. Barker & Son has just been set up in Washing- ton. It has been frequently asserted that George Washington was in the habit of carrying a pocket- dial instead of a watch, and I have seen a silver pocket-dial which was given him by Lafayette. He certainly had watches in plenty, as we know by the many well-authenticated ones still existing which once were his. I also know of a pocket-dial that was French Pocket-dial, with Compass. Le Maire. carried by Rochambeau. They were evidently the mode among Frenchmen of rank and station of that day. There is also in the collection of the Wash- ington Association of New Jersey, in their spacious house at Morristown, New Jersey, a very dainty, elegant pocket-dial of silver, the card label of which is marked : " Silver pocket Sun-dial used by a French officer in the Revolutionary War, made in Paris in 1673. Presented by Mr. Henry W. Miller," 144 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Silver Portable Dial, French. On page 143 is shown a French pocket-dial of different shape, a silver pocket-dial with compass, made by Le Maire in Paris two hundred years ago. When a plummet is added, this is deemed by modern dial-makers the best of all the pocket- dials, for use by soldiers, colonists, and travellers. It is so hinged that it can be folded very flat and thin, and takes but small space in the pocket. The names of various towns with their latitudes are given, and the arm is so marked that the proper angle for the dial-face is easily found. The choicest silver dials made in France were often furnished with shagreen or fish-skin cases to protect them, as were the watches of those days. These fine French pocket-dials came in various shapes, oval, round, oc- tagonal, oblong; and in Italy, a cross- V shaped dial was made, holding a \. reliquary. At Nuremberg in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries portable dials were made in great num- bers, a favorite form being that shown on this page. This is of brass and has a compass and string gnomon, and elaborately Brass Portable Dial, German. Portable Sun-dials 145 engraved astronomical tables. It bears the motto Omnia pervertit secli mutabilis or do 1571. Other noted dial-makers were Alexius and Ulricus Schneip. On page 146 are two by these makers, and on this page one by V. S., dated 1572, probably Ulricus Schneip. These are all of gilt-brass, but vary decidedly in construction, and form quite a study. The one with raised standard with plummet is dated 1578, and is made by Alexius Schneip. The other on same page is dated 1553. It will be noted that all the many portable dials printed in this book have each some peculiarity of con- struction : no two are alike, many are unique, no others are known, and nearly all are here made public for the first time. They merit a fuller description, but any accurate accounts would fill a book rather than a chapter. Bras * ^ ort ^ Dia1 ' An odd German dial (date about 1780) is given on page 1 30. The maker is D. Berin- ger. A hollow wooden block i^ inches square is supported on a standard. The lines and figures of the dial-face are printed on paper and pasted upon the block. A brass octahedron is shown on page 129, a block with seven dials on its various faces. The horizon- tal dial on the top has no motto ; the other mottoes read : OMNIA FIT ^ETAS, Time does all things. C O HAIO2 IIANTA MEPEI, The sun divides all things. L 146 Sun-dials and Hoses of Yesterday ' . * FAC DUM TEMPUS OPUS, Work while it is day. IIANY ANA^EPEI XPONO2, The sun brings all things. NULLA DIES SINE LINEA, No day without its line. 'O KAIPO2 OIKETAI, The moment passes. Such dials are very rare, especially in this size, about 7^ inches in length. It is a portable dial, not a pocket-dial, as are most of these examples. A very unusual block-dial is owned by Mr. Evans and shown on page 133. It was made in Styria, Two Gilt-brass Portable Dials, 1578, 1553. Austria, and has a decoration on one side of the arms of Pal/a Styria. Blocks with dials on several faces could be set in true position without the use of a compass ; for if all these dials were accurately drawn for use in the same latitude, they would be in their true position when they all showed the same hour. Still more beautiful were the pocket-dials of ivory ; with their delicate engraving and mellowed tint they seem an exquisite curio rather than a scientific instrument. Portable Sun-dials 147 One now in the United States National Museum is shown on this page. It is an equinoctial pocket- dial, 3^ inches by 4^ inches in size. It has a compass, plummet, and string gnomon; and is elaborately engraved in colors with scales for length of days, lunar epacts, etc. The names of twenty Ivory Portable Dial. towns with the latitude of each are also engraved on this instrument. On page 148 are two ivory folding-dials. The larger is a beautiful French dial of about 1660; it is octagonal in shape ; 3 J inches by 2^ inches. Outside the cover there is an equinoctial dial. In- side are three silver discs : one is for using the dial by moonlight ; the other two form a nocturnal dial. 148 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Within the lid is the common string gnomon, dial, and compass, and silver calendar disc. Number 2 is the tiny folding-dial shaped like a book, only I T ^ inches by i^ inches in size. It is ornamented with brass bosses. The pin-style dial shows the Ivory Book-dial, 1630, and Octagonal Dial, 1660. old German hours from sunrise. Its date is about 1630. On page 149 are three other ivory portable dials. The largest is a beautiful trinket as well as an object of use. It is oval in shape, 4! inches by 3 J inches complete, with a chain to use as a chate- laine ; I wonder what German Frau wore this pretty Portable Sun-dials 149 thing at her waist, and held it up and turned it round to the sunlight three hundred years ago. It was made by Hans Ducher in 1595, and is marked with his device, a wriggling serpent between the initials H. and D. Hans Ducher or Tucher was a famous Nuremberg dialler who had a wonderfully pretty taste in dials and mottoes. We can say of him as an Ivory Pocket-dials. English lout of a farm boy said of Shakespeare. Ii was near Stratford, and a friend of mine spoke to the lad who was driving some conveyance for her through the country, wondering whether he knew of the great man, and what he knew. " He may ha* been very learned and all," drawled the boy, " but he didna know enough to spell his own name aright." 150 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Ducher spelled his name with all the ingenious vari- ety of which the sixteenth century was capable. This chatelaine dial was planned for ready reference : the points of the compass are engraved outside the lid, while the needle was visible through a tiny hole when the dial was closed. Around the face are these mottoes : Hie marinus compassus semitam terra marique ostendit ; and, Der spodter sol nichts veracbten, den er kans besser macbten. On the bottom is a disc for using the dial by moonlight. On page 149 are two other ivory pocket -dials. One is an octagonal folding-dial i finches by I T V inches, Ivory Book-dials. 7 , } 6 r , , . , marked L. M., with a device, for Lienhart Miller, who manufactured dials from 1602 to 1643 m Nuremberg. The larger fold- ing-dial is 3 J inches by i| inches ; the work of Paulus Reinmann at Nuremberg, 1578. Two charming little ivory book-dials may be seen on this page. One is 3^ inches by 2 J inches ; the other 2-J- inches by 2^ inches. The first was made by Hans Troschel and has the fine motto Hora fugit Mors venit. The second is dated 1586 and has the motto Sic transit Gloria Mundi. The cover bears on one side the engraving of an armed man with a standard; on the other, a female saint holding a cross. Another form of portable dial is known as a quadrant dial. In them the principal circles of the Portable Sun-dials sphere are projected upon a plane, instead of being indicated by rings or bands. The time is often shown by an adjustable bead which can be moved up and down upon a movable string, a plumb- line. There were many shapes of these quadrant dials, some being of great quaintness and beauty, such as the " ship-dial " made in the form of a turreted ship with a slider on the ship's mast and an ingenious arrangement for adjustment. A lyre- shaped hori- zontal and an- alemmatic dial belonging to Mr. Evans is pictured on this page. Its date is 1763. Another of unusual shape, with a mova- ble gnomon, is given on page 135. This is the Thevenot dial. Hinged gnomons are found on many portable dials. A very fine equinoctial universal dial owned by the Lyre-shaped Horizontal Analemmatic Dial. author is dated 1764 and marked These dials were very costly, and were sometimes ordered by foreign governments for battleships or royal vessels. A similar one owned by Mr. Evans is given on page 152. This was made by Thomas Wright, Instrument-maker to the King (1720-1750). 152 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Dial made by Thomas Wright. Mr. Evans says of it, " It must have been a very costly instrument." I can say of my own dial, that it is one of the most exquisite pieces of brass work I have ever seen. The engraving is as beautiful as on the bridges of old verge-watches. These dials, and other of the costly dials have screws at the corners, by which they can be firmly attached to some fixed surface. A portable dial of special construc- tion for latitudes \35 90 is given on page 153. The maker was Augustin of Vienna. This is the only dial I ever saw of this form. When metal workers were both artists and crafts- men, as they were two hundred years ago, hand- wrought articles varied more in construction and shape than to-day. None of the parts of a dial were turned out in vast numbers, as to-day of simi- lar instruments ; hence the variety, and hence the delight in collection. A very odd and lovely portable dial was made at Nuremberg and perhaps elsewhere, what is called a goblet- or chalice-dial. This is a metal goblet marked within the bowl with the lines and numerals, while the gnomon is a perpendicular wire in the centre of the bowl. I had a great disappointment a few Portable Sun-dials months ago in purchasing a metal dial dated 1624, which was described to me in so extraordinarily and minutely accurate a manner that I felt sure I had se- cured a chalice-dial ; but upon opening the package a horizontal dial was seen in which the lines and nu- merals had been cut upon a pewter plate or shallow porringer, and the so-called date, 1624, on the base was, I fear, simply a tradesman's mark. Thus was added another to the many disappointments of a collector. "As high as we had mounted in delight In our dejection did we sink as low." A unique and beautiful casket-shaped dial be- longing to Mr. Evans is shown on page 154. The base is 8^ inches by 6 inches ; the top 5 inches by 3^ inches ; the height 4 inches. The sides are sil- vered, the ornamental margins gilt. The corners of the bottom plate have four hemi- Brass Equinoctial Dial, Augustin. r , . , -, spherical recesses i^- inches in diameter, in which are the heads of four levelling screws. At the top and on the four slop- 154 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday ing sides are five sun-dials, showing both Italian time (reckoned from sunset to sunset) and the ordi- nary hours. The gnomons of these dials are in the figure of a boy with outstretched finger. Each " time-boy " wears an encircling ribbon, on which is a motto. That on the top was missing, so Mr. Evans added an appropriate motto, namely, Opera manu- um nostrarum dirige super nos. Other mottoes read : Casket Dial. A soils ortu usque ad meridiem Intervalla ipsa diet e appeares. When gtCjfet be }">nr, ihrn jovr doth fnakJc vs Clauj t hcnoni HytiUct l ,tnt j.t Stfrmti Rtldt t _.. -.;/ "*'**' " Page from the Emblems of Geoffrey Whitney. The Sun-dial as* an Emblem 165 the first, whereby when with further Consideration it is understoode, it maie the greater delighte the beholder. And although the Worde doth comprehende manie things, and diuers matters maie therein be contained, yet : all Emblems maie for the most parte, be reduced into those three kindes, which is Historical^ Naturall and Morall. Historical! as representing the actes of some noble persones, being matter of Historic : Naturall as in expressing the nature of crea- tures, for example the Loue of yonge Storkes to the ould, and suchelike : Morall, pertaining to vertue and instruction of Life." This careful explanation illumines the meaning I wish to convey of the sun-dial as an Emblem : the dial should, like any other Emblem, have " some witty device," be " of cunning workmanship," have " something obscure not to be perceived at first," and should "greatly delight the beholder." And the significance of the sun-dial could also be classed very clearly under the heads, historical, natural, and moral. Another sentence of Whitney, in the title- page of his book, A Choice of Emblems, 1586, runs thus : u A Worke adorned with varietie of matter, both pleasant and profitable, wherein those that please may finde to fit their fancies. Herein by the office of the eie and the eare, the minde may reap double delighte through wholesome preceptes, shadowed with pleasant devises : both fit for the vertuous, to their incoraging : and for the wicked, for their admonishing, and amendment." Which words should also apply to the sun-dial : Let it be literature to the bookless ; a monitor to 1 66 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday "''*'. * the heedless; an encouragement to the virtuous; a reproof to the wicked/; let it be a delight to the eye, and above all let it be significant of something, be this historical, natural, or moral. It must have some implied meaning in addition to its actual pres- entation or it is not an Emblem. Emblems are ancient devices. Dutch, German, and Italian authors wrote Emblems in profusion by the close of the fifteenth century. Then these books suddenly multiplied in all European languages, and with the improved art of pictorial illustration reached a high degree of excellence. Our great English authors, Spenser and Shakespeare, show plainly the influence of Emblem books. A splendid book called Shake spere and the Emblem Writers^ by Henry Green, reveals the similarity of thought and expres- sion shown by them all ; it also tells of all the chief Emblem books, scores in number, previous to the year 1616, A.D. The general conception held of a book of Emblems is of a child's book, and it is true that they are most appropriate for that purpose. It is natural for children to like Emblems, and they under- stand them. Emblems suit their fancy. Stevenson says, " Making believe is the gist of the whole life of a child. Children are content to forego what we call the realities and prefer the shadow to the sub- stance." Others think of a book of Emblems as having always a spiritual or religious meaning, such as the Emblems of Francis Quarles or Willet's Cen- tury of Sacred Emblems. In truth an emblem should be serious ; it does not welcome flippancy any more than does a sun-dial. But it is not a sacred device, The Sun-dial as an Emblem 167 nor even a religious one. A study of the old em- blematic books such as The Dance of Death; The Ship of Fools, 1500; The Dialogue of Creatures, 1530; A Garden of Heroic all Devices, 1612 ; A Dis- play of Heraldry, 1 6 1 1 ; Allciafs Emblems, 1 549 ; Holbein's Imagines Mortis, 1545, would doubtless give to a ready mind frequent suggestion for sun-dial design. A great love of Em- blems sprung up in France through the wonderful popularity of the poet Theodore Beza, whose story is so pleas- ant to read. In France, Mary, Queen of Scots, learned to love Emblem books, as did her son James. And through this love grew his great interest in the allegorical Sun - dial at Prestbur y- representations dubbed masques, which so prevailed at his court after he became king of England. I will tell at some length of Mary's interest in Em- blems, as the story affords a striking example of the part they played in the history of that day. The many Emblem books furnished to her, as to other English women, beautiful and abundant de- signs for the decoration of houses and furniture. In Drummond's History of Scotland is a letter to Ben Jonson, from which we learn of a wonderful piece 1 68 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday j of needlework of Mary, Queen of Scots ; the let- ter begins thus : u I have been curious to find out for you the Impresses and Emblemes on a Bed of State wrought out and embroid- ered all with gold and silk by the late Queen Mary, mother to our sacred Sovereign : the first is the Loadstone turning towards the pole, the word her Majesties' name turned on an Anagram. Marie Steuart sa virtu, m'attire. This hath reference to a Crucifix before which with all her Royall ornaments she is humbled on her knees most lively." There was also an imprese of a phoenix in flames; an Apple tree growing on a Thorn; an arrow passing through three birds; Caduceus with two flutes, and a peacock ; two women upon the wheel of fortune, one of these (a figure of peace with a cornucopia) signified Queen Elizabeth ; a pyramid overgrown with Ivy; a ship with her mast broken and fallen in the sea ; a big lion and whelp ; a lion in a net with hares passing wantonly over him ; a Palm tree ; a bird in a cage with a hawk flying about, and the motto " 'Tis ill with me now, but I fear worse betides me " ; a tri- angle with the sun in a circle ; a porcupine among rocks ; a portcullis ; an " impresae of Henry VIII " ; one of the Duke of Surrey ; the Annunciation ; a tree planted in a churchyard environed with dead men's bones ; eclipses of the sun and moon ; a sword cast in to weigh down gold ; a Pine tree watered with wine ; a wheel rolled from the moun- tain to the sea ; a heap of wings and feathers ; a " Trophic upon a Tree with Mytres, Crowns, Hats, The Sun-dial as an Emblem 169 Masks, Swords, Books, and a Woman with a Vail about her eyes or muffled, pointing to some about her." One of the noblest of these allegories gave three crowns, two below and one above in the sky. The motto was "And awaits another/' implying that her crowns of France and Scotland would be ended with a crown in heaven: A homely but