firmament of heaven" at that distant and uncertain period whose "evening and morning were the fourth day." Nor did the beneficent power which erected these great meters of time in the constitution of the universe leave the world without suggestions how their use might be improved in the business of more minute subdivision. The thousand natural inequalities of the earth's surface, and the vegetable columns which spring from its bosom, furnish--as do the spires and towers and columns which man rears thereon--so many gnomons of the vast dial, on which are unerringly written with the finger of shadow the shining records of the sky. There is something unutterably solemn in watching the shade creep, day by day, round a circle whose diameter man might measure with his grave or even cover with his hand, and contrasting the limits within which it acts with the spaces of time which its stealing tread measures out, and feeling that it is the faithful index of a progress before which the individual being and the universal frame of things are alike hastening to rapid and inevitable decay. There are few types more awfully representative of that which they typify than is the shadow. It is Time almost made visible. Through it the mind reaches the most vivid impersonation of that mysterious idea which it is capable of containing. It seems as if flung directly from his present and passing wing. The silent and ceaseless motion--gliding for ever on and on, coming round again and again, but reverting never and tarrying never, blotting out the sunshine as it passes and leaving no trace where it has passed--make it the true and solemn symbol of him (the old unresting and unreturning one) who receded not, even when that same shadow went back on the dial of the king of Judah, nor paused when the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and the moon lingered over the valley of Ajalon! Of that mysterious type and its awful morals a lost friend of ours[1] has already spoken better than we can hope to speak; and as he is ("alas, that _he_ is so!") already one whose "sun shall no more go down, neither shall _his_ moon withdraw itself," we will avail ourselves of a language which deserves to be better known, and sounds all the more solemnly that he who uttered it hath since furnished in his own person a fresh verification of the solemn truths which he sung so well. "Upon a dial-stone, Behold the shade of Time, For ever circling on and on In silence more sublime Than if the thunders of the spheres Pealed forth its march to mortal ears! "It meets us hour by hour, Doles out our little span, Reveals a presence and a power Felt and confessed by man: The drop of moments, day by day, That rocks of ages wears away. "Woven by a hand unseen Upon that stone, survey A robe of dark sepulchral green, The mantle of decay, The fold of chill oblivion's pall, That falleth with yon shadow's fall!