n the same, whatever disparity
there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in
spite of the cavils and contradictions of the critics. I am no friend
to repeating watches. The only pleasant association I have with them
is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, who sat up
reading the _New Heloise_ when it first came out, and ordering her
maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed, and
continued reading on till morning. Yet how different is the interest
excited by this story from the account which Rousseau somewhere else
gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances, when a boy,
till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at
day-break, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed--"_Allons,
mons fils; je suis plus enfant que toi!_" In general, I have heard
repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some
fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour,
another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the
spring, it has counted out the time; each petty stroke acting like a
sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the dreary hours I had
already passed, and of the more dreary ones I had to wait till
morning.

The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and
other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike
the hour--that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time; that they
not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear; that they
"lend it both an understanding and a tongue." Time thus speaks to us
in an audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily
distinguished by the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the
mind; sounds, from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other
causes, appeal more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But
to do this, they must be unexpected and involuntary--there must be no
trick in the case--they should not be squeezed out with a finger and a
thumb; there should be nothing optional, personal in their occurrence;
they should be like stern, inflexible monitors, that nothing can
prevent from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is anything with
which we should not mix up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with
Time, the most independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the
superstition that hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its
flight, are chiefly attached to this circu