most significant design showed the plant Camomile growing in a garden; the motto, Fructus calcata dat amp/os, Trampled upon, she gives out greater fragrance. A panoply of war, com- posed of helmets, lances, pikes, muskets, cannon, had the motto, Dabit Sun-dial at Adlington Hall, Cheshire, England. Deus bis quoque God can put an end to these things. The full royal arms of England, Scotland, and France " severally by themselves and all quartered " appeared in every part of the bed. It was said that " the workman- ship was neatly done and above all value." Nearly all the designs bore a Latin motto, also the name and title of the person or event in politics or history signified by each of these twenty-nine Emblems. The designs for these embroidered Emblems were i jo Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday taken from various books, from Whitney, and from Jovio's Design of Love ; one of the latter was "the Impressa of King Francis First, a salamander, which signified that he was burning with love for the Queen and sought the flames." This wonderful piece of needlework might well have been the one praised by the Water Poet in 1640 in these lines : "Flowers, Plants and Fishes, Beasts, Birds, Flyes and Bees Hills, Dales, Plains, Pastures, Skies, Seas, Rivers, Trees There's nothing near at hand, or farthest sought But with the needle may be shap'd and wrought; Moreover, Posies rare, and Anagrams, Signifique searching Sentences from Names, True History or various pleasant Fiction In sundry colors mixt, with art's commixion ; All in Dimension Ovals, Squares and Rounds Art's life included within Nature's bounds." This extraordinary bed, so " curiously wrought," has wholly disappeared ; we might doubt the possi- bility of any one bedstead holding all these designs were it not that at Hinckley in Leicester there is another having the same number of emblematical designs and " Latin mottoes in Capital letters con- spicuously introduced." I have no lovelier picture in my mind of this fair queen and she is often pictured before me in my day-dreams than her presence as she sat bending over her embroidery frame, needle and crewels in hand, steadily working upon the marvellous cover- ing of this great bed ; working through the long weary hours of the dark winter days ; working at The Sun-dial as an Emblem 171 the deep-recessed, ill-lighted windows of the thick- walled Scottish castles which were her prisons ; working at the slit-like gun-windows of her later dungeons ; working by the scant firelight so grudg- ingly supplied her ; working by the dim and tiny cruisie of her day, or by waxen tapers ; and often working with that wonderful cheerfulness which seems to have been God-given to her. She found, I trust, the comfort which every good needlewoman has in doing good needlework. " Yet howsoever Sorrow came or went She made the needle her companion still And in that exercise her time she spent." She is not the only woman who has turned to her needle as the only thing which could occupy and comfort her grief- filled days. I have wondered whether in the many thoughts that crowded her ever active brain, she had no illuminations of the future, whether she did not thus work with the thought, the hope, that through this needlework she could send a message to suc- ceeding centuries, that women, certainly. i _, , i ' Sun-dial in Inner Temple Garden, would understand. London. 1 72 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday It was certainly natural that this unhappy crea- ture should turn to symbols and devices, to allego- ries and prophecies, with a despairing hope of a happy end to all her troubles. With her supersti- tious nature we can easily believe that in those symbols she both rejoiced and trembled. Her own personal devices were many and varied ; all were interesting. After the death of her boy-hus- band, the dauphin of France, her device was a Liquorice plant ; the root only of this is sweet, and that is underground. Her motto was Dulce meum terra tegit^ The earth covers my sweet one. Another was a vine from which the withered branches are being pruned by a hand with a prun- ing-bill. A third was an Apple tree growing on a thorn ; the motto, Per vincula crescit. In the family archives of the Earl of Leven is a letter written by her in which she orders embroidery materials just as we might have done yesterday. "Ye shall not fail to send with this bearer to me a half- ell of mcarnatt Satin, and a half-ell blew Satin ; also more twined silk gif there rests any, and sewing silver and sew- ing gold ; . . . with twa ounce black sewing silk. . . . Ye shall cause make ane dozen of raising needles and moulds and send me. And speir at Sewals gif he has any other covering of beds to me nor green." After she received these materials she worked for many months upon a magnificent over-garment for Queen Elizabeth, with a significant design ; and showed true womanly pleasure when it was finished and despatched with a letter to the queen, whose Obelisk-shaped Dial in Garden at Linburn House, Midlothian Scotland. The Sun-dial as an Emblem 173 faded tawny hair would ill consort with the carnation satin when compared with the darker locks of the Scottish queen, who, I doubt not, "tried it on" again and again in process of making. Mary received from another source four hanks of gold thread and moulds and needles for " rais- which was the was heavily embossed and difficult embroidery much in vogue in her day. A splendid screen of her " raised " work still exists, and is most valuable as a record of the costumes of her day ; every detail is given ; the jewellery is worked in satin-stitch with glazed yellow flaxen thread and the pearls are tiny knots. Fardingales, ruffs, and fans, all are faithfully depicted. The drawing of the figures is ani- mated and good. Sir Walter Scott thought it represented some old French or Italian ballad or romance ; while Miss Strickland thought it pictured the ill-fated love of Mary and Darnley, as the gallant knight of the screen seems to spring from two Marguerite flowers, which apparently typified the two queens, Margaret Tudor and Margaret Sun-dial in Churchyard, Rostherne, Cheshire. 174 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Lennox, from whom Darnley claimed descent. The woman's figure wears the costume of Mary, and bears the Rose cognizance. One singular and inex- plicable panel shows a gentleman seated with his leg bound and stretched on a block and about to be cut off, apparently by the order of a stern queen who stands near, while other ladies of the court turn away in horror. Taylor might have written of her instead of Katherine, wife of Henry VIII : " Although a Queen, yet she her days did passe In working with the Needle curiously, As in the Towre, and places more beside, Her excellent memorials may be seen Whereby the Needle's prayse is dignified By her fair ladies, and herself, a Queen." The tenderness which most women have for the history of this unhappy queen comes largely through her womanliness. We are drawn to her through her instinct in womanly doings. She took great pleasure in gardening, filling the gardens at Holyrood with flowers and trees from France. Two beautiful Plane trees stood till this century, and were pointed out as her trees. Her sun-dial was removed to Fingask Castle in Perthshire. Nothing could seem so close to her daily life as this sun-dial. I know not whether it still exists, nor what it was like ; but there were beautiful dials in Scotland in her day. Other English women adorned their closets with embroidered emblems ; forty-two were in the painted closet of Lady Drury at Hemstead. Samplers were found in every household, the work of every house- The Sun-dial as an Emblem 17* wife, of every woman-child who reached the age of ten, and of some not more than half that age. Often they have an imprese or a family crest. They form a fascinating example of domestic Emblems. Whatever women could do with their needles served to perpetuate Emblems, for their imaginative side ap- pealed to a woman's nature ; often women ordered the erection of symbolistic pillars and sun-dials. The original Emblem, any figure or ornament made for a sun-dial by sculptor, painter, engraver, or architect, by any worker in stone, metal, or wood, should be symbolized ; it should be the sign or token of a saying, an event, a thought, a sentiment, a fancy, a quality of the mind or heart, a peculiarity or attri- bute of character, any abstract idea, nay more, it might mark an operation of the soul. The devices of heraldry can aid greatly in giving the his- tory of a man, a family, a race, a nation. Many crests and coats of arms are truly emblematical ; and therefore heraldry offers an infinite variety of suggestions for sun-dials. There were heraldic devices on sun-dials, and sun-dials were used as devices in heraldry. The Emblem here given is of special interest to us because the device is a sun-dial. It was the favorite Emblem of the gentle and neglected wife of Henry III of France, Emblem of Louise de Valdemont. 176 Sun-dials and , Roses of Yesterday Louise of Valdemont. Above the sun-dial, which is on a pedestal, shines the full-rayed sun. On a rib- bon the meek motto, Aspice ut aspiciar, Look on me that I may be looked on. Sir Philip Sidney also had a sun-dial as his per- sonal emblem, and it was chosen in order " to acknowledge his essence to be in his gracious Sov- ereign " whatever that may mean. It was a sun- dial with the sun setting; the motto, Occasu defines esse. Relying upon his prince's favor, he devised the sun shining upon a bush, inscribed Si deferis pireo. To indicate the persistency of his character, he had another Emblem representing the Caspian Sea, which never ebbs nor flows, and the motto Sine Reflexa. Another rather sacrilegious device showed his love for his fair lady ; a Venus in a cloud with the motto Salve Me Domina. He had several other impresses to signify courage, assiduity, and also re- venge. Frederick Cornaro, Bishop of Padua, had as a device a Rose with this sun-dial motto : Una dies aperit, conficit una dies, One day opens, one day ends it. This seems to me perhaps a bit fanciful for a sun-dial, save for one designed especially with the thought of the life of a day such as one with a floral design. Another personal emblem or device existed from mediaeval days, and was known as a badge. A crest differed from a badge in- that the former was worn only on the helmet and by its proper owner, while the badge was worn by followers or retainers, and was placed on the sleeve or breast of the body gar- The Sun-dial as an Emblem 177 ment. These formal badges or cognizants often alluded to a name, an estate, an office of honor, or some family exploit, a deed of valor or of rare hap- pening, or an escape from death ; they glittered on standards, were embroidered on the dress on sleeve or breast, or when fashioned in metal were worn on the sleeve. These were hereditary, and a few are Washington Sun-dial. still retained in old English families ; among them are the Stafford knot and the Pelham buckle. The introduction of a coat-of-arms or crest upon a dial gives it at once^an emblematic value, and still more, a personal value. On this page is shown an ancient dial-face, which is of much interest to all patriotic Americans, because 178 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday it bears a dated Washington coat-of-arms, which is believed to have furnished the notion of our national Ancient Cross at Great Brington, Northamptonshire. " Stars and Stripes." This dial was found at " The Washington House," Little Brington, Northampton- shire, England. It is a circular slab of sandstone The Sun-dial as an Emblem 179 sixteen inches in diameter. The letters R. W. can be dimly seen. These were probably the initials of Robert Washington. On page 178 is the old cross just outside the churchyard at Great Brington. This may once have held a dial. Its date is earlier than 1400. The ancestors of George Washington must have passed close to this cross every time they attended church. In the yard of the rectory of this Great Brington church stands the dial shown on page 181 ; this is at the home of A. L. Y. Morley, Esq., the faithful antiquary who has given me the many sun-dials from Northamptonshire which are shown in this book. The motto on his dial is most quaint. "Haste ! oh Haste ! Thou Sluggard, Haste ! The Present is already past." It was natural that in the highest forms of Em- blem making and emblematic writing color should take an important part ; it did so directly and also in some occult ways, of which we have had a hint for many a year. In 1886 Arthur Rembaults put this hint into verse in his sonnet about the colors of vowels. Novelty-seeking French folk eagerly queried to other French folk, as though asking a conundrum, " What colors are your vowels ? " " A, black ; E, white ; I, blue ; O, red ; U, yellow ; But purple seeks in vain its vowel-fellow," wrote the poet. Walter Savage Landor had such a profound sense of color that he had a language or standard for colors. Purple expressed grandeur of thought; i8o Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday . -' scarlet, vigor of expression ; pink, liveliness ; green, an equable composition. I have long had another notion, that I should like to use vari-colored printer's inks, printing certain words in certain colors, or using a specially symbolic tint for a certain chapter. We can remember the value of symbolic color when painting sun-dials ; as, for instance, those on the wall of a house. In continental Europe painted sun-dials are seen constantly, even on very humble houses, and most effective and interesting they are ; they might well be adopted on country houses in America. For handsomer mansions, when chosen with thought and taste and fitted to the style of the architecture of the house, a painted and gilded dial- face has many advantages over a carved one. It can be seen more distinctly if upon the high wall of a house, and can readily be kept in freshness. I saw recently upon a half timbered house, on the end of a gable, a painted sun-dial in heraldic colors which seemed to me the perfection of good taste. Upon the long stables of an English country house, where the original timbering and external beams of the early barn structure have been carefully carried out, there is a richly painted sun-dial facing each point of the compass, so that the time of the day can readily be told on all sides by farm and stable workers. There is no doubt that any object or any deed which has or has had a symbolic meaning receives through this a certain charm, a charm occult and often scarcely formulated, yet nevertheless present. The Sun-dial as an Emblem 181 This subtle interest exists in very commonplace objects ; we feel it in sign-boards, in sign-posts or guide-boards ; let us see why. Whence is the word sign ? Think of the very word, and you have the key to the secret and to the interest. I never wearied in weeks of research about sign-boards, hanging signs, for my book, Stage- Coach and Tavern Days, sim- ply because they had that inexplicable charm. I never cease to feel a half-liking for guide-boards, which are fast disappearing because useless in our days of travel by railroads and electric cars. You find them now at the angles of the road, flat in the grass and bushes, or standing twist- ^ ed askew, point- ^ ing skyward or nowhere. Their very place at the cross-roads has a significance, what or whence I know not, for it is a significance of " forbidden." We know that in our country even in the nineteenth cen- tury suicides were buried at the cross-roads ; buried in the years preceding, with a stake through ' Sun-dial in Rectory Garden, Great Brington, Northamptonshire. 