No reason is assigned for proposing this modification of water work, no advantage is pointed out, the Marquis doubtless depending on its apparent impossibility for its exciting and stimulating inquiry. He knew how the promulgation of such a wonder would have affected his own mind, and never imagined but that the public would feel equally inquisitive. His incomprehensible truths are, however, often denounced, without investigation, as though they were false.
23.
To set a Clock in[9] a Castle, the[1] water filling the Trenches about it;[2] it[3] shall shew by ebbing and flowing the Hours, Minutes and Seconds, and all the comprehensible motions of the Heavens, and Counterlibation[4] of the Earth, according to Copernicus.
Footnotes
[9]as within a. MS and P.
[1]and the.
[2]about it shall show the hours, minutes, and seconds by ebbing.
[3]which—for it. P.
[4]counterlibration.
[An ebbing and flowing Castle-clock.] John Bate, in his “Mysteries of Nature and Art,” 1635, at p. 45, describes—“A water-clock, or a glasse showing the hour of the day,” by three different arrangements.