We remember a piece of stage sentiment, beginning

"Time! Time! Time! why ponder o'er thy glass,
And count the dull sands as they pass?" &c.

It was touchingly sung, but had too much of gloom and despondency for the theatre: possibly it may have reminded some of its hearers of their own delinquency.

With what solemnity has our great Dramatic Bard foreshadowed Time's waning:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

His departure is again sketched in Troilus and Cressida:

Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand,
But with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps the incomer.

Sir Walter Scott thus paints Time's evanescence:
Time rolls his ceaseless course.-The race of yore,
Who danced our infancy upon their knee,
And told our marvelling boyhood legends store
Of their strange 'ventures happ'd by land or sea,
How are they blotted from the things that be!

Cowley has this significant couplet:

To things immortal Time can do no wrong,

And that which never is to die for ever must be young.

Yet, what a treasure is this:

My inheritance! how wide and fair!

Time is my estate; to Time I'm heir.

Wilhelm Meister: Carlyle.

"Time is almost a human word, and change entirely a human idea in the system of nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures, as at Rome; but even when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, nature asserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, and in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man, providing food, vitality, and beauty upon the wreck

Time: Past, Present, and Future.

9

of monuments which were once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility."

As this beautiful passage was written by Sir Humphry Davy nearly three-and-thirty years since, the above use of the word progress had nothing to do with the semi-political sense in which it is now commonly employed. Nevertheless, there occur in the writings of our great chemical philosopher occasional views of the advancement of the world in knowledge, and its real authors, with which the progressists of the present day fraternise.

At the above distance, Davy wrote in the following vein: "In the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general, almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in their dynasties; and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate entirely from different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature. Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion of the people and the spirit of the age and nation. It sometimes happens that a gigantic mind possesses supreme power, and rises superior to the age in which he is born: such was Alfred in England, and Peter in Russia. Such instances are, however, very rare; and in general it is neither amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great improvers and benefactors of mankind are to be found."-Consolations in Travel, pp. 34, 35.

:

Brilliant as was Davy's own career, it had its life-struggles his last days were embittered with sufferings, mental as well as physical; and in these moments he may have written these somewhat querulous remarks.

TIME: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

Harris, in his Hermes, in his disquisition on Time, gives the distinction between the grammatical or conventional phrase, "Present Time," and the more philosophical and abstract "Now," or " Instant." Quoting Nicephorus Blemmides, Harris would define the former as follows: "Present Time is that which adjoins to the Real Now, or Instant, on either side being a limited time made up of Past and Future;

and from its vicinity to that Real Now, said to be Now also itself." Whilst upon the latter term he remarks: “As every Now or Instant always exists in Time, and without being Time is Time's bound; the Bound of Completion to the Past, and the Bound of Commencement to the Future; and from hence we may conceive its nature or end, which is to be the medium of continuity between the Past and the Future, so as to render Time, through all its parts, one Intire and Perfect Whole."

Thus, logically, "Time Present" must be regarded as a mathematical point, having no parts or magnitude, being simply the end of the Past, and the beginning of the Future. Thus, perishing in action and eluding the grasp of thought, it is a nonentity, of which, at best, an intangible and shadowy existence can be predicated:

And we may ask of it, with its carpe diem, its manifold attributes, and imputed influences, as the poet Young does of the King of Terrors:

Why start at Death? Where is he? Death arrived
Is past; not come, or gone, he's never here.
Night Thoughts, iv.

It is, however, in the more conventional sense that the phrase "Present Time" is generally made use of in writing and conversation. So Johnson, in his well-known passage: "Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings," &c. Here we have "the Present" invested with the dignity of individual existence, and compared with the Past and the Future, as having duration or extension with these; as if we should speak of a series of numbers, ascending on each side of nothing to infinity, as being divisible into negative, zero, and positive.

Among coincident forms of expression, on the part of writers who have spoken of the "Present Time" in its more precise and philosophical sense, is the following by Cowley, in a note to one of his "Pindarique Odes:" "There are two sorts of Eternity; from the Present backwards to Eternity, and from the present forwards, called by the Schoolmen

Time: Past, Present, and Future.

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Eternitas à parte ante, and Eternitas à parte post. These two make up the whole circle of Eternity, which Present Time cuts like a Diameter."

Carlyle, in his Essays ("Signs of the Times"), has this knowledgeful passage: 'We admit that the present is an important time; as all present time necessarily is. The poorest day that passes over us is the conflux of two Eternities, and is made up of currents that issue from the remotest Past, and flow onwards into the remotest Future. We were wise, indeed, could we discover truly the signs of our own times; and, by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, then, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us for a little on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity may disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer."*

Lord Strangford has left these pathetic stanzas:

Time was when all was fresh, and fair, and bright,
My heart was bounding with delight,

It knew no pain, it felt no aching:

But o'er it all its airy woes

As lightly passed, or briefly staid,

Like the fleet summer-cloud which throws
On sunny lands a moment's shade,
A momentary darkness making.

Time is-when all is drear, and dim, and wild,

And that gay sunny scene which smiled

With darkest clouds is gloomed and saddened;

When tempest-toss'd on passion's tide

Reason's frail bark is madly driven,

Nor gleams one ray its course to guide

From yon o'ercast and frowning heaven,

Till peace is wreck'd and reason maddened.

Time come-but will it e'er restore

The peace my bosom felt before,

And soothe again my aching, tortured breast?

It will, for there is One above

Who bends on all a Father's eye;

Who hears with all a Father's love

The broken heart's repentant sigh,

Calms the vexed heart, and bids the spirit rest.

Abridged from an excellent Communication, by William Bates, to Notes

and Queries, 2d series, vol. x. p. 245.

MEASUREMENT OF TIME.

Sir Thomas Browne, treating of Errors regarding Numbers, observes: "True it is that God made all things in number, weight, and measure; yet nothing by them, or through the efficacy of either. Indeed, our days, actions, and motions being measured by time (which is but motion measured), whatever is observable in any, falls under the account of some number; which, notwithstanding, cannot be denominated the cause of these events. So do we unjustly assign the power of action even unto time itself; nor do they speak properly who say that time consumeth all things; for time is not effective, nor are bodies destroyed by it, but from the action and passion of their elements in it; whose account it only affordeth, and, measuring out their motion, informs us in the periods and terms of their duration, rather than effecteth or physically produceth the same."*

Time can only be measured by motion: were all things inanimate or fixed, time could not be measured. A body cannot be in two places at the same instant; and if the motion of any body from one point to another were regular and equal, the divisions and subdivisions of the space thus marked over would mark portions of time.

The sun and the moon have served to divide portions of time in all ages. The rising and setting of the sun, the shortening and lengthening of the shadows of trees, and even the shadow of man himself, have marked the flight of time. The phases of the moon were used to indicate greater portions; and a certain number of full moons supplied us with the means of giving historical dates.

Fifteen geographical miles, east or west, make one minute of time. The earth turning on its axis produces the alternate succession of day and night, and in this revolution marks the smallest division of time by distances on its surface.

If each of the 360 degrees into which the circumference of the earth is divided, be subdivided into twenty-four hours, it will be found that 15 degrees pass under the sun during each hour, which proves that 15 degrees of longitude mark one hour of time: thus, as Berlin is nearly 15 degrees east

Vulgar and Common Errors, book iv. chap. xii.