1 82 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday . -* their hearts a cruel old Dutch and English law. Judge Sewall tells of the public obloquy and horror of suicide in Massachusetts in colonial days. Under a heap of stones suicides were buried at night in deepest disgrace ; one at a Connecticut cross-roads thus slept in ignominy till it was discovered that the poor fellow had been murdered. A more grotesque sight still saw the old New England. cross-roads in a "shift-marriage," when a widow, " clad only in her shift," was thus married to her second husband. By this ordeal she was freed from liability for her first husband's debts. This was an ancient symbol, derived from the marriage investiture of the Orientals. In Dutch New York a widow obtained future immunity from debt by placing a key or a straw on her dead husband's coffin and then taking it away. The use of a straw or turf as a symbol to indicate worldly possessions extended to legal transfers when real estate was conveyed by livery of seisin. A new owner was given corporal possession by transferring to him, if the property were a house, a key or door-latch ; if land, a turf or twig. It formerly accompanied all transfers. The word livery in its many symbolisms forms an interesting word-study ; the meaning of giving possession, and in sequence, the delivery itself. Liveries were allow- ances of food, clothing, and other provisions, as in the army, or to a great family; from this, keeping on a regular allowance as applied to horses only, as to keep a horse at livery; also a second meaning of an allowance of uniform garments, and hence a regular dress for servants. The Sun-dial as an Emblem 183 A weather-vane is another everyday object with a halo of interest as a symbol ; the cock was the nat- ural herald of the . day, and the weathercock now employed to show " the way of the wind/' was origi- nally a sun emblem. In the symbolic writing of the Chinese, the sun is represented by a cock in a circle. Beautiful ancient gems exist, some are in the pos- session of ancient societies of Free Masons, cut with the figure of a cock, meaning the sun. All symbolists would of course have us include in these objects of mysterious influence all archi- tectural erections conspicuous for height and slen- derness, such as obelisks, steeples, minarets, tall towers, and upright stones and monuments, under the assertion that they represent the pyramidal forms of fire, and have had a symbolic meaning ever since the days of the fire-worshippers. Cer- tainly we will not deny that they have a strong influence ; the tall steeple of the New England meeting-house doubtless had an earlier form in the " reminding-stone," the monuments of earlier days. The Bible records the setting up of monuments by the patriarchs. Monoliths are known of in all early religions. In the turreted temples of the Bhudds, in the fire-tow.ers of the Sikks, in the spires of the Hindoos, in the flame-fanes of the Parsees, in the pyramids of the Egyptians, we find testimony to the deification of fire. Many of these pyramidal forms beaf emblems of sun-worship ; some bear sun-dials ; many are the gnomons of sun-dials. In writing of Emblems we have to resist firmly constant inclination to turn into side paths and walk 184 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday therein gossiping garrulously ; one of these by-paths would lead us to write at length of the symbolical language of mythology and of ancient art. As spe- cially allied to the subject of sun-dials, we are led to learn all sun-lore ; to know of sun-worship, of sun-tradition, of sun-influences in yarious sciences, especially medicine. The mystic doctrines of ancient Greece are not wholly lost in daily life to-day. These doctrines were conveyed by allegories and symbols which had a character of sanctity. Many of the emblems of these mystical religions are found now in our Christian churches. Such are the rose-window, the altar and candles. CHAPTER VIII SYMBOLIC DESIGNS FOR SUN-DIALS How beautiful your presence, how benign, Servants of God, who not a thought will share With the vain world ; who outwardly as bare As winter trees, yield no fallacious sign." Ecclesiastical Sketches, XIX, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. HE old Emblem writer, Geof- frey Whitney, noted with severity, as we have with sympathy, that readers and on-lookers weary of monot- ony of device: "The nature of Man is alwaies delighted nouelties & too muche n corrupte with curiousnes and newfanglenes." Truly we desire and need " curiousnes and newfanglenes " in sun-dials as in all things else, and to satisfy that desire I shall offer in this chapter some suggestions for novelty as well as significance of design in sun- dials. At Ophir Farm, the country seat of Hon. White- law Reid, there stands in an open court, near the house, a sun-dial. It is pictured with a corner of 185 1 86 Sun-dia/ls and looses of Yesterday the castle-like house opposite this page. The dial is set upon a circle of brick pavement surrounded by sentinel trees of Japanese Retinosporas. It is not in a garden, but stands rather sombrely alone, with no flowers, no creeping vines, no neighbors but the solemn trees. It is fitting that it should thus stand, for it is an emblematic dial, and was not meant to be lightly wreathed and garlanded, nor to have its significance hidden. The dial-plate rests upon a carefully wrought bronze tortoise, and that is sup- ported on a symmetrical marble pillar which bear de- signs of the signs of the zodiac in wrought bronze. The design of a tortoise is most appropriate for a sun-dial. The myth of the tortoise is world-wide. The Hindoos believe that a great tortoise lies beneath the earth on his back. Earlier is the notion that the earth itself is a tortoise ; the flat plate on the belly of the tortoise is the land, and the sky is the shell of the back. The oldest of all Chinese pre-Confucian books is the famous Book of Changes. It contains a system of philosophy deduced from eight hexagrams which were copied from the lines on the back of a tortoise. Each represents some great power in nature, as fire, water, earth, etc. It is also regarded as a calendar of the lunar year. So important are the lessons of this book, so great is its wisdom, that Confucius declared that could a hundred years be added to his life he would devote them all to its study. A most suitable and perhaps the most dignified engraving for a dial-face is a chart showing the lines of latitude, signs of the zodiac, etc. Such a face is, Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 187 of course, a costly one, as the drawing must be made with astronomical precision and copied by a skilled workman. I give on page 187 such a dial-face from Dial-face with Lines of the Zodiac. Owned by Author. of my collection. It is about ten inches square, finest workmanship, dated 1812; a most attractive piece of work. The dial on the church porch at 1 88 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Eyam (facing page 64) shows the lines of the tropics and the equinoctial. On this page is given Captain Bailey's fine dial, which tells the seasons. This dial exhibits beauti- fully, not only the comparative obliquity and direct- ness of the sun's light, which is the primary cause of the seasons, but it also shows the rapidity of what in nautical terms is called the sun's decli- nation and entry into the signs of the zodiac. As the sun gets higher, the dial's shadow goes down ; then it crawls from Can- cer up through Leo and Virgo to Libra, and so on. The signs of the zodiac are shown in bronze on the pedestal of Mr. Reid's dial.. Being an absolute symbol of the progress of time, they are a natural and beautiful emblem for the decoration of pedestal as well as dial-face, and have appeared on many. Save in the simplest sym- bol they cannot become a common decoration, as they would be too costly a one, whether cast in metal or carved in wood or stone. There is a wide range of decorative forms to choose from, and many of them quaint indeed. They ever have had a fascina- Captain Bailey's Seasons'-dial. Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 189 tion for me since my childhood, when I gazed with bewildered curiosity upon their representation in old almanacs. From almanacs more ancient than those of my youthful days, many hints may be obtained for sun-dial designs. We can scarcely go back to Babylon where, 2000 B.C., the zodiac was formed ; but one of the oldest drawings of the zodiac is in an astronomical manuscript of the fourteenth century, in the Chetham Library. Each month has a picture medallion as a device, and each line of the following verses is explanatory of the device of month : "Over yis fire I warme myn handes. Wyth yis spade I delve myn landes. Here knitte I my vynes in springe. So merie I hear yese foulis singe. I am as joly as bird on bouz, Here wede I corn, clene I houz. Wyth yis sythe my medis I mowe. Here repe I myn corn so lowe. Wyth ys flayl I yresche my bred. Here sowe I my whete so red. Wyth ys knyf I styk my swyne. Welcome Christmasse wyth Ale and Wyn." These spirited verses have a real Chaucerian ring ; and it amuses me to see that the spring house- cleaning is not a Yankee invention. This old manu- script contains an astrological volvelle, an instrument mentioned by Chaucer. It has seemed strange to me to be able to buy within a year one of these astrological volvelles, made, I am sure, from an- cient patterns in evidence since Chaucer's day. This old manuscript must be the original Farmer's Alma- nac ; and the French Kalendrier des Eergers is equally 190 Sun-dials and IJoses of Yesterday longeval. I may be permitted to gossip a bit about almanacs since they have a cousinship with sun-dials. Zodiacal symbolism was conspicuous in mediaeval art. Nearly all the French cathedrals of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries have the signs of the zodiac painted or cut on their gates. Of course the zodiac of Notre Dame in Paris is the best known. Several English churches have zodiacal decoration, some be- ing very elaborate. In Padua there was a curious sun-dial of the months, wherein the sun's rays struck in turn the twelve symbols, which were painted by Giotto. The superb dial on the Church of Our Lady at Munich, with the signs of the zodiac, is shown in this book. Our modern hieroglyphics representing the signs of the zodiac were known in the tenth century. The signs of the zodiac are four thousand years old. Those of the Oriental lands as for instance the zodiacal signs of India are beautiful and decorative to a degree. Let us remain on our own continent, and take the calendar of the Aztecs, and we at once have a wonderful field of beauty, variety, and suggestion. The "age" of the Mexican calendar was fifty-two years ; this was com- posed of four cycles, each of thirteen years. The single year was named significantly a word meaning new grass. The cycles were designated as the flint, rabbit, cane, and house. Nothing could be more beautiful or appropriate for a dial-face than the Mexican representation of a cycle as shown on page 191. The outer edge was painted with an encircling snake holding the tip of its tail in its mouth and having a twist or knot in its body at each Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 191 of the four cardinal points ; within was a close bor- der of the four cycle symbols each recurring thirteen times. Within this were the signs of the month. The Aztec symbol for the year and the month is equally beautiful and appropriate ; the former having in the centre their emblem of the sun, with a strik- ing border of the designs for the eighteen months ; while the Aztec month was di- vided in simi- lar manner into days. These are within the com- pass of any skilled designer and workman, either in brass- engraving or stone-cutting. A truly glorious sun-dial, one of profound his- toric association and of exquisite fitness for the purpose, might be made by adopting the design of the Aztec calendar- stone dug up in the city of Mexico a hundred years ago, and so eloquently described and explained by Gama, see page 193. This great sun stone is about nine feet in diameter. In the centre is a drawing of the sun as usually painted by the Mexicans, and this is surrounded by beautiful hieroglyphics. Of course the careful workmanship of this remarkable carving 192 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday need not be copied ; but the suggestive outlines and general shape could be followed, and with won- derful effect. As every line of this Mexican dial had a sun-meaning, its appropriateness would equal its elegance. The Peruvians had similar calendar- stones, also with beautiful decoration. It will doubtless be offered as demur against the use of these Aztec designs the fact that they would be costly. They certainly would be when hand- wrought in stone or metal for a pillar-dial, and the pedestal would be costly, too. But simpler materials may be used ; the Aztec symbols can be employed for a vertical dial, they can be painted in colors on wood. For the wall of a summer-house or as the decoration on any outbuilding, such as stable, barn, granary, storehouse, I think this Aztec sun-dial would be strikingly ornamental. And any object that has a story, just in that is satisfying. The earliest-known symbol in the world, the widest-known symbol, and, I think, the most fascinating symbol is the swastika. Extended and varied is its bibliography. The most accurate ac- count of it is the monograph of several hundred pages prepared and printed for the National Museum at Washington. Of this I must tell that it was sent me by an enthusiastic man of science, who wrote, " I believe we have here every existing exponent of the swastika in the known world." I had the pleasure of sending to him, in a few hours after the receipt of his letter, a domestic swastika which was not included in the book : a square of an old patch- work quilt ; an everyday design found in old farm- Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 193 houses in New England, where it is named, in a triumph of irrelevance, Bonaparte's Walk. Great speculation has been made over the rela- tion between the swastika and the sun, because the Aztec Calendar-stone. two signs have been associated by primitive peoples. The sun-symbols of the bronze age were the swastika, the ring-cross, the wheel-cross, indicat- ing the sun-car ; the triskele or three-armed cross ; the S-shape or sun-snake ; in Egypt, the sun-ship. 194 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday In the Kensington Museum is a large bronze trum- pet found in a bog in Wismar, Germany, near the Baltic Sea. It may have been used in sun-worship, for it is covered with borders and ornaments com- posed of these sun-symbols. I would employ as a beautifully symbolic decora- tion for a sun-dial the sun-signs of this Wismar horn. They are simple ; and could easily be stamped with a die, or cut in stone or metal by a very plain work- man. It would be a pretty design and a meaning one, and would serve for pedestal and dial-face. The swastika alone would serve as a suitable decora- tion in all its varying forms. I offer this as a sug- gestion to some Arts and Crafts Society, that they employ their prentice-hands in making a line of inexpensive sun-dials decorated with the sign of the swastika. It is not the purpose of this book to introduce dial designs ; but the lack of originality, or rather the lack of notions of adaptation, in nearly all our dial designs is really surprising. Lack of design ! why I can think of half a dozen notions for decoration and design as I sit here writing. A study of the symbolism and mythology of the aboriginal races of the new world affords ample evidence of the appropriateness of their word-pictures, hieroglyphics, and sculptures as designs for sun-dials. These evidences cannot even be named. The real being of the sun-dial is, of course, based upon the cardinal points, the progress of the sun, light and shade. Among the red men the adoration of the cardinal points was universal ; so deep was this adora- tion, this familiarity, that the Indian ever had the &mrtu Hwtt nuiA boc ncflio qnana Seven Ages of Man. From Ancient Block Print. Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 195 points of the compass present in his own mind, and upon his tongue as well. His very existence as a hunter depended upon this knowledge. When his slow progress had brought him in the secrets of nature from the motions of the sun to the radicals of arith- metic, he took all knowledge as proofs of the sacred- ness of the four cardinal points. The world of the Mexicans was also to them a square world, literally hung up by cords at the sides, they thought ; the ancient cities of Mexico, Quito, and others were equally quartered ; their palaces were all square. Their temples were built with as due regard for the exact point of the compass as were the churches of old England or the farm-houses of old New England. The government form was quadruplicate. The Inca was lord of the four quarters of the earth. Possession was taken by throwing a stone or a fire-brand to each of the cardinal points. Study any faithful pictures of Indians, and see the ceaseless reiteration of the number four and the cardinal points. In many of the picture-writings even the days of the week are placed north, south, east, and west. The four yearly festivals of the Aztecs and Peruvians, their four points, their invocation of the cardinal points, their mourning for four years, their four ancestors, their four worlds and four ages, I could multiply these examples. The four gods of the winds were called upon by them as did the prophet Ezekiel call on the four winds in the Bible, as still do the Thibetans, the Chinese, the Parsees, the Brahmins. The veneration of the cardinal points familiarized 196 Sun-diajs and Roses of Yesterday these races with the symbol, which, beyond all others, has fascinated the human mind apart from its reli- gious significance, the cross. The missionaries of the Church of Rome did not bring the cross to America; they found the races of the new world employing the cross as an ancient emblem. In rain invocations, in fire-making, in mound-building, in many times and places, the cross was used, ever pointing each arm to one of the cardinal points of the compass. All these things prove to us, as do hundreds of other examples, the dignity of simple numbers and the honored place of mathematics, of dialling, among other branches ; and also show the absolute truth of Kepler's saying that the universe is an har- monious whole, and that numbers, like all nature, are in unison with the mysteries of religion. The beauty of numbers is not revealed to all ; favored souls like Frankenstein perceive it everywhere in nature, find the world filled with wonderful and beautiful forms. Had he lived to tell us bow to see^ we, too, might find beauty where now is naught but unmean- ing lines. His discovery of the universal principle of pure mathematics, his magic reciprocals and har- monic responses, partake of the charm of magic rather than of mathematics. The Shakespeare lover will find in the pages of the dramatist infinite variety of suggestion for dial design as for dial motto. None could be more fitting than the "seven ages of man." I should, for a dial, take none of the finished fancies of modern sculptors and painters, but some of the cruder Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 197 notions of earlier days, such, for instance, as a large block-print in the British Museum (facing page 194). Every line of this is significant and every word. The verses should be read across the page. They are but doggerel Latin. The stages of man's life have been divided into ten in ancient manuscripts ; Four Seasons' Dial-face. but Hippocrates (460-357 B.C.) and Proclus (412- 485 A.D.) made seven ages. A mosaic on the pave- ment of the cathedral at Siena, supposed to have been laid in 1476, gives seven ages. This block- print is believed to be older still. The four seasons offer naturally suggestions for a dial-face. These are known to many nations, and the crude symbolism can be made to fit a dial-face in 198 Sun-diajs and Roses of Yesterday quaint form. This fine dial-face with the designs of four seasons is made by F. Barker & Son, London. As four figures supporting a pedestal, the Sea- sons are seen on the dial at Wroxton Abbey, Ox- fordshire. The figure of Father Time bearing the dial is significant, and has been often employed on vertical dials, on window-dials, and also cast in lead or bronze, or carved in marble for garden- dials. Here is one of Time and Cupid cut in stone. Real passing of Time has had its effect on the faces, as on human faces, which are now grotesque instead of roguish and severe. Among the " Naturall " sources of emblematic design for sun-dials, and especially for garden-dials, no more delightful or well-filled stores can be found than in the botanic world. This might be in the direct application of conventionalized ornament from a single plant, the seed, root, stem, leaf, and flower could all afford detail which would indicate the life of a flower for a year. The Lotus designs offer an already worked out and thoroughly finished scheme Sun-dial at Belton House, Lincoln- shire ; Seat of Earl Brownlow. Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 199 of emblematic decoration. From this is an easy step to flower language. A sun-dial might have a floral design which readily could speak in the words of old Dr. Donne in his Elegie : " In these the alphabet Of flowers ; how they devisedly being set And bound up, might with speechless secrecy Deliver errands mutely and mutually." Leigh Hunt wrote, with his customary lightness of touch, of "Saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks ; In puns of tulips ; and in phrases Charming for their truth, of daisies Uttering as well as silence may, The sweetest words the sweetest way." The maidens of Hindoo and Persian races can easily interpret messages of love indicated by flowers, and other messages can be conveyed with equal exactness. There was a day in France when a springing Violet set at the hour of dawn on a dial's face would read, " Another morn will bring to us Napoleon again ! " and floral decoration might be chosen that would speak in full the lesson of the sun-dial as we each interpret it. Messrs. F. Barker & Son of London have an ornate dial-face show- ing a flower for each month of the year. An intimate study of the floral art of Japan would afford many suggestions for the floral design on a sun-dial, not only a study of one flower, but its grouping with other flowers and leaves, its man- 2oo Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday ner of growth, its age, its fixed position, and its formal signification, all would have bearing. Jap- anesque lines of great simplicity could be used for the pedestal. I can fancy the distinction of such a sun-dial set in an Iris garden or in front of a Wistaria arbor. Floral Dial-face. F. Barker & Son, London. In the choice of a plant for supplying decorative motives for a sun-dial in our own country, I have a fancy for native American plants. Many of our com- mon flowers offer fine forms for conventionalized ornament. Let me glance from my window and choose at random from the borders of old-fashioned flowers. Many which we fancy are native came, we discover, from the Orient ; but here is one whose name tells a tale of American nativity, while the Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 201 plant offers also suitable forms for our use. It is the Spiderwort, Tradescantia Virginica^ interest- ing in our early history as being one of the first of our plants to find a home in England, being carried there from Virginia by the botanical explorer, Tra- descant, before 1629. The plant perpetuates his name and that of his father, " an ingenious curious gardener" to Charles I. The pretty French name is Epbemerie de Virginie. It has a peculiar fitness for a sun-dial decoration since the flowers open only in the daytime, and for a single day. The flowering of this plant is of great scientific beauty and perfection ; the buds in the umbel hang down, are gracefully recurved; but just before the flower opens in the morning sun they stand erect, and when the flower fades, the withered flower and seeds once more bend down. This should be the motive in the hour markings, and can be exquisitely carried out. Under a magnifying glass the plant has additional beauty in the delicate stamens clothed in silky fibres and the gracefully poised anther ; these offer lines for the gnomon. It is such a cheerful, sensible plant in real life ; never greedily spreading though perfectly hardy, living happily either in damp or arid ground ; it needs no care, but sturdily opens its cheerful blue or white blos- soms both in our old gardens and in many a wild location. It has scant medicinal qualities in spite of its name, and a belief that it would cure the bite " of that Great Spider," an imaginary creature of the old herbalists. I was always told as a child that the plant was called Spiderwort because the sharply 2O2 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday bent grassy leaves resembled a spider's legs, which they certainly do ; they can be modelled in conven- tional forms for the dial pedestal, to give an effect of great stability. An ancient writer, Guillim, says of the Colum- bine, " 'Tis pleasing to the eye in respect of its seemly shape." Its seemly shape and the fact that it is a native American plant make it also suitable for the decoration of a sun-dial. Any study of its growth, the form of sepals, petals, stamens, will afford ample suggestions for design. I find that a true love of flowers is in general allied to a love for the philological derivation of the plant name, and at any rate with a desire to know the his- tory of the plant. Of course I have a special interest in the Tulip because I knew it in Persia when I lived there in my first incarnation in that land of sunlight and flowers. Many books have been written upon Roses and Lilies. There is a Daffodil book, a Crocus book, but none on the Tulip, though it has had a his- tory worthy of extended record, a more varied and extended history, indeed, than has the Daffodil. But the Tulip, though admired by all by nearly all and certainly beloved of the Dutch people, is not a flower of sentiment, as is the Rose, the Daffodil, the Lilac, the Pansy. The Dutch people showed their admiration for the Tulip in many ways subordinate to the- incontrovertible one of placing their liking on a moneyed basis ; they used it as the chief of decorative work whether in woodwork, pottery, painting, or embroidery. The Sun-dial in Yard of Friends' Meeting-house, Germantown, Pennsylvania. Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 203 Tulip is a curious design, not only in the elaborate crewel embroidery of bed-hangings and petticoats, but in quilts of patchwork piecing, in homespun and home-woven bed coverlets of linen and wool, and also in a curious knitted stitch used in counter- panes, bed valances, and the like. The Tulip was as omnipresent in worsted and metal within Dutch doors as it flaunted in scarlet and yellow bloom in Dutch borders. It was seen in Dutch metal work, stamped in brass, and wrought in iron; and I have a pewter teapot incised with a Dutch motto and Tulip design. Among the people of German extraction known commonly as " Pennsylvania Dutch,'* the Tulip held as honored a place as in Holland itself. On the iron fire-back of the open chimney, on the tiles of the close stove, the Tulip design was ever found. Scant petalled Tulips sprung up around the sturdy four- poster, the family bed ; they twined like a vine around these posts defying all rules of botany. They were carved on the wooden bowls and spoons ; even the wooden shoes bore a carved Tulip as a tulipette, just as the silken shoe of the English maid bore a silk and lace rosette. Here is a busk carved by a sturdy Pennsylvania Dutch lover; no amorous hearts and darts, no silly love-knots, garland this fierce bar of wood. The Tulip had a better significance for both man and maid. And her linen apron, an apron of strong homespun linen, wears a band in red and blue crewels embroidered ; not in Rosebuds or Lilies of the Valley, like this pretty and frail India muslin trumpery of English Cicely ; but here, again, is a 204 Sun-dials and .Roses of Yesterday Honestone Dial-face from Saxony, with Coats-of-arms. Date, 1760. Owned by Author. goodly red Tulip with blue and yellow leaves spring- ing from the apron's hem. Truly to paraphrase an English rhymster, " Her long slit Sleeves, stiff Buske, Puffed Verdingale With Tulips thus make her Angelicall." Tulips of more graceful form were wrought in the clasps of the neck-chains and chatelaines of silver Symbolic Designs for Sun-dials 205 worn by the goodwives of these Pennsylvania settlers, as they rode to the Sunday services of their curious sectaries, or chatted on their neighbors' " stoops " on Saturday night. I have seen a chatelaine key bag, and keys all wrought with a stiff Tulip design. And the clasps of Bible and hymn-book which sometimes hung on these silver chains bore also a design of Cross and Tulip, which was a prime favorite. Of the " Three R's " of an ordinary education in colonial times, -writing was ever the most esteemed, the most imperative ; and in general penmanship was fine. To write ill was deemed a disgrace. Spelling was rampantly varied, but writing must be good. It was easy to write with elegance with a quill pen, and whether elegant or inelegant in its results, there was a still greater value : never, so it is asserted, does he who writes with a quill pen have that dread disease of the nerves, writers' cramp. I may add, in pass- ing, another assertion as to writers' cramp: the con- stant employment of a lead pencil in writing will help sadly to produce that distressing affliction. Now from all this infinite variety of Tulip design there is certainly ample choice for sun-dial decora- tion and form, and had I time for the doing of it, I know I could shape out a Tulip sun-dial which would be perfect in a Dutch garden. It should not too closely resemble the Tulips all a-row around it, for that were tiresome ; but the severe and scant lines of the dial pedestal should be the long grass lines of the Tulip leaves, and the dial-head should open to show somewhat of a Tulip face. CHAPTER IX PEDESTALS AND GNOMONS ; A well-built marble pyramid doth stand By which spectators know the time o' the day From beams reflecting of the solar ray ; The basis with ascending steps is graced." The Humours of Co-vent Garden, The style is of iron, time is golden. It passes by like a shadow and returns not." Translation of Italian Sun-dial Motto. MONO materials for the making of dial pedestals, " many are called, but few are chosen." There are many other as suitable materials as wood and common gran- ite. White marble is ever good in a garden when of moderate bulk, and of limit also in the number of pieces shown. As the first qualification is conformed to in a sun-dial, we need only add that white marble is ever good for a dial pedestal if of careful and classic design. The colored marbles of many lands afford a wonderful choice; the least eccentric of these make the finest pedestals, nor should varied marbles be seen in one pedestal, 206 Pedestals and Gnomons 207 unless of well-studied effect and for special purpose. There is ample color in the garden without adding bizarre effects in colored marble. There are charm- ing Mexican marbles, not the onyx of upholsterers' choice, but red shaded marbles of wonderful veining. Many of our states have individual granites. The exquisite Spanish pink tint of natural alabaster is beau- tiful ; but I fear that stone is too. frail for out-door exposure in our climate. An exqui- site sun-dial pillar could be cut from the richly tinted cream - colored sandstone of Ottawa, which is used to such effect in the magnificent Houses of Parliament in Ottawa. The beauti- ful warm red Potsdam and Ohio freestone which forms the adorn- ment of these houses is a glorious stone for a sun-dial ; it is an allied tint to the natural alabaster. Those who have seen the perfect towers and buttresses and pinnacles of the Government Houses shining in the true golden light of sunset know that heaven and earth lie very close Simple Dial in a Worcester Garden. 208 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday together at such hours. With a background of greenery, and a choice close setting of dwarf Azalias around the pedestal, chosen with care, in precisely true sandstone and freestone tints a bit accented^ these would in the blos- soming give a color study of great won- der and beauty. And I should like to see this sun-dial in winter glowing in buff and sal- mon and terra-cotta lines, like a great tinted flower, against its ever- green background. The ceramic art offers pedestals for sun-dials. I have seen them of terra- cotta which were satisfactory, though many are too or- Terra-cotta Pillar. J . , nate. A very good one, made by Messrs. F. Barker & Son, London, is on this page. They can be made of pottery, both pedestal and dial-face, and several such have been made in our better potteries, with garden seats of cor- responding design. Mr. H. R. Mitchell of Haddon- Pedestals and Gnomons 209 field, New Jersey, makes a very good blue and gray stoneware dial-face. I have also seen Chinese vases and garden seats transformed into dial-pillars, but they have in general rather a make-shift air. A pretty one at Floral Park is shown on one page of this book. Of course a dial may be set upon a wooden post thrust in the ground, but that forms a pedestal of but shaky position ; a sawed off tree-stump is far better ; for the dial-face must be exactly horizontal to be of use. A properly set dial is built upon a firm foundation preferably of brick laid below the frost-line and the dial-face should be set by spirit- level. The smoothing off of a level face on the upper side of a boulder gives a substantial plane for the dial to be fastened to ; and if the boulder is shaped right, it is a very good dial foundation. "All clean and bare the stones look now, some light, some dark. As year by year goes by, lichens will slowly dot And drape them in soft tints ; beside them shrubs will grow, The barberry and sweet wild rose ; its shiny leaves The ivy climbing o'er it will display ; The clematis its silver floss." A column laid up of cobble stones in mortar offers a substantial and permanent plane also ; and if a few lightly clinging creepers be trained over it, or rarely the closely clinging Japanese Ivy, it can be made very effective. In all these dial pedestals the great striving should be to look and to be firm without being clumsy. One of good effect is shown on page 210. It is in the grounds of Mr. Henry T. Coates' residence at Berwyn, Pennsylvania. Another on a mound of stones is shown on page 211. This is at 2io Sun-cUals and Roses of Yesterday Sun-dial and Residence of Henry T. Coates, Esq., Berwyn, Pennsylvania. the residence of Mr. H. R. Mitchell, at Haddon- field, New Jersey. I would never, however, when the dial-pillar is fine of design, plant any close-growing creeper that would hide its beauty ; above all, the Japanese Ivy, which is the English sparrow of flowers. Where it is made welcome, other creepers are crowded out. Sometimes an absolutely plain shaft gives great dignity to a sun-dial. Such simple pedestals seem particularly fitting for country churchyards and burial- places ; nor are they ill-suited to the old-time flower- garden, when house and fences are of plain lines. Pedestals and Gnomons 211 In the Friends* burying-ground, Green and Coulter streets, Germantown, Philadelphia, is a brass dial-face fixed on one such square plain pedestal of gray gran- ite. See facing page 202. The gnomon is set on the Sun-dial at Haddonfield, New Jersey, in Garden of H. R. Mitchell, Esq. centre of a metal face engraved with an eight-pointed star, the points indicating the different points of the compass. The outer circle has the hours divided to minutes, and inside that is a table with the correc- 212 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday /*" tions for reducing the sun time to mean time for each day of the year. This finely calculated and engraved dial was made by W. & S. Jones, No. 30 Holborn Street, London, but has no date. The assigned date is 1778. On a brass plate fastened to the stone is engraved the noble text : " Our days are as a shadow and there is none abiding" my favorite motto of all sun-dial legends. The sun-dial on page 213 has a pretty story. It stands in the garden at Huntercombe Manor, Maidenhead, England, the garden of E. V. 