Things to be Remembered in Daily Life: With Personal Experiences and Recollections — John Shaqi
Things to be Remembered in Daily Life: With Personal Experiences and RecollectionsTimbs, John
Philosophy
Things to be Remembered in Daily Life: With Personal Experiences and Recollections
Timbs, John
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
In the court-yard facing the Banqueting-house was another curious dial,
set up in 1669 by order of Charles II. It was invented by one Francis
Hall, _alias_ Lyne, a Jesuit, and professor of mathematics at Liège.
This dial consisted of five stages rising in a pyramidal form, and
bearing several vertical and reclining dials, globes cut into planes,
and glass bowls; showing, “besides the houres of all kinds,” “many
things also belonging to geography, astrology, and astronomy, by the
sun’s shadow made visible to the eye.” Among the pictures were portraits
of the king, the two queens, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert. Father
Lyne published a description of this dial, which consists of
seventy-three parts: it is illustrated with seventeen plates: the
details are condensed in No. 400 of the _Mirror_. About 1710, William
Allingham, a mathematician in Canon-row, asked 500_l._ to repair this
dial: it was last seen by Vertue, the artist and antiquary, at
Buckingham House.
The bricky towers of St. James’s palace had their Sun-dials; and in the
gardens of Kensington palace and Hampton Court palace are to this day
superb dials.
Upon a house-front in the Terrace, New Palace Yard, Westminster, is a
Sun-dial, having the motto from Virgil, “Discite justitiam, moniti,”
which had probably been inscribed upon the old clock-tower of the
palace, in reference to its having been built with a fine that had been
levied on the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for altering a record.
The Inns of Court, where time runs its golden sand, have retained a few
of their Sun-dials. In Lincoln’s Inn, on two of the old gables, are: 1.
A southern dial, restored in 1840, which shows the hours by its gnomon,
from 6 A.M. to 4 P.M., and is inscribed, “Ex hoc monumento pendet
æternitas.” 2. A western dial, restored in 1794 and 1848, from the
different situation of its plane, only shows the hours from noon till
night: inscription, “Quam redit nescitis horam.” And in Serle’s-court
(now New-square), on the west side, was a dial inscribed, “Publica
privatis secernite, sacra prophanis.”
Gray’s Inn has lost its Sun-dials: but in the gardens was a dial,
opposite Verulam Buildings, not far from Bacon’s summer-house; and the
turret of the great Hall had formerly a southern declining dial, with
this motto, “Lux diei, lex Dei.”
Furnival’s Inn had its garden and dial, which disappeared when the old
Inn buildings were taken down in 1818, and the Inn rebuilt.
Staple Inn had upon its Hall a well-kept dial, above a luxuriant
fig-tree.
Clement’s Inn had, in its small garden, a kneeling figure supporting a
dial,—one of the leaden garden embellishments common in the last
century. In New Inn, adjoining, the Hall has a large vertical Sun-dial,
motto: “Time and Tide tarry for no man.”
Lyon’s Inn, which had been an Inn “since 1420, or sooner,” had, in 1828,
an old Sun-dial, which had lost its gnomon and most of its figures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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