Sun-dials are little regarded but as curiosities in these days; although
the science of constructing Sun-dials, under the name of Gnomonics, was,
up to a comparatively recent period, part of a mathematical course. As
long as watches were scarce, and clocks not very common, the dial was an
actual time-keeper. Of the mathematical works of the seventeenth century
which are found on book-stalls, none are so common as those on Dialling.
Each of the old dials usually had its monitory inscription; and although
the former have mostly disappeared, the mottoes have been preserved, so
that all their good is not lost.
The stately city of Oxford, which Waagen declared it was worth a special
journey from Germany to see, has, upon its churches and colleges, and in
their lovely gardens, several dials. Christopher Wren, when a boy of
fifteen at Wadham College, designed on the ceiling of a room a
reflecting dial, embellished with various devices and two figures,
Astronomy and Geometry, with accessories, tastefully drawn with a pen,
and bearing a Latin inscription; but his more elaborate work is the
large and costly dial which he erected at All Souls’ College, of which
he was a Fellow.
The Rev. W. Lisle Bowles was a sincere respecter of dials. In the garden
of his parsonage at Bremhill he placed a Sun-dial—a small antique
twisted column, gray with age, and believed to have been the dial of the
abbot of Malmesbury, and counted his hours at the adjoining lodge; for
it was taken from the garden of the farmhouse, which had originally been
the summer retirement of this mitred lord: it is of monastic character,
but a more ornate capital has been added, which bears the date of 1688;
it has the following inscription by the venerable Canon:
To count the brief and unreturning hours,
This Sun-dial was placed among the flowers,
Which came forth in their beauty—smiled and died,
Blooming and withering round its ancient side.
Mortal, thy day is passing—see that Flower,
And think upon the Shadow and the Hour.
From beneath a venerable yew, which has seen the persecution of the
loyal English clergy, you look into the adjoining churchyard of
Bremhill, on an old Sun-dial, once a cross. Bowles tells us: “The
_cross_ was found broken at its foot, probably by the country
iconoclasts of the day. I have brought the interesting fragment again
into light, and placed it conspicuously opposite to an old Scotch fir in
the churchyard, which I think it not unlikely was planted by Townson on
his restoration. The accumulation of the soil of centuries had covered
an ascent of four steps at the bottom of this record of silent hours.
These steps have been worn in places, from the act of frequent
prostration or kneeling by the forefathers of the hamlet, perhaps before
the church existed.” Upon this old dial Bowles wrote one of his most
touching poems, of which these are the opening verses:
So passes silent o’er the dead thy shade,
Brief Time! and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer-vapour steal away.
And have not they, who here forgotten lie
(Say, hoary chronicler of ages past),
Once more the shadow with delighted eye,
Nor thought it fled,—how certain and how fast?
Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept,
Noting each hour, o’er mould’ring stones beneath,
The Pastor and his flock alike have slept,
And “dust to dust” proclaim’d the stride of death.
Any thing that reminds us of the lapse of time should remind us also of
the right employment of time in doing whatever business is required to
be done.
A similar lesson is solemnly conveyed in the Scripture motto to a
Sun-dial: “The night cometh, when no man can work.” Another solemn
injunction is conveyed in the motto to a Sun-dial erected by Bishop
Copleston in a village near which he resided: “Let not the sun go down
upon your wrath” (_Ephesians_ iv. 26).
A more subtle motto is, “Septem sine horis;” signifying that there are
in the longest day seven hours (and a trifle over) during which the
Sun-dial is useless.
Upon the public buildings and in the pleasure-grounds of Old London the
Sun-dial was placed as a silent monitor to those who were sailing on the
busy stream of time through its crowded haunts and thoroughfares, or
seeking meditation in quiet nooks and plaisances of its river mansions
and garden-houses. Upon churches the dial commonly preceded the clock:
Wren especially introduced the dial in his churches.
Sovereigns and statesmen may have reflected beside the palace-dials upon
the fleetingness of life, and thus have learned to take better note of
time. Whitehall was famous for its Sun-dials. In Privy Garden was a dial
set up by Edward Gunter, professor of astronomy at Gresham College (and
of which he published a description), by command of James I., in 1624. A
large stone pedestal bore four dials at the four corners, and “the great
horizontal concave” in the centre; besides east, west, north, and south
dials at the sides. In the reign of Charles II. this dial was defaced by
an intoxicated nobleman of the Court; upon which Marvell wrote:
This place for a dial was too unsecure,
Since a guard and a garden could not defend;
For so near to the Court they will never endure
Any witness to show how their time they misspend.
