cal invention, it is rather a
hindrance than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it
pretends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to
itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, we turn
it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all our labour is
lost, and we must wait for some other mode of ascertaining the time
before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. The
philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must,
however, find an invaluable acquisition in this "companion of the
lonely hour," as it has been called,[37] which not only serves to tell
how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What a treasure must
not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the
very grains and fleeting sands of life. What a business, in lieu of
other more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and
then to renew the process again on the instant, that there may not be
the least flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense must be
brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the
time that is fled; what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the
slippery tenure by which we hold what remains of it! Our very
existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running down (without a
miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. "Dust to dust and ashes to
ashes" is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it
is ordinarily associated with the scythe of Time and a Death's-head,
as a _Memento mori_; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit hint to
the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in favour of a resurrection
to another life!

[Footnote 37:

"Once more, companion of the lonely hour,
I'll turn thee up again."

_Bloomfield's Poems--The Widow to her Hour-glass._]

The French give a different turn to things, less _sombre_ and less
edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in
Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing
along, with the motto, _L'Amour fait passer le Tems_--which the wits
again have travestied into _Le Tems fait passer L'Amour_. All this is
ingenious and well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have
something that they love and something that they hate, and with whom
everything is not alike a matter of indifference or _pour passer le
tems_. The French attach no importance to anything, except for the
m