The second period, that is, the first thirty-five years of the nineteenth century, represents an era of established and sound technique, exhibiting craftsmanship of a high order struggling for supremacy and recognition at a time when factory inventions and factory-made substitutes commenced to dominate not only the art of the clockmaker but other personal crafts. During this time the case and the dial cannot be said to possess the high artistic qualities found in the earlier period. Art was beginning to sink into the Slough of Despond which for half a century characterized most European arts, both fine and applied. =Hints for Beginners.=--To set out to buy an old clock is for the tyro like setting out to buy a horse. In the latter case the teeth may be filed and the hoofs pared to give a simulation of youth to which possibly the beast could not lay claim. In the former, added touches would counterfeit antiquity: here a pair of apparently old hands, there an antiquated-looking dial, and an enshrining case of no particular period, but seeming to bear Time's own impress of age, till one is inclined to say, to quote the _Merchant of Venice_: "I never knew so young a body with so old a head." The following chapters will indicate the outline of a complex and intricate subject. The case, the dial, the hands, all have to be studied with no little skill in comparison and deduction in regard to errors in clumsy repairers or unskilled restorers, who with vandal hands have destroyed the balance of fine work and introduced component parts which are harlequin to the trained collector's eye. This much for the _visible_. Then there is the movement, that is, the mechanism which makes the clock a clock. This is unseen by the average snapper-up of old clocks, or when seen not understood. There are those collectors who stop short in their requirements. A clock is an ornament to a well appointed home, in the hall, in the smoking-room, or in the dining-room. They are unconcerned as to whether it is a timekeeper or a monument, "long to be patient and silent to wait like a ghost that is speechless." One longs to call aloud to such an encumbrance with its dead wheels and its atrophied hands: "Watchman! What of the night?" It is a servant that serves no longer. It is like a poor relation thrusting his company upon his fellow-guests with dumb tongue and a solemn demeanour telling of former glories.