was the recession of the shadow on the dial ten degrees. The literal meaning of the original words are, " And the Lord brought back the shadow of the steps, or degrees which was gone down by the dial, or degrees of Ahaz, ten degrees or steps." It is extremely difficult either to understand the nature or form of this dial, or the literal meaning of the text; but in regard to the former, perhaps the nearest conclusion is, that it was nothing more than the pannels of the steps or stairs leading to the palace; for the origiginal Hebrew word " Megaloth" means nothing more than "steps, stairs, degrees, or ascents;" and this is the version of the Septuagint, and also, as such it has been trans. lated by the Chaldiac Pharaphrasts, which they rendered by the Greek word "ava6a0uug," which is of the same meaning and signification; it has also been called the "stone of time." And most of the various translations make "Maloth" of Ahaz, either "Balμug" or "avaba@uvg;" and it may not be uninteresting to know that the Syriac, Arabic, and other versions, give it the same meaning. There are some who have endeavoured to give an account and description of this dial, but their attempts are but guess work, and unsatisfactory, and not to be depended upon; because, from the paucity of the information we have of it, and the length of time elapsed since the miracle happened, we have no means of verifying their assertions. It has also been a point of controversy, whether the retrogradation of the shadow was occasioned by the actual recession of the sun, or merely of the shadow on the dial alone; the general opinion appears to be that it was confined to the mere recession of the sun's rays on the dial; and this, it is argued, is supported by the fact, that some of the neigh bouring kings actually sent ambassadors to Hezekiah to know whether this was really the case or not, because no such phenomena had been observed by them, which would have been the case, undoubtedly, had the sun himself gone back ten degrees, and it is therefore concluded, that this effect was produced by the recession of the sun's rays only; but this does not form any part of our inquiry; it is sufficient for our purpose to know that this is the first time-measuring instrument of which we have any records, and which is brought forward as an illustration of the assertion, that the idea probably originated from observing the variations of the lengths of shadows cast by vertical objects. And it may be observed here, once for all, that I do not profess to give a detailed account of all the instruments, but only a rapid glance of the progress made towards perfection, omitting many instruments that partake of time-measurers, but are not noticed here, as not coming within the precise nature of the views of this dissertation. Among the Greeks and Romans, there were principally two methods of measuring their time, which they had already divided into hours, each being of very different principles, the first of which is the "solaria," or sun-dial, and the second, the instrument called the "nλeπyudgia,” or the Clepsydra, commonly termed hour-glasses; and they were sometimes also called "Clepsammidium," which is derived from "nyaμuidior," and they are defined as being "horologium quo metimur horas effletu arence;" that is, a clock measuring time or the hours by the running of sand; but this appears to have been a later mode of making them; for we find, "nam antiquii aquam in clepsydris ponebant sicut nunc arenas ;" from which we evidently learn that water was the first thing they employed in making their hour-glasses, and they are defined "est etiam astronomicum orgunum, sydera dimentients;" from which we find that they employed them in their astrono mical operations. Suidas and Phavorinus also mention that they were employed for this purpose; and we are farther informed by Phavorinus, that it was "a vessel having a little hole in the bottom, which was set in the courts of judicature, full of water, by which the orators pleaded;"* and this, according to the same authority, was to prevent a useless waste of time, by long and unnecessary speaking, a fault, it appears, to which the ancient pleaders were addicted, as well as our modern orators. This mode of speaking by time, was an old custom of the ancient Greeks, and was introduced at Rome by Pompey, the third time he was consul. It is plain that there are many sources of error in the construction of these hour-glasses; for if we allow the time to have been counted or measured by the spouting of the fluid, it will be plain that it will • Hour-glasses were made use of by the preachers in the days of Cromwell, who, on their first getting into the pulpit, and naming the text, turned up the glass, and if the sermon did not last till the glass was out, it was said by the congregation that the preacher was lazy; and if he continued to preach much longer, they would yawn, and stretch; and by these sigus signify to the preacher, that they began to be weary of his discourse, and wanted to be dismissed.