Time's chronicle is of itself proof of his character, for the very record of his deeds he does not permit to be of long endurance. Time was, before the earliest historian began to take note of him, before the 'twilight of fable,' and before the most primitive symbol. Time himself were too brief to tell of his various experiences, the full value and purport of which we shall never know, until we have bridged the abyss which separates the present from the future. Time and the world, we are told, commenced life simultaneously, and their twin birth was greeted triumphantly 'with the music of the spheres,' the morning stars sang together rejoicingly; and it is also said that their courses shall be simultaneously determined when the edict shall be promulgated that 'Time shall be no more.' When will that great event take place? is a question which has occupied the attention of many theologians and others, who temporarily forget that 'of that day and hour knoweth no man.' As of the end so of the beginning of Time, there is to us no landmark, though geologists are endeavouring to prove that they have traced some of his earliest footprints in this world of ours. Professor Tyndall tells us that 'not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for æons, embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geologist and palæontologist, from subcambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves of that stone book are stamped the characters, plainer and surer than those formed by the ink of history, which carry the mind back into abysses of past time compared with which six thousand years cease to have a visual angle.' Although Time is so vast in his operations and so truly marvellous in his many features, it has, nevertheless, been found possible to measure his shorter intervals with the greatest accuracy,--even to but a few seconds in a year. It took some centuries to accomplish this feat, but it is now surely and systematically done. The stages of horological science are some of them remote, but they are well worth studying. The earliest divisions of time were doubtless those made by the operations of Nature, producing day and night,--the sun and moon were the earliest chronometers, and, marked by them, 'the evening and the morning were the first day.' It is even now by noting the recurrence of certain celestial phenomena that we are enabled to certify to ourselves the accuracy of our time-pieces, but although the motion of the heavenly bodies is the standard of computation for lengthened periods, it is found more convenient to reckon short terms, such as seconds, minutes, and hours, by machinery set in motion by a spring or by weights mathematically adjusted, and this in a word has given birth to the science called Horology.