In the court-yard facing the Banqueting-house was another curious dial,
set up in 1669 by order of Charles II. It was invented by one Francis
Hall, _alias_ Lyne, a Jesuit, and professor of mathematics at Liège.
This dial consisted of five stages rising in a pyramidal form, and
bearing several vertical and reclining dials, globes cut into planes,
and glass bowls; showing, “besides the houres of all kinds,” “many
things also belonging to geography, astrology, and astronomy, by the
sun’s shadow made visible to the eye.” Among the pictures were portraits
of the king, the two queens, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert. Father
Lyne published a description of this dial, which consists of
seventy-three parts: it is illustrated with seventeen plates: the
details are condensed in No. 400 of the _Mirror_. About 1710, William
Allingham, a mathematician in Canon-row, asked 500_l._ to repair this
dial: it was last seen by Vertue, the artist and antiquary, at
Buckingham House.
The bricky towers of St. James’s palace had their Sun-dials; and in the
gardens of Kensington palace and Hampton Court palace are to this day
superb dials.
Upon a house-front in the Terrace, New Palace Yard, Westminster, is a
Sun-dial, having the motto from Virgil, “Discite justitiam, moniti,”
which had probably been inscribed upon the old clock-tower of the
palace, in reference to its having been built with a fine that had been
levied on the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for altering a record.
The Inns of Court, where time runs its golden sand, have retained a few
of their Sun-dials. In Lincoln’s Inn, on two of the old gables, are: 1.
A southern dial, restored in 1840, which shows the hours by its gnomon,
from 6 A.M. to 4 P.M., and is inscribed, “Ex hoc monumento pendet
æternitas.” 2. A western dial, restored in 1794 and 1848, from the
different situation of its plane, only shows the hours from noon till
night: inscription, “Quam redit nescitis horam.” And in Serle’s-court
(now New-square), on the west side, was a dial inscribed, “Publica
privatis secernite, sacra prophanis.”
Gray’s Inn has lost its Sun-dials: but in the gardens was a dial,
opposite Verulam Buildings, not far from Bacon’s summer-house; and the
turret of the great Hall had formerly a southern declining dial, with
this motto, “Lux diei, lex Dei.”
Furnival’s Inn had its garden and dial, which disappeared when the old
Inn buildings were taken down in 1818, and the Inn rebuilt.
Staple Inn had upon its Hall a well-kept dial, above a luxuriant
fig-tree.
Clement’s Inn had, in its small garden, a kneeling figure supporting a
dial,—one of the leaden garden embellishments common in the last
century. In New Inn, adjoining, the Hall has a large vertical Sun-dial,
motto: “Time and Tide tarry for no man.”
Lyon’s Inn, which had been an Inn “since 1420, or sooner,” had, in 1828,
an old Sun-dial, which had lost its gnomon and most of its figures.
The Temple garden, Inner and Middle, has each a large pillar Sun-dial;
the latter very handsome. There are vertical dials in various courts;
but the old dial of Inner Temple terrace, with its “Begone about your
business,”—in reality the reply of a testy bencher to the painter who
teased him for an inscription,—disappeared in the year 1828. There
remain three dials with mottoes: Temple-lane, “Pereunt et imputantur;”
Essex-court, “Vestigia nulla retrorsum;” Brick-court, “Time and tide
tarry for no man;” and in Pump-court and Garden-court are two dials
without mottoes. Charles Lamb has this charmingly reflective passage,
suggested by the Temple dials:
What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their
moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they
measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately
from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! How
could the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of
childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an
evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep!
And yet doth beauty like a dial-hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived!
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of
lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication,
compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent
heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of
Christian gardens. Why is it almost every where vanished? If its
business be superseded 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 sunset, 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 measure 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 ‘carved it out
quaintly in the sun,’ and, turning philosopher by the very
occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones.
It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in
the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and
flowers:
How well the skilful gardener drew,
Of herbs and flowers, this dial new!
Where from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon’d, but with herbs and flowers?