* Hogarth, in his "Sleeping Congregation," has introduced an hour-glass. Ireland, in describing the above print,t gives the following anecdote: "Daniel Burgess, of whimsical memory, never preached without an hour-glass, and he frequently saw it out three times during one sermon. In a discourse which he once delivered at the conventicle in Russel-court, Drury-lane, against drunkenness, some of his hearers began to yawn at the end of the second glass; but Daniel was not to be silenced by a yawn; he turned his time-keeper, and altering the tone of his voice, desired they would be patient a while longer, for he had a much more to say upon the sin of drunk. Gent. Mag. vol. 74, p. 201. + See Hogarth illustrated, vol. 1, p. 110. continually decrease in velocity, according as the head of water decreases, therefore they must either have had some mechanical means of graduating them, or of having them maintained at constantly the same head of water ;but whatever may have been the exact mode of regulating them, I have not been able to find in any authority. Ancient sculpture has, in some instances, given us a slight knowledge of their form, which appear mostly to be in shape similar to what we now call minute-glasses: if the instrument was of this nature, it would, as an inevitable consequence, have required a constant attendant to have inverted it when run out; but the previous description expressly states, that they had a hole in the bottom, whence we must certainly infer that this was not the form of the clepsydræ here alluded to. Who was the actual inventor of them is not easy, at this distance of time, to infer; but Censorinus, in his De die Nat, attributes the invention to P. Cornelius Nascia, or, as Pliny calls him, the Censor Scipio Nascia, in the following words : "Primus aqua divisit horas atque noctium ac dierum idque horologium sub lecto decavit, anno Urbis 595:" that is, "Scipio Nascio was the first that measured the hours by water, by night as well as by day, and that clock he dedicated within doors, in the year U. C. 595," which time would be about the era of Judas Maccabeus, or about 150 years before the birth of Christ. It is rather difficult to understand the exact meaning of the latter part of the sentence used by Pliny, namely," sub lecto decavit ;" the literal meaning of lecto is to cover, or under shelter or roof; hence, sub lecto may be read, as in the text, "within doors.' "" This short account would lead us to conclude that there was some contrivance or other to maintain the clock in a constant state of action, and also to regulate it, by means not handed down to us; for this was a water-clock. In modern times, we have had several instances of water-clocks being made; amongst many of which, we cite the clock made by Newton, when a boy, which, however, like the rest, was not of much service, either for common use, or the more exact purpose of astronomical observations. But, however, all this vagueness, which characterises the accounts and descriptions that have reached us, will give us some idea of the great difficulty the ancients must have had to combat in their astronomy; and as so much depends upon the accuracy of the time in astronomy, we may wonder however they made so many discoveries in this beautiful and difficult science as they did, and cannot fail to admire their patience and industry, which alone could surmount so many difficulties. We may here observe, that the ancients did not reckon their time as we do, but from sun-rising, and their method of counting the dimensions of the day, differed from ours; the modern day is divided into 24 equal hours, or parts, but the ancient hour was equal to a twelfth part of the day, let what might be the length of the day; and it must therefore be plain, that the hours were longer in summer than in winter. It is not difficult to find the ratio of one of these ancient hours to a modern one; and amongst the Babylonians, Grecians and Romans, three of these hours constituted a "Vigilia," or watch, and amongst most of the ancients generally. The other method of measuring time, namely, by the solaria, or sun-dial, appears from all the accounts to be of prior date to the clepsydræ, as stated at the beginning of this paper. Pliny, in the second book of his Natural History, states, that "Anaximenes Milesius, the pupil of Anaximander, invented dialing, and was the first that showed a sun-dial at Lacedemon." Vitruvius calls him Milesius Anaximander, in his well-known book (De Architeo, &c.) Anaximander was one of the ancient philosophers who supported the famous opinion of Pythagoras, that the earth revolved round the sun, and that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of the world; and according to some, it is believed that they even taught the doctrine of the plurality of worlds. Having now given a rapid sketch of the early history and opinions as to the origin of the method of time-measuring, &c., previous to the introduction of clock-work, or, more properly speaking, wheel-work, I shall pass at once to a summary description of such machines as are to be found mentioned in the works of the ancients, at all worth noticing. And the first of these, is