Their hour of state, that’s all they have; for when
That’s out, Time never turns the glass again.
The Hour-glass has almost entirely given place to the more useful, because to a greater extent self-acting, instrument; and it is now seldom seen except upon the table of the lecturer or private teacher, in the study of the philosopher, in the cottage of the peasant, or in the hand of the old emblematic figure of Time.[[12]] We still sometimes see it in the workshop of the cork-cutter. The half-minute glass is still employed on board ship; and the two and a half or three minute glass for boiling an egg with exactness.
Preaching by the Hour-glass was formerly common; and public speakers are timed, in the present day, by the same means. In the church-wardens’ books of St. Helen’s, Abingdon, date 1599, is a charge of fourpence for an hour-glass for the pulpit; in 1564, we find in the books of St. Katherine’s, Christ Church, Aldgate, “paid for an hour-glass that hangeth by the pulpit when the preacher doth make a sermon, that he may know how the hour passeth away—one shilling;” and in the books of St. Mary’s, Lambeth, 1579 and 1615, are similar entries. Butler, in Hudibras, alludes to pulpit hour-glasses having been used by the Puritans: the preacher having named the text, turned up the glass; and if the sermon did not last till the sand was out, it was said by the congregation that the preacher was lazy; but if, on the other hand, he continued much longer, they would yawn and stretch till the discourse was finished. At the old church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet-street, was a large hour-glass in a silver frame, of which latter, when the instrument was taken down, in 1723, two heads were made for the parish staves. Hogarth, in his “Sleepy Congregation,” has introduced an hour-glass on the west side of the pulpit. A very perfect hour-glass is preserved in the church of St. Alban, Wood-street, Cheapside; it is placed on the right of the reading-desk within a frame of twisted columns and arches, supported on a spiral column: the four sides have angels sounding trumpets; and each end has a line of crosses patées and fleurs-de-lis, somewhat resembling the imperial crown.
[11]. Le Jeune has painted two children watching with wonder the sand flowing in the hour-glass.
[12]. The Hour-glass is the sign of Calvert’s Brewery, in Upper Thames-street.
CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
The clock was also the horologe of our old poets, from the Latin horologium: