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THE CYCLE OF THE SEASONS.

"The shadow on the dial's face,

That steals, from day to day,

With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,

Moments, and months, and years away;

This shadow, which, in every clime,

Since light and motion first began,
Hath held its course sublime."

If we

THE topic we have chosen for the present chapter is so intangible, that the moment we essay to grasp it, it is gone. Although impalpable it is yet real, for, like the circumambient atmosphere, it is ever present with us, although unseen. attempt to symbolize it, we fail fully to portray it, and yet images are its only mode of illustration. It is both the longest. and the shortest, the swiftest and the slowest; the most divisible and the most indivisible; the most regretted and the least valued; without which nothing can be done; yet, that which devours everything, and gives existence to everything. It is the most paradoxical, yet the simplest of elements. Strictly speaking, it is never palpable, yet it is ever present; a

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constant succession, an unfathomable duration; the most momentous benefactor to man, yet seldom estimated according to its worth.

It is the account current with all, in which more are found bankrupt than wealthy, when the balance-sheet is demanded. It marks the rising and the setting sun, spreads over us the black veil of night, and gilds with gladness the face of day; it rolls on the revolving seasons, chronicling the deeds of centuries; watching over the birth of infancy, the ardent aspirations of youth, toiling manhood, and the tottering steps. of the infirm and aged-his sorrows, loves, and cares, nor forsakes him so long as life shall last. It is always the friend of the virtuous and the true, a tormenting foe to those who abuse the gift; to the former, it is redolent of fragrant and pleasant memories,-to the latter, of gloomy remorse and despair.

"It rolls away, and bears along

A mingled mass of right and wrong;

The flowers of love that bloomed beside

The margin of life's sunny tide;

The poisoned weeds of passion; torn

From dripping rocks, and headlong borne
Into that unhorizoned sea--

Which mortals call eternity!"

And such is that mysterious myth, named Time, who measures our allotted span, from the cradle to the coffin, mingles our joys and griefs in the chalice of life, and then terminates it with his scythe,

"A shadow only to the eye,

It levels all beneath the sky."

Time is but a name; it is what is done in time that is the substance. What are twenty-four centuries to the hard rock, more than twenty-four hours to man, or twenty-four minutes to

the ephemera? "Are there not periods in our own existence," writes an ingenious thinker, "in which space, computed by its measure of thoughts, feelings, and events, mocks the penury of man's artificial scale and comprises a lifetime in a day."

I asked an aged man, a man of cares,

Wrinkled and curved, and white with hoary hairs:
"Time is the warp of life," he said. "Oh tell
The young, the fair, the gay, to weave it well."
I asked the ancient, venerable dead--
Sages who wrote, and warriors who bled:
From the cold grave a hollow murmur flowed--
"Time sowed the seed we reap in this abode."
I asked a dying sinner, ere the tide
Of life had left his veins: "Time," he replied,
I've lost it-ah, the treasure !" and he died.
I asked the golden sun and silver spheres,
Those bright chronometers of days and years:
They answered-" Time is but a meteor's glare,"
And bade me for eternity prepare.

I asked the seasons, in their annual round,

Which beautify or desolate the ground;

And they replied (no oracle more wise);

"Tis Folly's blank, and Wisdom's highest prize."

"Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and old Thebes; while his sister, Oblivion, reclineth semi-somnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller, as he paceth amazedly through those deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he knoweth not."+

Locke is of opinion that a man, in great misery, may so far lose his measure, as to think a minute an hour; or, in joy, make an hour a minute.

Shakspeare expands the same idea, where he says "Time

travels in divers paces, with divers persons; I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. He trots hard with a young maid, between the contract of her marriage, and the day it is solemnized; if the interim be. but a sennight, Time's pace is so hard, that it seems the length of seven years. He ambles with a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gout-for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning—the other knowing no burden of heavy, tedious penury; then Time ambles withal. He gallops with a thief to the gallows-for, though he go softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. He stays still with lawyers in the vacation-for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves."

Time is portrayed with wings to indicate his rapid flight, and if he strew our pathway with life's spring flowers, he also brings, too swiftly, its wintry frosts and desolation. He is also represented with a scythe, to notify that he mows down all alike—the young, the refined and the vulgar, the good and the bad.

"Even such is Time that takes on trust,

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days.”*

The earliest expedient for reckoning time seems to have been the sun-dial. Allusion to its use is to be found in Holy Writ.† It was called by the ancients sciathericum, from being marked by shadow. This instrument was in vogue among the Romans; we have an account of one being placed in the court of the Temple of Quirinus.

*Sir Walter Raleigh.

Isaiah, chap. xxxviii. 8.

Several of the Grecian astronomers and mathematicians constructed dials. Thales is said to have made one; as also Aristarchus and Anaximenes, of Miletus. Herodotus informs us that the Greeks borrowed the invention from the Babylonians.. The first sun-dial used at Rome was in use about three hundred years before Christ. Before the use of these instruments in the "Eternal City," there was no division of the day into hours; nor does that word occur in the Twelve Tables. They only mention sun-rising and sun-setting, before and after mid-day. According to Pliny, mid-day was not added till some years later, an accensus of the consuls being appointed to call out that time when he saw the sun from the Senate-house, between the Rostra and the place called. Græcostasis, where the ambassadors from Greece and other foreign countries used to stand.

The klepsydra, or water-clock, was introduced by Scipio Narsica at Rome, 157 B.c. It served its purpose in all weathers, while the dial, of course, depended upon the sun. Sundials are occasionally still to be seen in Europe.

"I count only the hours that are serene," is the motto of an old sun-dial near Venice. A capital conceit to dispel dulness and discontent. Life is sure to be much brighter if we look at the sunny side of it.,

There is a dial in the Temple, London, upon which is inscribed the admonitory line (a good hint for loiterers), Begone about your business."

The Chinese have been accustomed, as early as the ninth century, to have watchmen posted on towers, who announced the hours of the day and night by striking upon a suspended A similar custom still remains among the Russians.

board.

*In the year 807, the King of Persia sent as a present to Charlemagne a water-clock, furnished with some ingenious mechanism. A slight description of it is to be found in Annales Francorum, ascribed to Eginhard. The author says:-"Likewise a timepiece wonderfully constructed of brass with mechanical art, in which the course of the twelve hours was turned towards a clepsydra, with as many brass balls, which fall down at the completion of the hour, and by their fall sounded a bell under them."