'B., the Hon. Mrs. Boyle, author of A Garden of Pleas- ure^ Seven Gardens and a Palace^ and Sylvanas Letters to an Unknown Friend. Of all modern writers on the garden now living, Sylvana has to me the truest insight into the spirit of a flower, the purest enjoy- ment of flower life, the happiest manner of telling of her insight and her enjoyment. Every page of her books is a delight to read and I know that her letters were positively written to me. In one she tells the story of this sun-dial : ct I send you a likeness of the sun-dial, and here is the story of it, if you care to know. In one sense the sun-dial is old, and in another sense it is quite new. It would do to describe it either way. Years ago at M I knew a stone-mason's yard where old stone might be picked up. Here in those days I could often find choice old tomb- stones and bits of church architecture and old London Bridge parapets, stone balls, ^tc. My last bargain in the stone-yard was four corners of a tomb of the sort common a hundred or more years ago. For fifteen years I doubted what to do with them, till suddenly one summer day a sun- Pedestals and Gnomons 213 dial was decided. The difficulties of arranging it were great, and the work filled up at least two happy weeks. Three old carved stone tablets with lines in alto relievo were made to grace the sun-dial's head. The lines walk with stately step from the sun rising southwards towards Sun-dial made from Old Tomb, Huntercombe Manor, Maidenhead, England. the north. The well-weathered marble brackets on which the gnomon rests had lain in patience under the laurels for many a year till Time brought round an hour and a place for them. And then came the fulfilment of the whole, the motto of a famous architect given to me, and engraved around the upper step, Lux et umbra viclssim, sed semper amor. This motto, published in my Garden of Pleas- ure, has been since translated into English and printed in 214 Sun-dhils and Roses of Yesterday someone else's garden book. I wish you could see the white lily planted two autumns ago just under the lowest step. The slender shaft of its stalk carries now for the first time three or four buds, and when the sun shines upon it a delicate half-transparent shadow slants across the stone. For some reason known to itself this lily grows so small that it is like no mortal lily. Blue Gentian in May sets off the stone edging between it and the turf; and a plant of yellow Clematis flings itself in a light embrace around the central column or pedestal. The flower of it I have never seen. I only know its handsome fluffy seed." I have given this account of Sylvana's sun-dial at length, not only on account of its absolute charm of diction, but on account of the valuable sugges- tions it gives for the mounting of sun-dials. What infinite pleasure she has had in comparison to the owner of the .costly macle-to-order pedestal, in this " home-made " pedestal. Of course it is not home- made either, for the carving is fine and has seen good days ere it came to its better days in the manor garden ; but the putting together of the different parts necessitated much thought, and brought infinite gratification, like everything else over which we work long and make a success. I know, were it mine, I should never glance at this sun-dial without a thrill of delight over my handi- work. It is well to use old bits of marble and stonework, or old pillars and pedestals of turned wood, if one can find them of good simple shape. Charles Dickens used a pillar of the balustrade of old Rochester Bridge as a pedestal for his sun-dial at Gadshill. This dial and pillar were recently sold Pedestals and Gnomons 215 in London for fifty pounds. The early days of the dial are told in an inscription cut upon it. A clergy- man of Suffolk, England, has a dial in his vicarage garden at Pakenham set on a part of the balustrade of London Bridge. The bridge was taken down in 1832. I have known twice of using as a dial pedestal the stone roller of a worn garden or lawn roller of the old-fashioned type. Set on end firmly into the ground, and with a well-designed brass dial-face covering the other end, it was a very satisfactory pillar, and carried with it that pleasant sense of a decorous and not use- less end of the days for a faithful old servant, albeit of senseless stone, which one feels also for a worn old mill-stone turned into a doorstep ; for a well-curb made into a flower-stand ; or for an old Dutch wind- mill transformed to a house for garden tools. The richest pedestals are, of course, those of carved figures, suited only to very rich and pretentious gardens. Their cost, whether of marble, stone, metal, or even wood, would prevent their ap- pearance anywhere save in such gardens. A kneeling figure supporting a dial on the head was popular, see The Moor, Enfield Old Park, Middlesex. 216 Sun-dials and .Roses of Yesterday page 215. These were sometimes cast in lead. One which stood in the garden of Clement's Inn, and is now in the gardens of the Inner Temple on the Thames embankment, is a negro figure and has been known as "The Moor." It is said that there were in the eighteenth cen- tury a number of " stat- uaries," lead-casters, whose works were be- tween Piccadilly, Park Lane, and Devonshire House ; one of these men, John van Nost, made this " Moor" his favorite design. At Belton House, near Grantham, there is a worn dial in Earl Brownlow's garden, sup- Sun-dial at Hampton Court. ported by twQ figureS) Old Time and Cupid. This dial, with its quaintly grotesque figures, is shown on page 198. A unique dial is the famous old Turk's Head given on another page. At Windsor, near the Star " Build- ing," stands a sun-dial with a highly carved mar- ble pedestal, which is said to have been the work of that man of infinite genius, Grinling Gibbons. The carving is in high relief, and the Star and Garter is engraved on the dial-face with the motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense. Henricus Wynne ^ Londinii, fecit. Pedestals and Gnomons 217 In 1895 a beautiful dial was designed and set up by Messrs. Brewill and Baily at Whatton House near Loughborough. It is here shown. A moulded Sun-dial at Whatton House, near Loughborough. circular top is carried by four draped figures of the Muses, Clio, Euterpe, Erata, and Urania. This group resembles the dial in The Dane John at Canterbury. The exact size of figures for a sun- 21 8 Sun-d-jals and ; Roses of Yesterday dial- must be guided by the extent of the garden. I do not like colossal figures even in lead, still less do I like to see displayed " A little goddikin No bigger than a skittle pin," as Cotton wrote. On page 414 is shown the dial at Wroxton Abbey, Oxfordshire, described by Mr. Blomfield in his Formal Garden as "a moulded cir- cular top carried by four draped female figures, who stand on a square pedestal, the angles of which are decorated with rams' heads and swags of fruits and flowers." Perhaps the camera may be held at fault, but certainly these " Four Seasons " seem dumpy little goddikinesses. An appropriate pedestal 'for a substantial dial in a busy town is standing in the enclosure of the gas- works, northeast corner of Twenty-third and Market streets, Philadelphia. It was originally erected by the Market Street Bridge Company, at the western ap- proach of the bridge, as a memorial to those engaged in the construction of the bridge. Later the obelisk was removed to its present position. It is about twelve feet in height, cut clean and true from gray sandstone, and consists of a shaft standing on two steps, supporting a square block of stone, on the four sides of which are cut dials facing the cardinal points of the compass. The whole is surmounted by an urn carved with a burning flame. On the four sides of the obelisk are carved long inscriptions giving a history of the construction, quantities of masonry, etc., used in building the bridge. I \l\\\ Sun-dial and Dial-face at Harlestone House, Northamptonshire-. Pedestals and Gnomons 219 Facing page 218 is the sun-dial at Harlestone House, Northamptonshire, the residence of the Duchess of Grafton, and a reproduction of a rub- bing from the dial-face. It stands on the lawn at the south front of the house, and bears the name and date, Frederic Spencer, August, 1842. Maker, C. W. Dixey, London. Frederic Spencer was the late Earl Spencer, father of the present peer. The pedestal is very simple, but it is a good example of a well-proportioned plain dial-pillar. There are several sun-dials on the grounds at Althorp House, Northampton- shire, the seat of Lord Spencer. One shown on this page has a most elaborately engraved face, telling the time in various parts of the world. Another dial is depicted on page 220. This dial has recently been acquired by Lord Spencer, and placed by him at Althorp House. It formerly stood in the Admiralty House Gardens, Whitehall, London, that memoried spot. When the Admiralty was enlarged last year, the old stone garden house or summer house and this dial had to be removed. Lord Spencer was permitted to purchase both. There was vast appropriateness in their coming into Sun-dial at Althorp House. 22O Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday his possession, for he' has been First Lord of the Admiralty and his grandfather was also First Lord of the Admiralty as a member of Pitt's administra- tion in those great and glorious days when Lord Nelson ruled the water, at the time of the battle of the Nile and other great naval victories. It is told that Nelson sat often in this garden house with the sun-dial standing before him, talking over naval pol- icy, in those days when England faced down Bonaparte. At Lindfield, Sussex, is Old Place, the seat of Charles E. Kempe, Esq. The house was built originally in 1590 and has been added to wholly in the old spirit. The sun-dial is of an ^USUal form and deCO- ration, bearing a general resemblance to the dial at Oxford College. The dial-head has been made and set within a few years by Messrs. F. Barker & Son of London. It is a block with four dial-faces raised on a tall pillar, around which twines in large black and gold letters the motto in a spiral reading. The motto runs : Sun-dial from Admiralty Garden. Pedestals and Gnomons 221 Tempora prater eunt ; nunc sol nunc umbra viclssim Pr otter eunt ; super est ecce perenms amor. TIME FLIES, SUNS RISE AND SHADOWS FALL LET TIME GO BY. LOVE IS FOREVER OVER ALL. The words Perenms Amor are illustrated by a brooding pelican in bronze surmounting all. The Sun-dial at Yaddo, Saratoga, New York; Country Seat of Spencer Trask, Esq. 222 Sun-dials and .Roses of Yesterday pillar itself is raised on a high block covered with ivy, so the whole dial is a very imposing figure. An entirely different form of support for a dial- face is given on page 221. This beautiful sun-dial is ml ^W x A -r \ ,v% i.^' ^^l^i^^ Bronze Dial-face at Yaddc, Saratoga, New York ; Country Seat of Spencer Trask, Esq. in the Rose garden at Yaddo, near Saratoga, New York, at the country seat of Spencer Trask, Esq. The dial is like an antique table, supported by two carved figures. It is an exact copy of a beautiful Pillar-dial at Old Place, Lindfield, England; Seat of Charles E. Kempe, Esq. Pedestals and Gnomons 223 carving excavated at Pompeii, and it was made for Mr. Trask by express permission of the Italian government. The dial-face is very fine (page 222); it was designed and made by Messrs. F. Barker & Son of London, and bears two exquisite verses by Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, written specially for this dial. One reads : HOURS FLY FLOWERS DIE NEW DAYS NEW WAYS PASS BY : LOVE STAYS. The other is at the base of the gnomon : TIME is TOO SLOW FOR THOSE WHO WAIT TOO SWIFT FOR THOSE WHO FEAR TOO LONG FOR THOSE WHO GRIEVE TOO SHORT FOR THOSE WHO REJOICE BUT FOR THOSE WHO LOVE TIME IS ETERNITY. The house of Gilbert White at Selborne still stands close to the village highway. Its softly toned bricks and green vineries make it the ideal rural home. The grounds are much the same as during the naturalist's life. In the meadow is his shivering Aspen ; and on the green his Sycamore. The brick wall which he built still bears the tablet and date, G. W., 1761. His favorite walk still stretches its narrow brick pathway over The Hanger. Surely, 224 Sun-dials, and .Roses of Yesterday the sun-dial and tortoise must be still here ! The lawn is glittering with sunshine so the aged tortoise cannot be seen, but here is the sun-dial on the verge of the lawn, just as he placed it, and read daily its informing letters. You can see its picture here on this page, and a very good model, too, would it form for those who constantly write to me searching for simple well- proportioned dial- pillars. The dial pedestals shown in the illustrations throughout this book offer vast variety of design. Many of them have been chosen and presented sim- ply to instruct the " dial seeker. Opposite this page is shown a very satisfactory dial pedestal at the home of Charles F. Jenkins, Esq., in Germantown, Pennsylvania. This pedestal is new ; it forms a suitable support for the old dial- face, which belonged originally to Nathaniel Spen- ser, who lived in Germantown before and during the War of the Revolution. His daughter Hep- zibah married, and carried the dial-face to Byberry. Sun-dial of Gilbert White, Selborne. Pedestals and Gnomons 225 She in turn had a daughter whose married name became Jenkins, and she carried the sun-dial to Gwynedd. Her grandson is the present owner. He rescued the sun-dial of his forebears from a chicken-house with gnomon missing, and after a time that was found. Its inscription, Time waits for No Man, is held to be a punning device on the word gnomon. This dial jest, varied to read, Hours stay for No Man, I wait for No Man, etc., is seen on many English dials. Two or three years ago a liberal prize was offered in one of our American art associations for the best design for a sun-dial. I know not the specifications in this contest, nor whether there were limitations. I have seen the designs which were deemed the most creditable, and in one case I looked upon the drawing with much curiosity, querying whether the artist had ever seen a sun-dial, or really under- stood either its significance or its working, as he cer- tainly did not its traditions. The gnomon of the sun-dial is that piece which projects from the face of the dial, the shadow of which tells the time of the day. It is often triangular, but may be of various shapes ; in fact, an obelisk or any index or line which marks a meridian line is also a gnomon. This gnomon is also called a stylus, or style, or stile, or index, or pointer these all mean precisely the same thing. Florio says, "The gnomon is the gnow-man or know-man of a diall, the shadow whereof pointeth out the howers." From this comes the word gnomonics, or as it once was spelled gnomonicks, the art or science of dialling ; and various Q 226 Sun-dials and .Roses of Yesterday other words, such as gnomonist^ one versed in dialling, and gnomonology, a treatise on dialling. The derivative adjective is gnomonic, gnomonical, and gnomic, but as the last-named word has another remote signification, it is not much used. I may say in passing that in the word dialling I have clung to the spelling always found in the old trea- tises and trigonometries ; the spelling given in mod- ern dictionaries is with a single 1 dialing. On the exact setting of the gnomon all the worth of the sun-dial depends ; of course all parts should be exact, but the gnomon must be precisely made and set. Therefore it is not well to make the gnomon of wood, because it may warp and twist. I would suggest to all who are erecting sun-dials, especially horizontal dials in a garden, that more thought and work be spent upon the gnomon than is generally done. Being ordinarily of metal it can be engraved on its flat surface, or, better still, it can be pierced. The use even of a monogram in the design will add to its interest, or a date or crest. I like a large gnomon with as much fine pierced work as can be put upon it. When pierced brass work of such exquisite design was used in old watches, it is strange the brass worker did not turn to the sister timekeeper, the sun-dial, as a field for delicate orna- mentation. I have a collection of two hundred old brass verges or bridges from ancient verge-watches in which the designs show every variety of exquisite tracing and outline. I know no gold wrought work to compare with them in delicate beauty, and were they of precious metal, they would make a superb Sun-dial at Cranford, Germantown, Pennsylvania; Residence of Charles F. Jenkins, Esq. Pedestals and Gnomons necklace. Some such work, though of necessity much heavier and of a deeper cutting, since it is to be exposed to the weather, would I see on the stylus of the sun-dial. It could carry out in finest effect the design of pedestal and face. Or the gnomon might be given a voice and speak both to the dial- face and to that person who is termed in the old dial-mottoes the " Passinger," that is the passer-by. In a facet-headed dial where the gno- mons are so prominent, they should hold the chief ornamentation. I can im- agine a beautiful dial a simple pil- lar supporting a block with twelve faces, each a dial; these faces to have no ornamentation, merely to show the hour lines. The gnomons could be pierced in a floral design, such as the Tulip. Gnomon of Dial. Lelant Each of the smaller gnomons could be two or three leaves, or a leaf and bud. The four large dials would show the full flower on their gnomons. The pillar should be plain save at the base, where a circular block could show in very low relief a few lines suggestive of Tulip leaves. Great indifference or lack of taste is often shown in regard to the relation of the ornamentation of the dial-plate to that of the pedestal. The adornment of the plate and sculpture of the pedestal should correspond in design, or, at least, be of a similar school of decoration. You do not wish a Japan- esque engraving of lines with a Grecian pedestal ; 228 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday nor would I wish a floral ornamentation on the dial-plate and the signs of the zodiac on the ped- estal. Very rarely an old gnomon will show some curi- ous design. On page 227 is pictured the gnomon of a vertical dial at Lelant Church, Cornwall ; it is the figure of a skeleton standing on a hori- zontal bar. This is pierced in such a way that his ribs, skull, dart, and 't hour-glass are plainly seen. This emblem of Death, a skeleton, was held to be as suitable to a sun-dial as to a tombstone; and sometimes the dial bore a carving of skull and bones. One is shown on ~1 ^ -24iasar r this page, also page Dial-face, Sheepstor Church, Dartmoor. 