(Vol. iv., p. 471., &c.)
Perhaps the following will be of use to your correspondent HERMES (Vol.
iv., p. 471.), referring to dials which I take to mean sun-dials.
Lately there was rather an interesting object of that kind to be seen
upon the south wall of Glasgow Cathedral, with this motto or
inscription:--
"Our life's a flying shadow, God's the pole,
The index pointing at Him is our soul;
Death the horizon, when our sun is set,
Which will through Christ a resurrection get."
That the above cannot now be classed among _living_ inscriptions is
entirely to be ascribed to the zeal for clean walls exhibited by Her
Majesty's Commissioners of Woods and Forests, under whose auspices the
renovation of our cathedral has been accomplished. I regret to mention
some other memorials have also disappeared, long familiar to the eye of
the antiquary--not granting but that these gentlemen have a power to do
what they please; however, _en passant_, we would entreat, if they can,
to lay on their hands as charily as possible when such innocent matters
come in their way. Though the following well-known lines--
"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust inclosed here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones"--
be not literally applicable in the present case, they breathe such a
spirit as would almost make any one "nervous" in tampering with revered
and time-honoured relics nearly become sacred.
Glasgow does not appear at all rich in dial erections; the only one I
know of is in our old street the Gallowgate (or _Gallow's Gate_; as you
would say, _the road to Tyburn_), on the south front of a tenement, with
no motto, but date 1708. Our long fame for numerous public clocks and
excellent bells, according to the ancient adage--
"_Glasgow for bells_,
Linlithgow for wells,
Falkirk for beans and pease,
Edinburgh for wh----s and thieves,"
together with our frequent wet murky atmosphere, may all have
contributed to the unfavourableness of endeavouring to mark the flight
of Time through the medium of the solar rays.
The cities and villages under the sunny skies of southern climates, and
where also appears a better taste generally than with us for
inscriptions on public and private monuments, would, I think, be the
richest field for HERMES to explore. I speak from some little
observation in a tour of France and Italy, &c., in the year 1846.
Sun-dials were to me objects of curiosity, but not of that importance as
to be engrossing. On a loose memorandum I have the two following mottoes
which particularly struck me, but have not preserved a note of the
places, that I think lay on the route from Florence to Bologna:--
(Latin Englished) "This dial indicates every hour to man but his
last."
"Se il Sol benigno, mi concede il raggio,
L'ora ti mostra, è il ciel ti dia buon viaggio."
On a building near the Cathedral of Geneva, there is rather a novel and
curious example of the sun-dial, in a perpendicular line bisected on
each side by two curves, the curve on the one side _black_, the other
_gilded_, with the following:--
"Fait en 1778--Restauré en 1824,
La Courbe noire Indique le Midi du 21 Juin au 21 Décembre,
et la
Courbe dorée du 21 Décembre au 21 Juin."
Meridian lines, though not, properly speaking, coming under the order of
sun-dials, may be reckoned so far cognate; fine specimens of these may
be seen in the cathedrals of Milan, Bologna, &c.
Public clocks occasionally become objects of considerable interest, as
at Berne, &c., not to mention the _monster_ of Strasbourg, which all the
world has heard of.
Quaint allegorising on such subjects as the foregoing, as presenting
different stages in the life of man and the fleeting nature of times and
things, were not unusual among our old Scotch divines, as in the
subsequent quotation from _The Last Battell of the Soule in Death_, by
Mr. Zachary Boyd, Glasgow, 1629:--
"Men's dayes are distributed vnto them like _houres_ upon the
_Horologe_: some must liue but till _one_; another vnto _two_;
another vnto _three_. The _Palme_ turneth about, and with its
finger pointeth at the _houre_. So soone as man's appointed
_houre_ is come, whether it bee the _first_, _second_, or _third_,
there is no more biding (abiding) for him. _Nec prece nec precio_,
neither by _pryce_ nor _prayer_ can Death be moued to spare him
but an _houre_; no, not, As the sound of the _clocke bell_
ringing, his last _houre_ passeth away with all speede, and
turneth not againe, so must the poor man at death packe him out of
sight, and no more be seene upon the _land of the living_."