that of Dionysius, which is mentioned by the historian and biographer Plutarch, in his life of Dionysius, in which he speaks of a remarkable piece of mechanism, but what it was he does not expressly state; it appears to have been nothing more than a sun dial of some kind; and therefore, as well as for want of more precise information respecting it, we shall say no more about it. There is also one mentioned by Eusebius, which belonged to Sapor, one of the kings of Persia; but whether this king was contemporary with that of Constantine the Great, does not sufficiently appear; so inexact are the chronicles of the ancient historians. Cardan, an illustrious mathematician of the middle of the 16th century, and author of the well-known Algebraic Formulas that are called by his name, says, that Sapor could sit in the middle of it, and see its stars rise and set, and that it was made of glass; according to this account, it would appear to have been a large and peculiarly-constructed sphere; but how the king could possibly contrive to sit in the centre of it, is not easy to be con ceived; neither does the account state whether this curious machine was moved by clock work, or whether it had any regular motion at all; but the account stating that the stars in it appeared to rise and set, we therefore infer that it must have had a motion of some sort; but it is extremely difficult to reconcile its motion with the statement of the king being able to sit in the middle of it. Vitruvius gives a description of another machine of this nature, which is too long to quote here, it appears to have been a piece of clock-work moved by water-the French edition of Vitruvius gives an engrav. ing of it; this instrument performed a great variety of feats, such as blowing trumpets; according to some accounts, which the words of Vitruvius in no way states, it showed the hours through every month of the year, and was capable of projecting stones; the original words relating to this feat are, "Calculi aut tona projecitur;" and this also refers to its power of sounding trumpets. And it is not a little curious, that from these three words nearly all the musical historians have laid claim to it as being an hydraulicon, or water-organ; whether they are justified in so doing depends upon the extension they give to the meaning of "tona," for Vitruvius himself appears to be somewhat at a loss here, for he uses the indefinite" aut," instead of the positive "et." The maker of this curious machine, according to Vitruvius, was one Ctesibius, the son of a barber of Alexandria, and a philosopher of some note, who flourished under Ptolemy Evergetes, according to Athenæus; if so, he lived about one hundred and forty years before the birth of Christ. DALBY LOCKWOOD. (To be concluded in our next.) MONK FISH. THE following description of a curious fish is given in the History and Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Paris, for the year 1759:- Some fishermen, who had been out to catch tunny, near the port Cette, on finding their nets heavier than usual, dragged them to shore, when they discovered a monstrous fish, having, between the head and the thickest part of the body, five large membranes, in the form of a monk's hood, which occasioned them to give it the name of monk fish. Under those membranes were holes, through which the water passed in and out with impetuosity; its skin was rough, scaly, and cutting or sharp like the sea-dog. It was twenty-two feet in length, and seventeen in circumference in the largest part of its body; its head was four feet long, with a snout that advanced upwards of a foot beyond the mouth, which was very wide, and of the form of a crescent underneath: it was furnished with very small and sharp teeth, which jutted out a little: the nostrils were under the extremity of the snout: the eyes were little in proportion to its size, being not much more than an inch in diameter: the breadth of the five detached and floating membranes was upwards of two feet; and the organs of hearing, which were concealed under them, were garnished with flexible barbs, that formed a kind of grate work: there were three fins on each side, and two eminences on the back. It weighed nearly fifty quintals. A dozen of lampreys were found adhering to its sides when the fishermen disengaged it from their nets.-W. G. C. THE MAGNIFICENT TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT DJIMMILAH. THE most remarkable object in all Africa, is a splendid triumphal arch, in perfect preservation, at Djimmilah. The sculpture of the cornices, capitals, and freezes, which are of the Corinthian order, remind me of the finest works of Rome. The inscription, which remains entire, informs us that it was dedicated to Caracalla, and Julia, his mother, in the third century of the Christian era. A few paces from this are the remains of a temple, with four pedestals, each supporting a statue, one of Severus, and one of Venus, but the other two are unknown. Opposite to the triumphal arch is a circus, still in good condition. Sepulchral inscriptions abound here, as in all parts, and every