house, or under the supervision, of one of the inspectors of the corporation. The visiting inspectors, elected by all the members, as well as by the trustees and the syndics, were authorised when introducing themselves into the workshops, to look after the proper construction of watches and clocks; and if it happened that they found such as did not appear to be made according to the rules of art, they could not only seize and destroy them, but also impose a fine on the maker for the benefit of the corporation. The statutes also gave exclusive right to the accredited masters to trade, directly or otherwise, with all the stock, new or second-hand, finished or unfinished.
Figs. 148 to 150.—Watches of the Valois Epoch. (Sixteenth Century.)
“Under the influence of these wise institutions,” M. Dubois remarks, “the master-clockmakers had no fear of the competition of persons not belonging to the corporation. If they were affected by the artistic superiority of some of their colleagues, it was with the laudable desire to contend with them for the first places. The work of one day, superior to that of the preceding, was surpassed by that of the day following. It was by this incessant competition of intelligence and knowledge, by this legitimate and invigorating rivalry of all the members of the same industrious community, that science itself attained by degrees the zenith of the excellent and the sublime of the beautiful. The ambition of workmen was to rise to the mastership, and they attained that only by force of labour and assiduous efforts. The ambition of the masters was to acquire the honours of the syndicate—that consular magistracy the most honourable of all, for it was the result of election, and the recompense of services rendered to art and to the community.”
Having thus reached the middle of the sixteenth century, and not wishing to exceed the compass assigned to this sketch, we may limit ourselves to the mention of some of the remarkable works produced during a century by an art that had already manifested itself with a power never to be diminished.
The clock which Henry II. had constructed for the château of Anet has long been regarded as very curious. Every time the hand denotes the hour, a stag appears from the inside of the clock, and darts away followed by a pack of hounds; but soon the pack and the stag stop, and the latter, by means of very ingenious mechanism, strikes the hours with one of his feet.
The clock of Jena ([Fig. 151]), which is still in existence, is not less famous. Above the dial is a bronze head presumed to represent a buffoon of Ernest, Elector of Saxony, who died in 1486. When the hour is about to strike, the head—so remarkably ugly as to have given the clock the name of the monstrous head—opens its very large mouth. A figure representing an old pilgrim offers it a golden apple on the end of a stick; but just when poor Hans (so was the fool called) is about to close his mouth to masticate and swallow the apple, the pilgrim suddenly withdraws it. On the left of the head is an angel singing (the arms of the city of Jena), holding in one hand a book, which he raises towards his eyes whenever the hours strike, and with the other he rings a hand-bell.
The town of Niort, in Poitou, possessed also an extraordinary clock, ornamented with a great number of allegorical figures—the work of Bouhain,