_From “The Garden.”_
Another noted dial gave name to a locality of the metropolis, which has
known many mutations, viz. Seven Dials, built in the time of Charles II.
for wealthy tenants. Evelyn notes, 1694: “I went to see the building
near St. Giles’s, where Seven Dials make a star from a Doric pillar
placed in the middle of a circular area, said to be by Mr. Neale (the
introducer of the late lotteries), in imitation of Venice, now set up
here for himself twice, and once for the state.”
Where famed St. Giles’s ancient limits spread,
An in-rail’d column rears its lofty head:
Here to seven streets seven dials count their day,
And from each other catch the circling ray:
Here oft the peasant, with inquiring face,
Bewilder’d trudges on from place to place;
He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze,
Enters the narrow alleys’ doubtful maze,
Tries every winding court and street in vain,
And doubles o’er his weary steps again.
Gay’s _Trivia_, book ii.
The seven streets were Great and Little Earl, Great and Little White
Lion, Great and Little St. Andrew’s, and Queen; though the dial-stone
had but six faces, two of the streets opening into one angle. The column
and dials were removed in June 1773, to search for a treasure said to be
concealed beneath the base. They were never replaced; but in 1822 were
purchased of a stone-mason, and the column was surmounted with a ducal
coronet, and set up on Weybridge Green as a memorial to the late Duchess
of York, who died at Oatlands in 1820. The dial-stone is now a
stepping-stone at the adjoining Ship inn.[8]
The Sun-dial was also formerly used with a compass. The Hon. Robert
Boyle relates, “that a Boatman one day took out of his pocket a little
Sun-dial, furnished with an excited needle to direct how to set it, such
dials being used among mariners, not only to show them the hour of the
day, but to inform them from what quarter the wind blows.”
A Cape Town Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ describes a Sun-dial
and compass in his possession, made by “Johann Willebrand, in Augsburg,
1848:” it has a curious perpetual calendar attached, and is of highly
finished work in silver, parcel-gilt. Another Sun-dial and compass is
mentioned as made by Butterfield, at Paris: it is small, of silver, and
horizontal; upon its face are engraved dials for several latitudes, and
at the back a table of principal cities; it is set by a compass, and the
gnomon adjusted by a divided arc. The N. point of the compass-box is
_fixed_ in a position to allow for variation, probably at Paris; and,
judging from this, it would appear to have been made about 1716.[9]
We should also notice the pocket ring-dial, such as that which gave
occasion to the Fool in the Forest of Arden to “moral on the time:”
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says, very wisely, “It is ten o’clock.”
This is a ring of brass, much like a miniature dog-collar, and has,
moving in a groove in its circumference, a narrower ring with a boss,
pierced by a small hole to admit a ray of light. The latter ring is made
movable, to allow for the varying declination of the sun in the several
months of the year, and the initials of these are marked in the
ascending and descending scale on the larger ring, which bears also the
motto:
Set me right, and use me well,
And I y^e time to you will tell.
The hours are lined and numbered on the opposite concavity. When the
boss of the sliding ring is set, and the ring is suspended by the ring
directly towards the sun, a ray of light passing through the hole in the
boss impinges on the concave surface, and the hour is told with fair
accuracy. Mr. Thomas Q. Couch, of Bodmin, thus describes this Dial in
_Notes and Queries_, 3d series, No. 36. Mr. Charles Knight, in his
_Pictorial Shakspeare_, has engraved a dial of this kind, as an
illustration of _As you like it_.
Mr. Redmond, of Liverpool, describes the old pocket ring-dial as common
in the county of Wexford some twenty-five years ago: there was hardly a
farm-house where one could not be had. The same Correspondent of _Notes
and Queries_, 3d series, No. 39, describes a door-sill marked with the
hour for every day in the year: the sill had a full southern aspect, so
that when the sun shone, the time could be read as correctly as by any
watch.
Another Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 38, has an
ingenious pocket-dial, sold by one T. Clarke: it is merely a card, with
a small plummet hanging by a thread, and a gnomon, which lies flat on
the card, but, when lifted up, casts the shadow to indicate the hour of
the day, and also the hours of sunrise and sunset.
In the United Service Museum, Whitehall, is a Sun-dial, with a
burning-glass arranged to fire a small gun at noon; also a large
Universal Dial, with a circle showing minutes; and another large
Universal Dial, with horizontal plate and spirit-level.
Suppose we collect a few of the monitory inscriptions on dials in
various places. Hazlitt, in a graceful paper “On a Sun-dial,” tells us
that