2 ^ Q j have seen a mounted globe serving as a gnomon. An ele- phants trunk and the wing of a bird have furnished designs for gnomons. A very fine gnomon, shaped like a dragon, is upon a dial made in London for an American garden. It is shown in this book. A very curious gnomon and a very curious dial was that of the Church of Brou in the Savoy valley. MORSJANVAVITAE Pedestals and Gnomons 229 It is said it was made for the use of the workmen of many lands who built the church. "Stones are sawing, hammers ringing, On the work the bright sun shines, In the Savoy mountain-meadows, By the stream below the pines. -< On her palfry white the Duchess Sate, and watched her working train, Flemish carvers, Lombard gilders, German masons, smiths from Spain/' thus wrote Matthew Arnold in his poem, The Church of Brou. This sun-dial was a great circle on the pavement, thirty-three feet in diameter ; and the hours were marked in bricks. The time-seeker himself, were he Flemish carver or smith from Spain, formed the gnomon. He placed himself on the spot marked with the name of the current month and his shadow fell on the correct hour. A very elaborate and exact dial was made in Dijon about a hundred years ago by one M. Caumont. Four great blocks of stone marked the points of the compass, and were carved with the signs of the zodiac, and other long slabs of stone with the meridian line and east and west line. Outside these was a circle of twenty-four great stone slabs, each marking an hour. The time- observer set an upright stick on the meridian line opposite the initial letter of the month, and its shadow showed the correct time. I was once shown at a seaside resort a row of numbered stones and a socket, and told to thrust a long pole in the socket, when its shadow would fall on the stones and tell 230 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday the hour. This we did, and the result proved the pole and stones a very fair timekeeper. I have a fancy that a sun-dial should ever have some extrinsic value ; no object yields more readily to the power of association. Let your dial be made from stone taken from some historic or memorable spot. For instance, a pedestal was cut in stone taken from the field of the battle of Bennington. In that battle took a prominent part a sturdy old farmer from what is now Vermont. His part was prominent not that he was an officer, but he was a soldier of such exalted enthusiasm and belief in his cause ; he was so fear- less, so enduring, so bold, though he was seventy years old, that he became a leader in his company through sheer force of his own belief and his expres- sion of it as many an- other leader has become. His quaint and fearless sayings are told to this day. He was a blacksmith, and of course with his tem- perament he was the best blacksmith in the province; and he was proud of his work, as all first-class workmen are. And, what is far rarer, his grandson is proud of it also ; and on the fine shaft cut in grand simplicity of shape from this Bennington boulder, he has set as a gnomon a Sun-dial in Wall of Black Friars' Burial-ground, Perth. Pedestals and Gnomons 231 bronze arm wielding a hammer, a splendid piece of work. It fairly speaks to you of his grandfather, the fighting blacksmith, of the certainty of the blows with which he made his way through life, conquer- ing Time because he fearlessly and cheerfully filled.it with honest and dignified work. Another dial- pillar has a ten- derer message: it islaidin cement of sea-worn stones of nearly uniform size and great beauty of tint, which were gath- ered from the beach, and the very corner of the beach made mem- orable to the dial- owners as the place where the twain became be- trothed ; and since the husband is a well-known Shakespearian critic, it is meet that the motto should be a line from Shakespeare's Sonnet cxvi : " Love alters not with Time's brief hours and weeks." A dial-face which I have seen was cast in metal taken from the sheathing of an old battleship, upon which the dial-owner, when a midshipman, had Pedestals of Dials at Enfield Old House and Chiswick, Middlesex. Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday served during our Civil War. Value could come to the dial through its model ; it could be shaped like a dial which had been possessed or designed by some one of deserved renown. As an example let me again refer to the sun-dial pictured on page 13, which is a precise reproduction of the sun-dial o'f Sir Walter Scott. What value this knowledge gives to it ! It is a gate opening to us a world of historical and literary memories. One might reproduce the dial of Gilbert White, shown on page 224. It is a bit more ornate than would seem to please Gilbert White's very quiet tastes. He had an interest, we know, in things allied to sun-dials. Read his letter upon building a heliotrope in the garden two, indeed ; one for the summer, the other for the winter solstice. Several who could own a costly dial have reproduced the Queen Mary's dial at Holyrood Palace; others have adopted it in part. I do not, in general, like an alteration of an historical model. The moment it is imitated in part, it has lost its value, that of exact picturing. Even an association through the selec- tion of a motto is better than no association. CHAPTER X THE SETTING OF SUN-DIALS "I stand amid ye summer flowers To tell ye passing of ye hours ; When winter steals ye flowers away I tell ye passing of their day." Sun-dial Motto, REV. GREVILLE G. CHESTER, 1860. |OW readily a sun-dial may be-made beautiful or marred by its setting! A pictu- resque or wise setting can do much to atone for or hide an ugly or ill-suited pedestal. Doubtless many of the charm- ing pictures formed by the sun-dial in old gardens came through the judicious and beautifying touch of Time. I am easily influenced by sun-dials. I must acknowledge myself when in each one's presence wholly under its dominion, and dominated a bit, too, by friendship for the owner of the dial. Thus when I am at Twin Beaches, I think a close-set row of English daisies around the circular foundation, a true daisy-wreath, is the sweetest setting any sun-dial could have. At Hillside, in the Shake- 233 234 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * . speare garden, I know the bunches of the homely old Snow Pinks are wonderfully satisfying, whether tipped with their low-growing sweet-scented pale stars of fra- grance or simply standing in clean clumps of grayish green grass-like foliage, so suited in tint to the color of the dial-stone. At Cranford the pillar of the old Quaker dial is surrounded with Golden Honeysuckle, for " Time is golden " ; and what could be more graceful and appropriate ? But when I turn down the Rose walk of the Van Cortlandt manor garden, or walk through the blaze of sunshine and color and perfume of the Burnside garden near my Worcester home, and find the old sun-dials garlanded and sur- rounded with Roses, then I know that sun-dials and Roses are best of all. So in the garden of Dial House, which is- the name of my country home which is not, but which is ever to be there my garden-dial, too, will be partly surrounded with Roses. If the sun-dial is set in a Rose garden, it will probably be at the crossing of two paths, whether these be of grass or earth ; or it may be on a grass-plot in the centre of the garden. But if Roses are set near it, they should always be low- growing bush Roses, and small of flower ; and pret- tiest of all would be any of the Pompon Roses, the tiny Fairy Rose, or the Pink Burgundy, or the charming Paquerettes ; these in their trim little quilled bosses of color and bloom would well adorn the sun-dial. And in my garden these Rose-bushes must be set with precise regularity around the dial-base, at the four corners probably; and the Rose-bushes must be Sun-dial in Lippincott Garden, Germantown, Pennsylvania. ' The Setting of Sun-dials 235 kept of the same size, and a bit formal of shape. I can look at and admire some irregularity of growth and blossom around the sun-dials of -others ; but in my own garden, and with my own dial, I wish the precision of the laws which rule the dial, and make it the thing it is, to be suggested by some precision of decoration and surroundings. That the bloom at the dial-base should be small and the encircling vine, if present at all, light in growth is proved by regarding the dial of E. V. B., shown on page 213, where the Clematis is scarce more than an outline, and the Lily a miniature thing but you cannot doubt their fitness for their place. If one has garden associations, and especially childish associations, and if one has, above all, some tender association of memory with a -certain plant, I think it well ever to heed them, and to commemorate them if possible through the planting around a sun- dial. For there, in the presence of that which marks the flight of Time, let the Past be recalled in a permanent manner. It is appropriate to the mean- ing of a sun-dial. I always like to see my friends' sun-dials, and this summer I walked down the garden path of a friend to see a pretty sun-dial which had been set on a pedestal made of an ancient granite gate-post. This stood on a square slate base raised a single step ; this slate step was carved with initials and dates in the old-time manner of lettering, when the posses- sions of man and wife Henry and Alice Earle, for instance would be marked E . This stone step was edged around with Ribbon-grass, with large 236 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday clumps growing at the four corners. I knew why she had planted it thus, it was in memory of her childhood in a garden. I looked at my friend in silence, then stooped and gathered two of the blades Sun-dial with Crimson Rambler in Garden of Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, Fairfield, Connecticut. of green and white grass. And oh, what a wealth of garden memories came to -me with the sight and the touch of these grass-blades ! What hours had we spent together as children The Setting of Sun-dials 237 striving to find two blades whose colorings and stripes were exactly alike ! Nothing hung on the performance of this task ; there was no traditional promise of good luck, no dread of uncanny happen- ings if one failed to accomplish this grass-mating. It was absolutely without reason, yet we hung among the grass-grown bed at the foot of the garden all the long summer afternoon, parting and peering and culling and comparing them. I recalled with delight this garden dalliance, as it came to me with the pleasant touch of the hot green and white gauze ribbons of grass. Gardener's Garters was their quaint old English name. This grass-matching stood on a high plane, on some purely aesthetic principle which no grown folk could fathom, and which I have now forgotten if I ever understood it, but which formed the essence, the spirit, of all childish flower-lore. I wish I could still feel in any accomplishment of mine to-day the gratification which came to me as I seemed to approach success in our childish and meaningless Ribbon-grass play ; it was a triumph over all other garden frequenters. Yet I never found two blades that were exactly alike. Throughout the summer and even during the autumnal harvest of golden leaves, which we also tried to match and mate, we turned to the Ribbon- grass. No one can explain the fascination and charm which it held for us. Another sun-dial has been set in the centre of a circle of Thyme about ten feet in diameter ; and around the base of the dial is a row of Golden Thyme in deference to the jest of the old herbalists ; and 238 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday without the Thyme circle is a circular flower bed of sweet-scented herbs, broken only by two openings of paths. This gives an effect not so much of beauty, but of gratification to the sense of smell ; whoever walks to the sun-dial has there a vast number of fragrances that he may snip off and bear away. Great bushes of Sweet Briar, Bayberry, Calycanthus, and Southernwood stand on either side of the path entrances ; and there are Lemon Verbenas and Frax- inellas and scented Geraniums, including the spicy Nutmeg Geranium beloved of children. Then there are bunches and strips of herbs, not the ranker herbs such as Rue, Sage, Mint, Pennyroyal, Tansy, and Camomile, for these so overwhelm all others, but there is Sweet Basil, and the pretty Burnet, Costmary or Tongue Plant, and a little Lavender, Sweet Cicely, Summer Savory, Woodruff, Tarragon, Rosemary. There were little low hedges of Box around the flower beds, but many declared that the perfume of the Box overwhelmed all other scents, and many did not like it ; so to make the sun-dial a beloved resort for all, herbs of universal welcome only were kept. This sun-dial has been planted and set but five years, yet it is astonishing how it has become endeared to visitors as well as the family, partly through the power of associations of scents. One man writes, " I never smell now a bit of Rose Geranium or Verbena without thinking of your sun-dial and sunlight and summer." A particularly suitable setting for a sun-dial es- pecially one standing upon a square platform is to plant Yuccas at the four corners of the dial-base. The Setting of Sun-dials 239 Sun-dial in Garden of Henry Souther, Esq., Hartford, Connecticut. What an effect these Yuccas have thus planted ! Their beautiful blooms are those of a miniature Cen- tury Plant. ' They are like a marble statue, so clear and colorless ; indeed, they are like ice by night. How fine the starry columns of bloom seen with the 240 Sun-dials and Rose's of Yesterday sun-dial against a hedge ; and when the great flower- stalk is dead and cut away, the cluster of sword-like, spiny leaves is as classic a decoration as the Aloe or Century Plant. I once saw the balustrade of an Italian garden set with a row of Yuccas in full bloom in white marble jars, and their white spires were grand beyond compare. How much more white things tell in the garden than those of other colors, the white flowered trees, the white blossoming shrubs ! White is the high light, the effective point of the garden, just as it is of stained glass ; and when white flowers are set near the white marble dial, they all seem a fine study of light and shade. In the daytime the Yucca's column is hung in scentless but graceful bells, and greenish in tint ; but now it is night, and the bells open and stand up, full of odor as they are of light. Pale night moths hover round the flowers and float over the dial, lured by the rich fragrance. "In such a night as this," the vivid moon-night of Shakespeare, the moon-night of the Merchant of Venice^ the moon-night of Lorenzo and Jessica, in such a night as this, when u tipped with silver are all the tree-tops," and all the living scenes of poetry and drama seem near us, in such a night as this we would be like William Blake, a little mad, and know that there walked with us those whose names we honor, who died centuries ago. Blake had as companions Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and Homer; but I would be deeply content in such a night as this to stroll with William Blake himself, and hear him speak of the icelike Yuccas. I once saw a sun-dial surrounded by a row of The Setting of Sun-dials 241 scarlet Tulips in full bloom ; it was a cheerful sight for its day and hour, and had a certain fitness in that it was found in the garden of a flower-lover of Dutch descent, who gave due honor of place to the sun-dial by encircling it with a favorite flower. But even in a Dutch garden, the Tulip seems of too fleet- ing a bloom to seem suitable as a sun-dial setting. I can well comprehend the longing of a Tulip- lover to place it thus, as the place of honor in a garden. No distinction was too great to be shown to the Tulip. With an admiration and affection which did not waver for centuries did the Dutch strive to place the Tulip in prominence. I have referred to this at some length in my chapter on Sun-dial Designs. On page 242 is shown the sun-dial of Horace Howard Furness, Esq., at his home at Wallingford, Pennsylvania. How fine are the long stems and Poppy-seeds which surround this dial ! How beau- tiful must have been these Poppies in bloom ! Every minute of the life of a Poppy is beautiful, yet they are seldom a much-loved flower. Yester- day a flower-lover here at East Hampton was asked her favorite flower, and she answered Joan Silverpin, referring to old Gerarde's quaint words about the Poppy, namely, " Being of many variable colours and of great beautie, although evill smell, our gentle- women doe call them Jone Silverpin.*' Constant reference is made by older writers to their vile scent which apparently every one loathed. But nowadays I find many like the smell of a Poppy ; I do, and I like to eat the seeds, as I always ate them in 242 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday childhood. In many countries they are baked with wheaten flour into cakes. Sun-dial with Poppies in Garden of Horace Howard Furness, Esq., Wallingford, Pennsylvania. In German bake-shops you may find, and in the so-called " Vienna Bakeries " of our American cities, The Setting of Sun-dials 243 a certain roll glazed with yolk of egg, and bestrewn plentifully with tiny purplish grains, curious of aspect, but distinctly pleasing, albeit unusual of flavor. This coarse powder or grain is Poppy-seed, and here is a recipe for these cakes : u The seeds of white Garden poppies were made into Biskits or Comfits with honey and served up as a Bank- etting Dish. The rustical peasants of the country were wont to guild or glaze (as it were) the uppermost crust of their loaves of bread with the yolks of eggs, and then to bestrew it with Poppy-seed which would cleave fast to it. They would put them into the oven being thus seasoned which gave a commendable taste to the bread being baked." You would think that recipe was for our New York rolls, albeit in the wording of a seventeenth century chirurgeon, but it is far older still. It is a translation of a recipe in Pliny's Natural Historie ; and should you partake freely of these cakes, I doubt not you would feel the opium which must be in the Poppy-seed, and when you slept there- from, you would dream of ancient Rome. There is a certain appropriateness in surround- ing a sun-dial with flowers which have a subtle air of mystery ; they seem suited to the passing of time, to night and day, to all the magic of life. The Poppy has this quality, felt in full by the two great- est students of the very being of the Poppy that the world has known, Ruskin and Celia Thaxter. The growing Poppies of Celia Thaxter's gardens and the gathered Poppies of her home were miracles of 244 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday * * ' f 1 beauty. An arrangement of Poppies on a mantel, which she kept ever fresh throughout the entire summer, seems to have made a lasting picture of glorious beauty upon the minds of all who beheld it. Many have a distinct indifference or even dislike of planting flowers in the immediate vicinity of a sun-dial ; and I am sure it is wholly a modern fashion. You seldom find an ancient garden-dial, if in its original position, with flowers set near it. But when no herbaceous plants are near the dial, shrubs may be planted at a little distance with wonderful effect. I saw recently a sun-dial which stood in a grass-plot in the clear sunlight. In a semicircle, remote enough that they never could shadow the dial-face, were planted shrubs which through careful selection gave to the sun-dial a succession of blossoming companions from early spring till winter found only the scarlet hips of the Japanese Roses. The spring months are readily filled, but there is a period well known to all garden- makers when the sun-dial would have no blossom companions were it not for the Tamarisk, and those faithful relics from old-time gardens, the Althea, or Rose of Sharon. Of course the very essence and being of the sun- dial lies in ample sunshine, still there may be a cer- tain proximity to trees great and small that will add much to its graceful existence. Three trees of small growth stood near the white marble shaft of one sun- dial ; in winter I knew that these small trees were Peach trees, and I knew they would have their day and hour of beauty, but I did not know that they The Setting of Sun-dials Sun-dial at Drumthwacket, Princeton, New Jersey ; Country Seat of M. Taylor Pyne, Esq. were double-flowering Peach trees, and that thereby their time of beauty would be so multiplied, quad- rupled, in glory. When I saw them in their glo- rious bloom, they were the first double-flowered Peach blossoms that I had ever seen. There are 246 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday . ,* certain flower-pictures of extraordinary beauty that seem indelibly imprinted on our eyes and brains, wonderful scenes which we can never forget; this is such a one. I have only to close, my eyes on the dullest day in midwinter, on the longest sleepless night, and I see these wonderful irregular mounds of intense pinkness, these masses of flowers with the pure white sun-dial among them. Its warning words of coming night and darkness and death had scant weight in the? sight of such beauty which, like all beautiful things, seemed to me, in my first and unreasoning delight, immortal. All this flower-talk opens another line of thought, namely, whether the flowers in the immediate vicinity of the sun-dial should not be carefully regarded as to their relation to the character of the decoration of the sun-dial. But perhaps, in Horatio's words, "'Twere to con- sider too curiously, to consider so." Another wonderful background was a row of Pine trees which had been left standing from the old forest when the house was built and the garden planned. Not near enough to shadow basely the dial at midday, but close enough to render useless the markings of the hours of later afternoon, they watched over the dial, and the sound of their branches seemed the very passing voice of Time. I never hear now the soft musical sighing, the tender low breathing of the Pines without recalling the tree-planting in Hardy's Woodlanders a won- derful description, yet of few words, wherein you smell and hear and see the beautiful young trees the moment they are planted upright. How solemn The Setting of Sun-dials 247 and weird is that sighing in an old tall forest ! It is a distinct third of three notes, formed perhaps by the different height of the trees or by cross-currents Sun-dial in Garden of the late Hon. William H. Seward, Auburn, New York. of air. I walked through such a forest last sum- mer, one with grand mast-trees like those marked by the king's broad arrow of old; trees born to be masts and with the tone of the sea in their chords. 