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.* 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, 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, 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 twentyfive 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 * N. T. Heineken; Notes and Queries, 3d series. 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 Sundial, with a burning-glass arranged to fire a small gun at noon; also a large Universal Dial, with a circle showing minutes; and another large Universal Dial, with horizontal plate and spirit-level. Suppose we collect a few of the monitory inscriptions on dials in various places. Hazlitt, in a graceful paper "On a Sun-dial," tells us that Horas non numero nisi serenas is the motto of a Sun-dial near Venice; and the same line is painted in huge letters over the Sun-dial in front of an old farmhouse near Farnworth, in Lancashire. At Habden Bridge, in Yorkshire, is this quaint motto: Quod petis, umbra est. Canon Bowles, in his love of the solemn subject, prescribed the following, with paraphrastic translations: Morning Sun.-Tempus volat. Oh! early passenger, look up-be wise, And think how, night and day, time onward flies. Haste, traveller, the sun is sinking now: Over the Sun-dial on an old house in Rye : Underneath it: Tempus edax rerum.* That solar shadow, As it measures life, it life resembles too. In Brading churchyard, Isle of Wight, on a Sun-dial fixed to what appears originally to have been part of a churchyard cross, is the motto: Hora pars vitæ. Near the porch of Milton church, Berks, is : Our Life's a flying Shadow; God's the Pole, The Index, pointing at him, is our Soul, Which will, through Christ, a Resurrection get. • We remember this motto for many years beneath a large figure of Time, executed in Coade and Seeley's composition, and placed at the corner of the lane leading from Westminster Bridge Road to Pedlar's Acre. The Great Pyramid a Sun-dial. Butler has this couplet : True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shin'd upon. Hudibras, part iii. canto 2. 25 Upon this Dr. Nash notes: " As the dial is invariable, and always open to the sun whenever its rays can show the time of day, though the weather is often cloudy, and obscures its lustre: so true loyalty is always ready to serve its king and country, though it often suffers great afflictions and distresses." There cannot be a more faithful indicator, according to Barton Booth's song: True as the needle to the pole, Or as the dial to the sun. 46 After all, the sun-dial is but an occasional timekeeper; a defect which the pious Bishop Hall ingeniously illustrates in the following beautiful Meditation On the Sight of a Dial:" If the sun did not shine upon this dial, nobody would look at it in a cloudy day it stands like an useless post, unheeded, unregarded; but, when once those beams break forth, every passenger runs to it, and gazes on it. "O God, while thou hidest thy countenance from me, methinks all thy creatures pass by me with a willing neglect. Indeed, what am I without thee? And if thou have drawn in me some lines and notes of able endowments; yet, if I be not actuated by thy grace, all is, in respect of use, no better than nothing; but when thou renewest the light of thy loving countenance upon me, I find a sensible and happy change of condition: methinks all things look upon me with such cheer and observance, as if they meant to make good that word of thine, Those that honour me, I will honour: now, every line and figure, which it hath pleased thee to work in me, serve for useful and profitable direction. O Lord, all the glory is thine. Give thou me light: I will give others information: both of us shall give thee praise." The Pyramids of Egypt, the most ancient and the most colossal structures on the earth,-the purpose and appropriation of which has been much controverted by antiquaries and men of science,-have been considered by some to have served as Sun-dials. Sir Gardner Wilkinson does not pretend to explain the real object for which these stupendous monuments were constructed, but feels persuaded that they have served for tombs, and have also been intended for astronomical purposes. "The form of the exterior might lead to many useful calculations. They stand exactly due north and south; and while the direction of the faces to the east and west might serve to fix the return of a certain period of the year, the shadow cast by the sun, or the time of its coinciding with their slope, might be observed for a similar purpose." There is an interesting association of the Great Pyramid with the ambitious dream of one of the world's celebrities, which may be noticed here. When Napoleon I. was in Egypt, in 1799, he rode on a camel to the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, that relic of mystic grandeur. Karl Girardet has painted this impressive visit; and the picture has been engraved by Gautier, and inscribed, "Forty Centuries look down upon him.” Charles Mackay has written a graceful poem as a pendent to this print; in which the poet makes the young Napoleon thus invoke the colossal monuments: Ye haughty Pyramids ! Thou Sphinx, whose eyeless lids On my presumptuous youth seem bent in scorn! Coeval with the flood, Of all earth's monuments the earliest born, And I so mean and small, With armies at my call, Am recent in thy sight as grass of yestermorn! Yet in this soul of mine Is strength as great as thine, O dull-eyed Sphinx that wouldst despise me now; Is grandeur like thine own, O melancholy stone, With forty centuries furrow'd on thy brow; Deep in my heart I feel What time shall yet reveal, That I shall tower o'er men, as o'er these deserts thou. The dreamer of empire proceeds, bespeaking: Nations yet to be, Surging from Time's deep sea, Shall teach their babes the name of great Napoleon. But hear the reply of the decaying oracle: The Hour-glass. Over the mighty chief There came a shadow of grief. The lips gigantic seemed to move and say, Arise yon Pyramid? Know'st thou who placed me where I stand to-day? Strewn on the heedless land: Think, little mortal, think, and pass upon thy way! Pass, little mortal, pass! The autumn sickle shall destroy thy prime. Which ne'er before they heard, The name of glory, fearful yet sublime. Their works confess them not: Pass, hero! pass,-poor straw upon the gulf of Time !" 27 It will be remembered how Napoleon's disastrous Egyptian campaign ended; and how he secretly embarked for France, and read during his passage both the Bible and the Koran with great assiduity. Among the interesting memorials of Mary Queen of Scots at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, there remains the Sun-dial placed in the centre of the palace-garden, and usually denominated "Queen Mary's Dial." It is the apex of a richly-ornamented pedestal, which rests upon a hexagonal base, consisting of three steps. The form of the 'horologe' is multangular; for though its principal sections are pentagonal, yet from their terminating in pyramidal points, and being diametrically opposed to each other, again connected by triangular interspaces, it presents no fewer than twenty sides, on which are placed twenty-two dials, inserted into circular, semicircular, and triangular cavities. Between the dials are the royal arms of Scotland, with the initials M. R., St. Andrew, St. George, fleurs-de-lis, and other emblems. This memorial carries us back nearly three centuries, when Holyrood was a palace Where "Mary of Scotland" kept her court. THE HOUR-GLASS. The use of the Hour-glass can be traced to ancient Greece. In Christie's Greek Vases, one is engraved from a scarabæus of sardonyx, in the Towneley collection: it is exactly like the modern hour-glass. The first mention of it occurs in a Greek tragedian named Bato. On a bas-relief of the Mattei Palace, of the marriage of Thetis and Peleus, Morpheus holds an hour-glass; and from Athenæus it appears that persons, when going out, carried it about with |