14 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



we view the vast and magnificent circumvallation of earth- 

 works from which arose in recent times that roar of can- 

 nonry which jarred the ears of the world. Winding 

 through the rugged region of the Vosges mountains, we 

 arrive at Strasbourg, where we s^^end the night. Here 

 we pay a visit of curiosity to the most famous clock in 

 the world, and gather some fragments of the Cathedral 

 tower, which rises over it, brought down by the missiles 

 from the German camp. 



This celebrated astronomical clock was constructed by 

 Schwilgue, and completed in 1842. The globe beneath 

 shows the course of the stars; on the left is a piece of 

 mechanism exhibiting christian chronology; on the right, 

 the geocentric opposition and conjunction of the sun and 

 moon; above it, a dial determining the intervening time; 

 still higher is shown the course of the moon. As noon 

 approaches, an angel on the first gallery strikes the quar- 

 ters on a bell in his hand; higher up, a skeleton, repre- 

 senting time, strikes the hour of twelve. Figures around 

 it strike the quarters, and represent man's progress 

 through boyhood, youth, manhood, and old age. Under 

 the first gallery, the symbolic deity of the day steps out 

 into a niche, Apollo on Sunday, Diana on Monday, and 

 so on. In the highest niche, the Twelve Apostles move 

 around a figure of the Savior, bowing as they pass. On 

 the highest pinnacle of the side-tower is perched a cock, 

 which fiaps its wings, stretches its neck, and crows, awak- 

 ening the echoes of the remotest nooks of the Cathedral. 



Here in Strasbourg the art of printing w^as invented 

 in 1440, by Johann Gutenberg, and the house in which he 

 is said to have lived still remains standing. The art of 

 using reversed letters carved on wooden tablets had been 



