The marked interest that has been taken in the sundial during recent years shows it has still a great future before it. If, then, age can add to its value, and yet in nowise impair its reliability, who will be without such a garden ornament that gives also a gentle touch to what is already a beautiful possession? Calling upon the thoughtful as it does by many an apt line or verse to consider the brevity of time, it warns and exhorts with far greater emphasis than the voice of man. Though only of iron and stone, the work of men’s hands, it seems almost to gain our sympathy, for given to one who has experienced the ravages of time, it demonstrates the value of quiet endurance and resignation under trouble. T. G. W. H. [Illustration: Photograph No. 1 of Saxon Sundial built into the South Porch of a Norman Church, Stanton S. Quintin, Chippenham, Wilts. ] [Illustration: Photograph No. 2 of the Saxon Sundial discovered by the Author at Stanton S. Quintin, Chippenham, Wilts. ] Famous Men and the Sundial, with Notes on Mottoes. CHAPTER II. The study of “ye horologe” is a most pleasing occupation and a most engrossing science. So much so that when it has come before the special notice of the great men of bygone ages, it has always effected some lasting record of their interest, and oft-times improvement, in the construction of what was a most necessary acquisition for every establishment. Shakespeare, in his Richard II. (act v. scene 5), makes King Richard, who was incarcerated in a dungeon in Pomfret Castle, give utterance to the following words:— “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Or now hath time made me his numb’ring clock: My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they jar Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.” In Henry VI. Shakespeare again takes notice of the sundial:— “Methinks it were a happy life To carve out dials quaintly point by point.” He also alludes to them in some of his other plays. Mentioned by many famous men in various ways they are dealt with directly by not a few. So important did the study of gnomonics become that it was at one time considered to be a most necessary part of a student’s education. Sir Christopher Wren was well versed in the art of dialling in his boyhood, and as a boy Sir Isaac Newton made a sundial which he painted upon the ceiling of his room; he also carved two dials upon the south end of the Manor House at Woolsthorpe, in the parish of Colterworth, where he was born. So numerous are the instances of famous men making or ordering sundials to be made, that it would be impossible to mention even a representative number of names.