360 Old Time Gardens 



on their weary march. This is a primitive but exact 

 chronometer. 



There are serious objections to quoting from 

 Charles Lamb : you are never willing to end the 

 transcription — you long to add just one phrase, one 

 clause more. Then, too, the purity of the pearl 

 which you choose seems to render duller than their 

 wont the leaden sentences with which you enclose it 

 as a setting. Still, who could write of sun-dials 

 without choosing to transcribe these words of 

 Lamb's ? 



" What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous em- 

 bowelments of lead or brass, its pert or solemn dulness of 

 communication, compared with the simple altar-like struc- 

 ture and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as 

 the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost 

 everywhere banished ? If its business use be suspended 

 by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, 

 might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of mod- 

 erate labors, 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. The ' shepherd carved it out quaintly 

 in the sun,' and turning philosopher by the very occupa- 

 tion, provided it with mottoes more touching than tomb- 

 stones." 



Sun-dial mottoes still can be gathered by hundreds ; 

 and they are one record of a force in the develop- 

 ment of our literate people. For it was long after 

 we had printing ere we had any general class of folk, 

 who, if they could read, read anything save the Bible. 

 To many the knowledge of reading came from the 



