The cities and villages under the sunny skies of southern climates, and where also appears a better taste generally than with us for inscriptions on public and private monuments, would, I think, be the richest field for HERMES to explore. I speak from some little observation in a tour of France and Italy, &c., in the year 1846. Sun-dials were to me objects of curiosity, but not of that importance as to be engrossing. On a loose memorandum I have the two following mottoes which particularly struck me, but have not preserved a note of the places, that I think lay on the route from Florence to Bologna:—
(Latin Englished) "This dial indicates every hour to man but his last."
"Se il Sol benigno, mi concede il raggio,
L'ora ti mostra, è il ciel ti dia buon viaggio."
On a building near the Cathedral of Geneva, there is rather a novel and curious example of the sun-dial, in a perpendicular line bisected on each side by two curves, the curve on the one side black, the other gilded, with the following:—
"Fait en 1778—Restauré en 1824,
La Courbe noire Indique le Midi du 21 Juin au 21 Décembre,
et la
Courbe dorée du 21 Décembre au 21 Juin."
Meridian lines, though not, properly speaking, coming under the order of sun-dials, may be reckoned so far cognate; fine specimens of these may be seen in the cathedrals of Milan, Bologna, &c.