248 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday And the tree-voices seemed to bear the weight and profundity of the centuries of their lives, a solem- nity that is not sad, but seems rilled instead with the essence of a noble life. It is one of the inarticulate nature-sounds that speak more clearly than words. The voice of the Pines differs at times. Lowell knows the Pine-tree like a brother, knows its moods and its voices : " Pines, if you're blue, are the best friends I know ; They mope and sigh and share your feelin's so ; They hush the ground beneath so, too, I swan You half forget you've got a body on." " Under the yaller pines I house When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, And hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west wind purr contented." Forests of tall-growing Pines and forests of masts in our harbors alike are disappearing ; thus we lose the finest of those beauties given to us simply through the repetition of perpendicular forms. I presume the brother outline, the long ranks of bayonets, will also disappear from our marching armies, and some insignificant little deadly weapon fill the bayonet's place. Yearly are the picturesque elements of our life taken from us. We are given many comforts to replace them, but no work of science or art can ever equal the wondrous natural beauty of the serried Pine frees and Pine masts. Even this row of a scant dozen Pines guarding the sun-dial has the charm of a succession of up- right lines. It is this beauty of perpendicular forms 33 I The Setting of Sun-dials 249 that make many plant rows of Hollyhocks as a back- ground to the sun-dial, where they are beautiful as long as they stand in erect lines even though the blossoms are gone and only the "cheeses" remain studding the stalks with their curious forms. There is much dig- nity in all of the Mallow tribe in the gar- den, whether they be our beautiful wild Marshmallows, the Holly- hocks, or our friend the Rose of Sharon. We are apt to think and speak of a sun- dial as being suited to a flower garden ; but it is equally so for an expanse of lawn, or even to a paved courtyard with no growing flowers. Of course its happiest home is like every one else's in a flower garden. There are certain gardens to which the garden-dial seems wonted and a part thereof; these are specially all old-fashioned gardens, and all Sun-dial with Peonies at Kenmore. Fredericks- burg, Virginia ; Home of Betty Washington Lewis. 250 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday formal gardens, and there is a certain type of garden which promises the presence of a sun-dial. It is impossible to formulate a description of such a one, nor can you give any details by which to know of the treasure within. Sometimes the slightest hint will suggest the presence of a sun-dial to you ; sometimes you have an inspiration. I was driving along a Long Island road, on the out- skirts of a long-settled village, when we passed an old house with grand central chimney flanked by a nebulous growth of greenery of various heights, which suggested evergreen and ancient shrubbery. A hedge stretched across the front Sun-dial at Stenton, the Logan of the forecourt, that House. Presented to the So- enclosure which we call ciety of Colonial Dames by the front yard, a hedge Horace J. Smith Esq., of Ger- o f comparat i ve ly old mantown, Pennsylvania. ,, A J growth for America. An aged negro was trimming this hedge with an old cavalry sword, which -he gallantly and skilfully wielded. I know not whether it was the unusual sight of a sword used as hedge shears and I assure you it proved an excellent one or the The Setting of Sun-dials 251 irregular expanse of shrubbery, but I at once sus- pected the presence within this garden of an old sun- dial ; and when we entered, there it was. The wooden pedestal had rotted away, and the poor stump with the rickety dial-face lay prone among the vast Box hedges, hidden save for such undaunted searchers as ourselves. The metal dial-face was fastened by a single rusted screw to the pillar, and twisted about, and was prone face down, with its gnomon thrust in the ground, in an utter abasement and degradation, which resembled in a half-comic manner the grinding of a nose in the dirt ; which resemblance, of nose to gnomon, the poet sung in Cynthia's Revel, when " her nose was the gnomon of Love's diall, to tell you how runs your heart." I carefully pushed the decaying pedestal from under the edge of the heavy Box and turned the dial-face to the light, and then brushed off the decayed leaves and earth with which it was caked. I read thereon in well-worn letters these ironic words, Omnibus exemplum et regula A PATTERN AND A RULE FOR ALL. Alas, poor dial ! thou wert a pattern and a rule but for a short time and season ! CHAPTER XI SUN-DIAL MOTTOES " A Sun-dial motto should be as short as the Posy on a Ring ; as Clear as the Sun that shines on the Dial's Face ; and as True as Christian Ethics.'' NE thought cannot fail to come to all who read any consid- erable number of sun-dial mottoes, a sense of their inherent refinement and grace. They cannot be coarse, nor clumsy, nor scarcely ungra- cious. Of course they vary in happiness of conception, but all seem refined. I suppose no one would in- scribe a motto on a sun-dial until he or she had given ample thought to the wording, and had indeed meditated deeply in order to seize or shape some poetic thought to be a fitting voice for the serious and dignified dial. I shall not attempt to give a full list of dial mot- toes. The curious reader -can find them in many languages to the number of sixteen hundred in Mrs. Gatty's Book of Sun-dials. Baron Edmund de Riviere published another long list. Early writers on dialling 252 Sun-dial Mottoes 253 give many suitable mottoes. I had collected sun-dial mottoes in various languages for many years before I saw Mrs. Gatty's book, but I found on comparison that she had nearly all that I had gathered, besides many more ; still, I will give here some of the inter- Sun-dial on Bridge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. esting ones from my collection. Many in the larger gatherings are valueless as a motto for use on ordi- nary dials. One almost unvarying characteristic of the sun- dial motto may be noted, its solemnity. A very 254 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday few are jocose, a few are cheerful, nearly all are sol- emn, many are sad, even gloomy. They teach no light lesson of life, but a regard of the passing of every day, every hour, as a serious thing. Biblical texts offer a vast field for culling sun-dial mottoes. The very best to my mind my favorite motto is this solemn warning : Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abid- ing. i Chronicles xx. 15. Opening the Bible wholly at random, after the fashion of the fortune-seekers of old, my eyes fall on these noble lines : Truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. Ecclesiastes xi. 7. As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow. Job vii. 2. All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Job xiv. 14. Behold now is the accepted time. 2 Corinthians vi. 2. / have considered the days of old and the years that are past. Psalm Ixxvii. 5. His time passeth away like a shadow: Psalm cxliv. 4. Lord teach us to number our days rightly and to apply our hearts to wisdom. Psalm xc. 14. While ye have light, believe in the light. St. John xxii. 36. Let there be light ; and there was light. Genesis i. 3. Man is like a thing of nought. His time passeth away like a shadow. Psalm cxliv. 4. Abide with us, O Lord, for it is toward evening. St. Luke xxiv. 29. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm xc. 12. Oh, remember how short my time is. Psalm Ixxxix. 47. Sun-dial Mottoes 2 55 He brought back the shadow by degrees, 2 Kings xx. 1 1. The Lord's name is praised from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same. Psalms cxiii. 3. This last text and parts of it are a favorite choice for mottoes ; and in Latin also. In Northampton, England, on the Queen's Cross were four sun-dials, each bearing a few Latin words of this text. This cross is shown on this page in its present condition ; it was set up by Edward 1 in memory of his wife, Eleanor of Castile, and has been sadly tinkered with and the dials re- moved. It was a fre- quent motto on French churches. In Kircher's Ars Magna Luc is et Umbrae (1646) is a curious exposition of Cross at Northampton, England. this verse. A great folding plate is given, having twenty-four dials set in the form of a tree, and four more at each corner. From this tree radi- ates this verse in thirty-four different languages. On a scroll is the text, Sicut oliva fructifora in domo Dei. This plate was intended to have been mounted 256 Sun-dials, and Roses of Yesterday on a board, and each dial was to have a gnomon affixed, which would then show the time of the day at the places named. The size and shape of each Pillar-dial in Graveyard at Dean Row. Cheshire, England. gnomon is carefully given. This would form a splendid triumph in gnomonics. Some familiar mottoes are seen on many dials. They are certainly common, and some are common- place, but they are suited to their position. I LABOR HERE WITH ALL MY MIGHT TO TELL THE HOUR BY DAY AND NIGHT. Sun-dial Mottoes 257 Sometimes these lines are added : AS CAREFUL, THEN, BE SURE THOU BE, TO SERVE THY GOD AS I SERVE THEE. or IF THOU WILT BE ADVISED BY ME, I'LL SERVE MY GOD AS I SERVE THEE. Mrs. Gatty gives an old " clock-paper " which, neatly written and framed in colored paper, was placed under an ancient timepiece : HERE MY MRS. BIDS ME STAND AND MARK THE TIME WITH FAITHFUL HAND; WHAT IS HER WILL IS MY DELIGHT, TO TELL THE HOURS BY DAY AND NIGHT. MRS. BE WISE AND LEARN OF ME TO SERVE THY GOD AS I SERVE THEE. A hundred and more years ago the works of a watch were entirely detached from the case, and cir- cular pieces of ornamental paper were placed within the case to protect the works. These discs of paper were known as watch-papers ; they were cut in tiny designs, pricked with a pin, painted in water- colors, and inscribed with verses, posies such as were found in posy-rings. One watch-paper which I have has a motto evidently adapted from the motto of the clock-paper : IT IS MY WILL AND MY DELIGHT TO TELL THE HOURS OF DAY AND NIGHT ; and in a manuscript collection of posies for watch- papers is this similar verse : 258 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday HEAR ME TICK AT YOUR COMMAND AND MARK THE TIME WITH TRUTHFUL HAND BE THOU WISE AND LEARN OF ME TO SERVE THY GOD AS I SERVE THEE. Other everyday mottoes on sun-dials are : A CLOCK THE TIME MAY WRONGLY TELL; I, NEVER, IF THE SUN SHINE WELL. AS TIME AND HOURS DO PASS AWAY SO DOTH THE LIFE OF MAN DECAY. TIME'S GLASS AND SCYTHE THY LIFE AND DEATH DECLARE. SPEND WELL THY TIME AND FOR DEATH PREPARE. BE THE DAY WEARY, BE THE DAY LONG, SOON IT RINGS TO EVEN SONG. AS TIME DOTH HASTE, SO LIFE DOTH WASTE. LIGHT RULES ME THE SHADOW, THEE. A very numerous " cou- <^-t sinry" of mottoes is that which in Latin runs, Non Sun ~ dial at Barnciuith, Cadzow , . . Forest, Scotland. numero boras nisi serenas. This was said to be the favorite dial motto of Ten- nyson. In its various forms it is doubtless the most popular of all the sun-dial mottoes. In this modification it was chosen by Queen Alexandra for the sun-dial at Sandringham (see page 259), the Sun-dial Mottoes 259 home for so many years of Edward VII when Prince of Wales : - LET OTHERS TELL OF STORMS AND SHOWERS, I'LL ONLY COUNT YOUR SUNNY HOURS. LETOTHEBS TELLOF STOHMStSHOWER U.QNW CODMTYOUR SUNNY HOOFS Vertical Dial at Sandringham, England, residence of King Edward VII of England. 260 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday I COUNT THE BRIGHT HOURS ONLY was on Prince Albert Victor's dial. This was an octagonal pillar with several dials which stood in front of the Exhibition Buildings in Edinburgh in 1886. The Exhibition was opened by the prince and the dial named for him. Other mottoes were : AS A SERVANT EARNESTLY DESIRETH THE SHADOW. LIGHT IS THE SHADOW OF GOD. TIME AND TIDE TARRY FOR NO MAN. TIME IS THE CHRYSALIS OF ETERNITY. WELL ARRANGED TIME IS THE SUREST SIGN OF A WELL ARRANGED MIND. TIME AS HE PASSES US HAS A DOVE'S WING, UNSOILED AND SWIFT AND OF A SILKEN SOUND, TAKE TENT o' TIME ERE TIME BE TENT. On a fine dial in the Isle of Wight this reads : TAK TINT O' TIME ERE TIME TAK TINT o' THEE. To return to our motto-group. The form on the sun-dial at the fort at Delhi reads : I COUNT NONE BUT SUNNY HOURS. Others are : I COUNT THE SUNNY HOURS ; I MARK ONLY SUNNY HOURS; I MARK NONE BUT SUNNY HOURS; I NOTE THE BRIGHT HOURS OF DAY; I NUMBER NONE BUT SUNNY HOURS ; I ONLY MARK BRIGHT HOURS. Sun-dial Mottoes 261 On a slate-dial owned by the Duchess of Cleve- land, which was captured by the allied forces in 1854, is this motto : I MARK NOT THE HOURS UNLESS THEY BE BRIGHT, I MARK NOT THE HOURS OF DARKNESS AND NIGHT. MY PROMISE IS SOLELY TO FOLLOW THE SUN AND POINT OUT THE COURSE HIS CHARIOT DOTH RUN. A Latin variant is, Horas nullus nisi aureas I count none but golden hours. This is exquisitely delineated on a vertical dial de- signed and set by A. G. Hum- phrey, Esq., at C r o w b o rough Cross, Sussex, on a pole in his garden. The motto and nu- merals are in open iron work on a semi-transparent gilt ground, which shines out gloriously in the sunlight. Thus the motto has a double meaning. Another allied motto reads : THE HOURS, UNLESS THE HOURS BE BRIGHT, IT IS NOT MINE TO MARK; I AM THE PROPHET OF THE LIGHT, DUMB WHEN THE SUN IS DARK. Sun-dial at Edwin Forrest Home, now Mount St. Vincent Convent. 262 Sun-dials ,and Roses of Yesterday In an old album there is written this poem by Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, with a note The Lodge at Charlecote House, Stratford-on-Avon. saying that he saw the motto on a sun-dial at Worms : To A. G. E. Horas Non Numero Nisi Serenas. " The sun when it shines on a clear cloudless sky Marks the time on my disc in figures of light ; If clouds gather o'er me, unheeded they fly, I note not the hours except they be bright. " So when I review all the scenes that have past Between me and thee, be they dark, be they light, Sun-dial Mottoes 263 I forget what was dark, the light I hold fast, I note not the hours except they be bright.'' SAMUEL F. B. MORSE. WASHINGTON, March, 1845. A sun-dial motto may be simple in its wording and it must be lucid. Lucidity is often confounded with simplicity ; but the former is a quality of style, and the latter of thought. A straining after rhyme must not be permitted to make the thought of the motto obscure. For instance, this motto from Lucile is pretty, but it is not lucid ; in fact, it is not true : THE DIAL RECEIVES MANY SHADES, AND EACH POINTS TO THE SUN, THE SHADOWS ARE MANY, THE SUNLIGHT IS ONE. On the sun-dial of Thornby Church, North- amptonshire, are these serious lines : MARK WELL MY SHADE, AND SERIOUSLY ATTEND THE COMMON LESSON OF A SILENT FRIEND, FOR TIME AND LIFE SPEED RAPIDLY AWAY ; NEITHER CAN YOU RECALL THE FORMER DAY. YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO RECALL THE PAST, BUT LIVE THOU THIS DAY AS IF THE LAST. At Oxford there is a sun-dial bearing the arms of Thomas, Earl of Wharton, who was Lord-lieutenant of Oxfordshire from 1691 to 1702; it bears these clever lines : A MOMENT MARK HOW SMALL A SPACE THE DIAL SHOWS UPON THE FACE ; YET WASTE BUT ONE AND YOU WILL SEE OF HOW GREAT MOMENT IT CAN BE. 264 Sun-dial.s and Roses of Yesterday One of the most exquisite and perfect of all antique English sun-dials partakes of the lectern-shaped type. It is shown facing this page. This dial is at Moccas Court, Herefordshire, the seat of Rev. Sir George Cornewall, Barf. It has many fine mottoes; Sun-dial at Brockenhurst Park, Hants. in Latin is a verse of the Nineteenth Psalm, " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." Also in Latin is a text from Deuteronomy sixth, " Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." Other mottoes are : Instar globi stat machina mundi Like a ball stands the frame- Sun-dial at Moccas Court, Herefordshire. ' Sun-dial Mottoes 265 work of the world ; Si culpare velis, culpabilis esse cavebis. Nemo sine crimine vivit : idcirco ne temere judicto If thou wouldst blame, thou wilt beware of being blameworthy. No one lives without reproach, therefore judge not rashly ; Sol est lux et gloria mundi The sun is the light and glory of the world. There is also this quaint English verse : TYME PASSETH AND SPEAKETH NOT, DETH COMETH AND WARNETH NOT, AMENDE TODAY AND SLACK NOT, TOMORROW THYSELF CANNOT. This dial is thought to be of the time of Charles II. Mr. Evans has a very interesting Manx dial made of marble, which has several fine inscriptions. One is most quaint and old-fashioned, and is a favorite of mine : WHILST PHCEBUS ON ME SHINES, THEN VIEW MY SHADE AND LINES. There is a group of Latin mottoes which are often found : Sic transit hora Thus passes the hour ; Sic tempora labuntur Thus glides time ; Sic transit gloria mundi -Thus passes the glory of the world; Sic transimus omnes Thus pass we all; Sic transit bora Thus passes the hour; Sic vita So is life; Sic vita fugit Thus life flies ; Sic vita transit So life passes. With many variants these are seen on many English churches and houses, and on garden- dials in Scotland, England, France, Holland, and Italy. Sic transit glori mundi is upon a brass sun- dial at Matale, Ceylon, engraved in curious char- acters, the initials being shaped like animals. 