TIME-KEEPING IN GREECE AND ROME. 397 



and Goths, shall develop iuto uew hiuguages, in time to become as per- 

 fect vehicles of thought as their original. New forms of government and 

 of social order shall spring from her laws and institutions and philoso- 

 phies ; and from the hills of credulous and despised Judea is to burst 

 a new religion, before whoso bright beams the perpetual fires of Vesta 

 shall pale and the whole train of Olympian gods vanish like the mist. 

 Bnt amongst these uuconceived changes, and through the storms that 

 shall sweep away — and the cataclysms that shall engulf — all the objects 

 of her pride and glory and reverence, there shall still endure what she 

 cared least for (constant in all their inconstancy), the Roman hours. 



The problem of improving the time-keeper is one with which cloistered 

 scholars and mechanicians will not cease to contend, but the barrier 

 that Rome has set up will continue to baffle their ingenuity ; and when 

 thirteen centuries shall have passed since Hipparchus in vain urged the 

 advantages of the equinoctial system and Ctesibius strove to solve the 

 riddle of Roman time by some practical mechanism, we shall still find 

 Bernardo Mo nachus recording how the monks of Oluny perplexed their 

 pious souls with the old, old question, and how the good sacristan must 

 needs to go out into the night to learn — from the stars — if it were time 

 to call the brethren to prater. 



