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Some are arrived at so great Knowledge, that they can tell every time any Butcher kills a Calf, every time any old Woman's Cat is in the Straw; and a thousand other Matters as important. One ancient Philosopher contemplates two or three Hours every Day over a Sun-Dial; and is true to the Dial, ... As the Dial to the Sun, Although it be not shone upon.
There was in the court a peculiar silence somehow; and the scene remained long in Esmond's memory: the sky bright overhead; the buttresses of the building and the sun-dial casting shadow over the gilt memento mori inscribed underneath; the two dogs, a black greyhound and a spaniel nearly white, the one with his face up to the sun, and the other snuffing amongst the grass and stones, and my lord leaning over the fountain, which was bubbling audibly.
For as touching the sun-dial and the gnomon and the twelve divisions of the day, they were learnt by the Hellenes from the Babylonians.
Certainly there was no danger of a shower, and they might as well go on with the picnic. But when Solomon John and Ann Maria had arranged the sun-dial, they asked everybody to look at their watches, so that they might see if it was right. And then came a great exclamation at the hour: "It was time they were all going home!"
A south window was added close to the east end, and it, too, was a sun-dial; it told the hour of angelus, the mid-day, when the bell was rung and a calm reverence fell on all within its hearing. Such churches can still be seen at Aran and Inismurray, on the islands of Lough Derg, Lough Ri, and in many other places.
The stray customers have hardly any connection with the growing taste for reading, being people a little outside the general run gentlemen with archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the title-page visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic days.
The weather record for 1760 was kept on blank pages of The Virginia Almanac, a compendium that contains directions for making "Indico," for curing bloody flux, for making "Physick as pleasant as a Dish of Chocolate," for making a striking sun-dial, also "A Receipt to keep one's self warm a whole Winter with a single Billet of Wood."
But it is only for a time that any good can to the good appear evil, and at this very moment, Nature, who in her blindness is stronger to bind than the farthest-seeing intellect to loose, was urging him into her presence; and the heart of Dorothy, notwithstanding her initiative in the separation, was leaning as lovingly, as sadly after the youth she had left alone with the defaced sun-dial, the symbol of Time's weariness.
Do you see that motto on the sun-dial: 'I bide my time' I've read it and read it, and I've said it over to myself and waited and hoped to move you. Now I can't wait any more." He kissed her, dropped her hand, and turning from her went out through the iron gate and down the drive. For a moment Jan stood by the sun-dial as though she, too, were stone.
Already, in 1816, he and his boy had tried a somewhat higher flight of mechanical and scientific skill than usual, in the construction of a sun-dial, which involves a considerable amount of careful mathematical work; and now George found that the subject of locomotive engines was being forced by circumstances upon his attention.
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