266 Sun-diajs and Roses of Yesterday On the tower of Shillington Church, Bedford- shire, a clock and sun-dial were formerly found with two exceptionally happy mottoes. The sun-dial had this : Sine soleo sileo ; and the clock : Sine sole loquor. A sun-dial may speak in solemn voice and yet not be offensively despairing. I particularly dislike such mottoes as this on the dial at Brougham Hall, West- moreland : WRETCHED MAN REMEMBER THOU MUST DIE, SENCE ALL THINGS PASSE AND NOTHINGS CERTAIN BE. The date cut on this dial is 1660, and at that time and in that condition of English history there were many to whom thoughts of death and solemn warnings and dread of hell were as the breath of life. A skull and hour-glass further decorate this dial. Fortunately it bears on another face the beautiful and appropriate words, Tempus ut umbra preterit Time passes by as a shadow ; and also that dignified but most common of all dial mottoes, Ut hora sic vita Life is as an hour. 1 own a handsome brass sun-dial, about a foot in diameter which bears the date 1748, and these lines, evidently added at a later date : HASTE, TRAVELLER, ON THY WAY, THE SUN IS SINKING LOW. HE SHALL RETURN AGAIN, BUT NEVER THOU. This always seemed to me an ungracious and inhospitable answer to the chance passer-by, who sociably halted to learn the time o' the day ; but I Sun-dial Mottoes 267 find a similar sentiment conveyed in many dial mottoes, a request not to dawdle around, and likewise a solemn warning to lose no time thus, since the return of the sun might not bring back the day to the dial reader as to the dial. Vertical Sun-dial at Germantown, Pennsylvania. E. V. B. in her book A Garden of Pleasure tells of a beautiful motto of allied thought upon a dial in a Riviera garden : u Io vade e vengo ognl giorno fyta tu andrai senza ritorno" " I go and come every day, But thou shalt go without returning." 268 Sun-dials, and Roses of Yesterday A particularly fine motto is this : Transit umbra ; lux permanet The shadow passes ; light remains. Sun-dial at Canon's Ashby, Northamptonshire; Seat of Sir Henry Dryden, Bart. Its simplicity increases its force, and the sentiment is grateful to every one. Sun-dial Mottoes 269 WHEN THOU DOST LOOK UPON MY FACE, TO LEARN THE TIME OF DAY, THINK HOW MY SHADOW KEEPS ITS PACE, AS THY LIFE FLIES AWAY. TAKE, MORTAL, THIS ADVICE FROM ME, AND SO RESOLVE TO SPEND THY LIFE ON EARTH, THAT HEAVEN SHALL BE THY HOME, WHEN TIME SHALL END. This was taken from the sun-dial on or near Dromore Castle, County Kerry, Ireland ; its date is 1871. A severe motto reads : I NOTE THE TIME THAT YOU WASTE. A very spirited motto is in Latin : Horam sole nolente nego I tell not the hour when the sun will not. In the Ulster Journal of Archeology for Octo- ber, 1901, is a fine description of an interest- ing old sun-dial from the parish church at Bangor. It is of slate, elaborately carved on both sides, and was set in a sloping position with the outside circu- lar edge tending upward. It has several curious inscriptions, one being the old almanac rhyme, THIRTIE DAYES HATH SEPTEMBER, APRIL, JUNE, AND NOVEMBER ; FEBRUARIE HATH 28 ALONE, AND ALL THE REST 30 AND ONE. 1630. DEC. On page 250 is an old sun-dial which now stands in the garden of the Logan Mansion, Stenton, the 270 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday house now occupied by the Society of Colonial Dames. The dial was given to the Society by Hor- ace J. Smith, Esq., of Germantown, one of the few descendants of the Logan family. On one side are the incised words, WE MUST (scil dial, i.e., die-all). This clumsy joke is common on English dials. It appears under a mural sun-dial in the engraving of Hogarth's picture of Chairing the Member. The painting had the fine motto, Pulvis et umbra sumus We are dust and shadows; well suited to the skull and cross-bones accompanying it. But the engraver evidently thought himself a better humorist than the painter, and replaced the Latin motto with WE MUST . The joke is older than Hogarth. The Horologiograpbia Op tic a by one Morgan, published in 1652, ends with it. On a church dial is this verse : LIFE'S BUT A SHADOW, MAN'S BUT DUST; THIS DIALL SAYS DY ALL WE MUST. There is a very quaint variant of this motto on a farm-house dial at Millrigy, near Penroth, in the form of a dialogue between the Sun-dial and the Passer-by : Dldl. STAIE PASSINGER. TELL ME MY NAME, THY -NATURE. Pass. THY NAME IS DIE ALL. I AM A MORTALL CREATURE. Sun-dial at Ivy Lodge, Germamown. Pennsylvania; Seat of Horace Jay Smith, Esq. Sun-dial Mottoes 271 Dtall. SINCE MY NAME AND THY NATURE SOE AGREE, THINK ON THYSELF WHEN THOU LOOKEST UPON ME. Another beautiful dial, with musing figure point- ing to the dial-face, is at Ivy Lodge, the home of Horace J. Smith, Esq., Germantown, Pennsylvania. It is shown facing page 270. On French dials there is a jocose motto which is not uncommon. A cock is painted on the dial-face and the words, Je chanter ai quand tu sonneras ; or, Lorsque tu sonneras je chante. This is, of course, the challenge of the silent cock to the silent dial. At Linburn, Midlothian, Scotland, Ebenezer Er- skine Scott, Esq., erected two very fine modern dials. One, shown facing page 172, is an obelisk-shaped dial of good proportions. The other, facing page 274, is a facet-headed dial of great beauty. Both are set on octagonal raised steps. The latter dial is nine feet in height, and was designed by Thomas Ross, Esq., F.S.A. On the upper step is engraved verse 3 of Psalm cxiii., " From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised." On the lower steps are graceful verses which have a curious story ; they run thus : AMIDDST YE FLOWRES I TELL YE HOWRES. TIME WANES AW AYE AS FLOWRES DECAYE. 272 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday BEYOND YE TOMBE FFRESHE FFLOWERETS BLOOME. SOE MAN SHALL RYSE ABOVE YE SKYES. These mottoes were written by Rev. Greville J. Chester, and appear in his novel Aurelia^ in his de- scription of the bishop's garden, with " a double Sun-dial in Mrs, Bell's. Garden, Cheshire, England. Sun-dial Mottoes 273 row of Hollyhock, spires of flame and rose-color, and white and crimson ; and bunches of Golden Aaron's Rod, and Canterbury Bells, and Bee Lark- spur, and Prince's Feathers ; and later on in the year tufts of purple golden-eyed Michaelmas Daisies : and at the end of all, upon a lump of turf, stood a gray time-tinged sun-dial, inscribed on its four sides with the quaint distiches devised by Bishop Edmund Redyngton, who set it up A.D. 1665." So vivid was this description that many read- ers placed implicit confidence in the reality of the old sun-dial and its ancient verses, and the lines have been copied on others than the Linburn dial. There are two old sun-dials in California. One is in the ancient Mission of San Juan Bautista, San Benito County ; it was brought by pious padres from Spain in 1794, and is the official clock of the Mission. The other was set up at Mare Island in 1854 by Admiral Farragut. Its motto runs, Como la sombra huye la hora Like the shadow flies the hour. Many English poets have had the writing of dial mottoes, and many verses of English poetry have served as mottoes. Dr. Watts wrote a characteris- tically gloomy verse for Lady Almy at Newington in 1735: SO ROLLS THE SUN, SO WEARS THE DAY AND MEASURES OUT LIFE'S PAINFUL WAY ; THROUGH SHIFTING SCENES OF SHADE AND LIGHT TO ENDLESS DAY OR ENDLESS NIGHT. T 274 Sun-dials .and Roses of Yesterday A favorite verse of mine was written by Walter Savage Landor, but I do not know whether it has ever been used on a dial. IN HIS OWN IMAGE THE CREATOR MADE HIS OWN PURE SUNBEAM OJJICKENED THEE O MAN! THOU BREATHING DIAL ! SINCE THY NAME BEGAN THE PRESENT HOUR WAS EVER MARKED BY SHADE. I wonder whether Chaucer's lines have been set on a dial : " For tho' we sleep, or wake, or rome, or ride, Ay fleeth the time, it will no man abide." or Spenser's fine line : " None can call again the passed time." Another line which suggests itself as appropriate for a sun-dial is Tennyson's line in The Ancient Sage : " Make the passing shadow serve thy will." How exquisite are the lines of the " Prince of Poets/' Ronsard : " Le temps s 1 'en va, le temps s' en va y madame ! Las ! le temps non : mats nous nous en allons. ' ' Austin Dobson thus renders them : " Time goes, you say ? Ah, no ! Alas, Time stays, we go ! " Hudibras furnishes this couplet for several Eng- lish dials : Facet-headed Garden-dial at Linburn, Midlothian, Scotland. Sun-dial Mottoes 275 AS TRUE AS THE DIAL TO THE SUN ALTHOUGH IT BE NOT SHONE UPON. And Addison's Paraphrase of the Nineteenth Psalm gives these two lines : THOU ART, O LORD, THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF ALL THIS WONDROUS WORLD WE SEE. From Shake- speare's seventy- seventh Sonnet are these lines : THOU BY THE DIAL'S SHADY STEALTH MAY KNOW TIME'S THIEVISH PROG- RESS TO ETERNITY. Quarles's Emblems furnish several whin- ing verses for mot- toes. Emblem Number 13, Book III, is a sun-dial. The Bible verse is from Job: "Are not my days few? Cease then and let me alone, that I may bewail myself a little." These lines are his verses and are printed on an English dial : READ ON THIS DIAL HOW THE SHADES DEVOUR MY SHORT-LIVED WINTER'S DAY. HOUR EATS UP HOUR ALAS ! THE TOTAL'S BUT FROM EIGHT TO FOUR. Sun-dial at Bramhall, Cheshire. 276 Sun-dials and Rpses of Yesterday Another stanza has also been used : NOR DO I BEG THIS SLENDER NICHE, TO WHILE MY TIME AWAY, OR SAFELY TO BEGUILE MY THOUGHTS WITH JOY THERE'S NOTHING WORTH SMILE. TIME FLIES. LINES RISE AND SHADOWS FALL LET IT PASS BY LOVE REIGNS FOREVER OVER ALL. These lines are on a sun- dial owned by Lord Ronald Gower ; they are the English rendering of the Latin verses which are on the dial at Old Place, Lindfield, Sussex, see page facing 226. Far more beautiful are the lines by Dr. Henry Van Dyke given on page 223. Mr. Evans gives me a group of sun-dial mottoes which are not published in Mrs. Gatty's book, nor in its latest edition by Mrs. Eden. I cannot give them all in full. Amour pour Amour, on an ivory porta- ble quadrant dial, French, in Mr. Evans's collection. Dial in Rose Garden at Broughton Castle. AS THE SUN RUNS SO DEATH COMES, Sun-dial Mottoes 277 on a horizontal dial made by "Adam Stear, 1660," belonging now to Rev. G. W. W. Minnes, The Cliff, Weston, Southampton. Curriculum meum per- ficiam donee advenerint dominus i WILL RUN MY COURSE UNTIL THE LORD SHALL COME, on a German dial of gilt-brass resembling an astrolabe, sixteenth century. Justum et not copy the recipes for potpourri since they are so well known, but here are some recipes which are not so familiar to us : u To make Conserve of Roses boyld. Take a quart of Red Rose Water, a quart of fair water, boyl in the water a pound of red Rose leaves, the whites cut off. The leaves must be boyld very tender, then take three pound of Sugar, and put to it, a pound at a time, and let it boyl a little between every pound, and so put it up in your pots." " To make Lozenges of Red Roses. Boyl your Sugar to sugar again, then put in your red Roses, being finely beaten and mayd moist with the juice of a Lemon. Let it not boyl after the Roses are in, but pour it upon a Pye plate and cut it into what form you please." The Form of Cury was a roll of English cookery compiled about the year 1390 by the master-cooks of King Richard II. He had in all two thousand cooks. It was a vellum roll containing one hundred and ninety-six recipes, and was presented to Queen Elizabeth as a great curiosity. A few other con- temporary collections of cooking recipes exist, and these were all privately printed in 1791 in a large book which is now very rare. A vast discretion had to be employed by one who followed these recipes. The amounts were seldom given, even of powerful flavorings and ingredients ; " according to taste " was the universal rule. The extreme of vagueness of time-durations in cooking from those old recipes was reached in one given by one ancient Henslow, " Let it seethe the spaces of a mile or more," that is, while you could Rosa Soils, Rose Plate, and Rosee 313 walk a mile, which meant about twenty minutes. " Seethe it a walm or two " was also far from definite. Roses, and especially Rose-hips, were of much value to those two thousand royal cooks. Here are two of the Rose recipes from the Form of Cury. "Rosee (from white Roses). " Take thyk Rose mylk as to fore welled [before willed] . Cast thereto sugar, a goode porcion pynes [mulberries]. Dates, ymynced canell [cinnamon] and powder gynger, and seethe [boil] it and messe it forth. If thou wilt, in stede of almand mylke take swete cremes of kyne." " Sawce Sarzyne (Saracen sauce). "Take heppes [hips] and make hem clene. Take almands blanched. Frye hem in oil and bray hem in a mortar, with heppes. Draw it up with red wyne, and do therein sugar ynowhg [enough] with powdor-fort [powder of hot spices as pepper, ginger, etc.]. Let it be stondyng [stiff] and alay [mix] it with floer of rys, and color it with alkanet, and messe it forth ; and flourish with pomegarnet [pomegranate] . If thou wilt in flesch day seeth capons, and take the brawn, and tese him smal, and do thereto, and make a lico [liquor] of this broth." We learn many things besides recipes from these old books, among them most ingenious modes of misspelling. But I really believe that ynowhg for enough is the veriest height of cacography. When I was a child we always nibbled the hips of Wild Roses and of Eglantine, but had a firm notion that other Rose-hips were poisonous. We called the young shoots of the Wild Rose " Briar- 314 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday Rose Arches at Twin Oaks, near Washington, D.C. candy." I find they were really candied by house- wives two hundred years ago. Rose-hips have been entirely neglected for many Rosa Solis, Rose Plate, and Rosee 315 years as a product for conserves, sweetmeats, etc. I know but one person who gathers them for that purpose, and that is the Irish wife of a German farmer in Old Narragansett. She cooks both Rose- hips and Mushrooms, to the distinctly expressed scorn of many of her American neighbors. From her husband she learned to make the German com- pote called Hagenmark. This seems to preserve 'the very being of the Wild Rose in its lovely glow- ing color. When sold in great pails *in chill November in the German market-places, the vivid red tempers the frosty air. Siebold says that the Rosa rugosa has been culti- vated in China for over a thousand years, and that the ladies of the Chinese court have ever made a delightful potpourri by mixing hips and leaves with musk and camphor. Here is a recipe for a tart, from a seventeenth century cook-book, entitled The Accomplish! Cook. " To make a Tart of Hips. " Take Hips, cut them and take out the seeds very clean, then wash them, season with sugar, cinnamon and ginger. Close the tart, bake it, ice it, sprinkle sugar, and serve it in." Pastes of various flowers were made boiled down with Rose-water. Jemelloes were made of sugar, caraways, and Rose-water ; these were excellent for "banqueting." "Sugar plate" was similar, save that " gum-dragon " was added. Rose plate was nearly the same thing. Muskechives or Kissing Comfits were made of sugar, " gum-dragon, musk, 316 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday , -** civet, orris powder and Rose-water," and were " cut into lozenges with your iging-iron." Macaroons were of almond flour flavored with Rose-water. Italian chips were made of flowers of various colors, chiefly Roses. Gingerbread was flavored with Rose- water and gilded, and was deemed a great elegance. A curious sort of potted Roses was made by the cook of the king of Sicily, and is thus described : "This is what I call Potted Roses, and it is thus pre- pared : I 'first pound some of the most fragrant Roses in a mortar ; then I take the brains of birds and pigs well boiled, and stripped of every particle of meat. I then add the yolks of some eggs, some oil, a little cordial, some pepper and some wine : after having beaten and mixed it well together I throw it in a new pot and place it over a slow but steady fire." The chronicler adds that when the pot was un- covered the most delicious fragrance issued forth, overcoming the guests with delight. We have seen that Wine Rosat was known in ancient Rome, and there was a smooth and oily but potent drink of Elizabethan days known by the pretty name of Rosa Solis, strong with aqua vit