thing concurs in proving that Djimmilah, the ancient Culculum Colonia, was an important Roman station, and in fact a capital city. Near the ruins at Mons was found a fragment of sculpture, representing Roman soldiers, wrought in a pure style. Not far from this were observed a number of tombs, close to each other, four or five of which appear to have been perfectly uninjured. The upper stones alone have been removed, merely to admit of a search for the contents, the Arabs having been satisfied with opening without destroying them. On arriving at Setif, our notice was first attracted by the ruins of a citadel, forming a rectangle, abou: 200 yards by 150 yards. We counted ten towers on the walls, placed at unequal distances, and in positions to flank each other. The stones with which this citadel was built, were evidently taken from some more ancient structure, and we hence infer that it was not erected by the Romans. Among the ruins we turned up several capitals of a rude and irregular order. There were, in fact, three generations of ruins. Some of the towers have been converted by the Beys into silos. Every opening in the sides is carefully closed up, and the corn is let down from an aperture in the roof, which, when the silo is full, is also closed up, and when the corn is wanted for consumption, a new opening is made at the bottom, by which it is taken out.-Correspondent of the Debats; inserted in the Times Journal, 1839. NORTH-EASTERN ANGLE OF THE CITY WALLS AT ROCHESTER. THE above engraving will convey to the reader not only a representation of the vene rable relic named above, but also enable him to form some idea of those propugnacula, or bulwarks, by which our civic forefathers were erst defended. The wall, which is about thirty feet high, is remarkably entire near this point, and still retains its ancient form and embrasures, but the circular tower at the angle was probably of greater altitude. It consists, at present, of three stages; the second having long narrow windows, at once affording light, and the means of annoying an enemy: the third, or upper stage, was, no doubt, crowned with embrasures similar to the wall. Within this tower is a winding staircase. The walls of Rochester, of which there are considerable remains, are of great antiquity, having been mentioned so far back as the time of Ethelbert, A. D. 600, in a grant which he made to the neighbouring cathedral; and from the Roman bricks now, or until lately, to be seen in them, there is very little doubt of its having been a fenced city, though the general appearance of the present relics only allow us to consider them coeval with the walls of the adjoining castle, which they exactly resemble; both having been repaired by Edward the Fourth, in or about 1472. C. S. APPEAR ANCE OF PREMATURE DECAY IN THE PAINTINGS OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. THERE is not perhaps a more humiliating sensation in the breast of the man who really loves his country, and rejoices in the progress of her arts, than the sad conviction that some of her brightest ornaments are sinking into premature oblivion. Such have been my feelings both in the public repository and private gallery, when the works of this illustrious artist have been presented to my view; and I have lamented that while Titian and Rembrandt ramained in unsullied purity of colour, and the sunshine of Claude illuminated every landscape with its fascination and glory, many of the produc tions of the man who could raise by his transcendent talents, the degraded and fal len English School of Art, and at the same time elevate himself to the highest point of pictorial greatness, should show but too evident symptoms of decay. I would that I were mistaken, and that others might convince me of erroneous judgment! But alas! there are not a few who will be inclined to agree with me, and think, that even as the shades of night fall thickly upon and obscure the beautiful landscape, which during the day we have been delighted to contemplate, so is there reason to fear that the nullifying spirit of obscuration is covering the splendid works of Sir Joshua with its wings. need we go far for proofs of this regretted fact: for both at Dulwich and the National Gallery are instances at once painful to the artist and the Englishman. Who can regard any of the beautiful pictures of Claude in the Angerstein Collection, magnificent in composition, glowing in all the beauty of their magic lights, and faultless in perspective; or study the stupendous painting of the Rape of Ganymede by the matchless Titian, and Lazarus again revivified, if I may use such a pleonasm, by the pencil of Sebastiano del Piombo-who, I repeat, can look upon these exquisite gems, their colours all rich, all brightly glowing, as it were, in the garments Nor of yesterday, though ages have elapsed since the hand that painted became motionless and cold, and then turn to the Banished Lord, or the Holy Family, in the same collection, without exclaiming, in the anguish of his heart, Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory is departing from among us? It