name of the man who presumably restored it (J. Tattersath, 1812) is graven on the base.
Hearing that in Canon Bowles' garden in the Close, Salisbury, was to be found a fine cruciform dial, bearing the motto, "Quam cito jucundi practeriere dies" (How quickly the pleasant days have passed away), erected by that gentleman in 1829, I eagerly went, hoping to get a drawing of it. Sad to say, the motto seemed to have been prophetic. I stood in the cathedral by the tombstone which marked his last resting place, and hunted long, but in vain, in the dear old-world garden which had once been his but saw no sign of any dial.
Within a hundred yards, at the other end of the Close, painted high up on a wall (dated 1749) about four feet square, is a dial with the tradition—"Life's but a walking shadow" (Macbeth, Act V. scene v.). James Harris, the author of "Hermes," was a Salisbury man; he died in 1780, and there are many reasons for believing that he erected this dial. On the tower of St. Martin's Church, Salishbury, almost completely effaced, and with the gnomon gone, may be traced the wreck of what was once a fine dial.
There is a story told that once of the Deans of Bangor had a faithful but certainly somewhat irascible old gardener, who used to keep away numbers of his master's troublesome visitors by saving to those he saw about, "Go about your business." After the gardener's death the Dean had engraved upon the dial in the garden the curt injunction of his faithful servant, but in this wise:—
"GOA BOW TYO URB US IN ESS 1838."
The amusing part being that it was usually mistaken to be a Welsh motto.
At Poole's Cavern—an enormous natural excavation in the carboniferous limestone of Derbyshire, running for several hundred yards under a hill about half a mile beyond Buxton—was found in 1865, buried some seven or eight feet in stalagmite, a mass of wonderfully interesting remains—Samian ware, Roman glass; coins of the time of Tryan, Faustinia, Nerva; flint implements, weapons, rings; and a Roman bronze pocket sun-dial, in perfect preservation, the same size as depicted in the sketch given. These fascinating "finds" are still to be seen in the quaint little private museum adjoining the cavern entrance. The cavern traditionally derives its name from an outlaw named Poole, who, in the reign of Henry VI, made it his place of abode and plunder depository.
