3 6 ° 
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 ? 
u 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 4 shepherd carved it out quaintly 
in the sunf 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 