would be well, if while sympathising in an exile's fate, which the melancholy countenance pourtrayed in this matchless painting never fails to bring vividly on the speculum of the mind, or regretting the sad discoloration which has taken place in the latter-mentioned beautiful picture, which has been considered as one of the first productions that ever emanated from Sir Joshua's pencil, we could console ourselves with the reflection that these were the only instances. But no, the same lamentable contrast is visible else where; the picture at Dulwich, of " Mrs. Siddons, in the character of the Tragic Muse," is fast fading away; and I fear that no great period will elapse ere it will become to us, even as the form it was intended to represent, lost and irrecoverable. The "Death of Beaufort" is another proof of the declination I deplore; though perhaps the composition of this picture will enable many to say, that it might be better spared than any other of his works; for notwithstanding the eulogium of Opie, who professes to know of " none in modern times who availed himself of poetic license with more address than Sir Joshua did in this instance," and who declares, what possibly may be the fact, with one exception, that "the varied beauties of this work might well employ a great part of a lecture," though he passed them over, and discussed only the effect of the "visionary devil crouched close, and listening eagerly behind the pillow of the dying wretch;" which he considers as invigorating" the subject with appropriate interest and terror," and clearing up all ambiguity, by informing us, "that the sufferings" so forcibly delineated "did not originate in the mere pang of death," but in "the overwhelming horrors of a guilty and awakened conscience." Opie insists most energetically on the absolute necessity for the presence of the demon, and declares it to be an accessory "so completely successful, that far from being regarded an unwarrantable license, it is justified by all rules of sound criticism," and ought to be considered a signal example of artistical invention. Such was the cpinion of Opie on this subject; but I rather agree with Allan Cunningham, in decrying this hideous and shapeless supernumerary as foreign to any just perception of the poet, and consider it as offensive to the feelings of charity in man. Do we need any stronger proof in the poet to express the utter hopeless state of the departing sinner, than the words, "Lord Cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, Hold up thine hand, make signal of thy hopeHe dies, and makes no sign." Or can any attribute in the painting be necessary beyond the agonized countenance, the firmly-closed teeth, the horribly-fixed and dying eye, together with the distorted position of the head upon the pillow, to prove that the wretched being before us "Died not the death of the righteous, neither was his end like his." But however opinion may be divided respecting this picture, it partakes largely of the appearance of decay which seems to pervade the generality of the paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Many commentators have spoken respecting the cause of this decline; by some he has been accused of using colours liable to speedy volition, though perhaps the most likely point to which it may be referred was a mania for discovery, which induced him to enter the wide, and (to an artist) dangerous region of chemical experiment. Whatever the cause may have been, we are told by Cunningham, that this great painter was at length convinced of its dangerous effect by the appearances of decay in those very works which he doubtless hoped would have become monuments of art for the imitation of posterity. Poor Sir Joshua, what must have been thy feelings at the discovery of the nascent symptoms which have now become so alarmingly apparent! you had taken Titian for your prototype; to be a Titian was the supreme object of your great ambition. An object which you nobly attained; for your productions have shown an admiring world the glories of the Venetian School, combined with all that is good and excellent in the practice and colouring of others; and whenever art shall be encouraged, or science esteemed, then will thy name and memory be held forth for honourable distinction. C. S. TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE BE GINNING OF THE WORLD. I was the only son of Athenian parents, who bestowed on me the name of Ctesias. Brought up under the care of a mother, who was known by the title of "the Beautiful Cinyra," I became, in my younger years, skilful in most of the elegant accomplishments of the day. I arrived at some excellence in touching the strings of the harp, and could sing many a national melody, either to tones Ionian or Doric. But as I advanced to maturer years, the elegancies of life gave way to the pursuit of manlier studies; and without mingling in the affairs of the state, I consecrated my days to the study of philosophy. The celebrated masters who attended me, perpetually enlightened me by their counsels, and with them I re-ascended to the principles |