The Knickerbocker Gallery/The Sun-Dial of Isella
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Yours truly,
Richard B. Kimball
The Sun-Dial of Isella.
Our young traveller—we have no means of ascertaining his name, or who he was, possibly the author of "Views Afoot"—had safely crossed the last torrent, which, the bridge having been swept away a few days previous, was even now not altogether free from danger. He had passed the boundary of the Valais, and, in fact, stood upon the soil of Italy. To be sure, he did not at once behold the deep blue of the sky, nor breathe the mild atmosphere, nor witness the exuberance of foliage and of flower, which belong under an Italian sun. Nevertheless, the presence of the luxuriant chestnut, the softer green of the grass, and the frequent appearance of the vine itself, proved to our pedestrian, as he entered the little village of Isella, that he was fast bidding adieu to the desolate majesty of the mountain, and would soon enjoy a prospect of the loveliness of the plain.
There was nothing inviting about the place which the youth had reached, save its romantic situation. At the present time it was filled with travellers in great variety, who had been detained by the over-flowing of the "gallery" beyond, which rendered an advance impossible. The sole house of entertainment was a miserable and dirty inn, now literally without provisions, if we may except a quantity of onions and some fat bacon. It could, of course, afford no accommodation for the hourly increasing additions to the company. The only building of decent appearance was the custom-house; for Isella, being the frontier town and on the Simplon route, the number of travellers was large at certain seasons, and at this spot every species of luggage underwent a close examination. Finding he could obtain nothing whatever at the tavern, the youth, without delaying to exchange courtesies with any of his fellow voyageurs whom he encountered there, turned suddenly away, and with the promptness and alacrity of an old soldier, entered one of the meanly-built cottages which compose the town, and soon procured half a loaf of black bread, some very poor cheese, and a bottle of wine, so exceeding sour that, thirsty as he was, it was not till he had been nearly choked by the coarse crumbs he could bring himself to swallow it. He left the hut, making a series of wry faces, but, after all, feeling much refreshed and quite ready for adventure. The "gallery" was still filled with water; yet to a pedestrian, this might not prove an insurmountable obstacle; so he resolved, after reclaiming his knapsack at the custom-house, and with another glance at the surrounding scenery, to hasten on his way. Who will blame our hero? What to him—young, eager, and enthusiastic—was the crowd which pressed around the inn? What to him was the look of interest displayed by many a fair girl, as he passed, this way and that, unconscious? He was entering Italy for the first time. But he did not hasten on his way; he staid more than one good hour at this unpromising, wretched place. Notwithstanding the sun began to decline, and kept sinking and sinking toward the west, still he remained quietly on the same spot where he stopped—as he thought but for a moment—just after leaving the officers of the customs, with his knapsack in his hand.
It was before a sun-dial: a dial not remarkable in its appearance, an ordinary dial, but having some letters engraved on it, which attracted his attention, and he paused to read them. The lines made such an impression on him that he put down his knapsack, drew out his memorandum-book, and seated himself a few steps aside to copy the inscription. It was as follows:
Ma non più rètorna l'età figgita."
The vanished shadow returns when returns the sun;
But fugitive Life returns never again.
While the youth sat for a moment, engrossed with reflections which the words suggested, two persons approached the dial, and stopped before it. They were husband and wife, refined in appearance, and considerably past the prime of life. They stood quite still for two or three minutes, their eyes fixed on the inscription. The woman was the first to speak. Turning her face full on her husband, though still retaining his arm, she exclaimed: "Now I know why you left the young people at Martigny to follow us in the morning; I have not forgotten this spot; I have not forgotten that thirty years ago this day"—and tears started to her eyes as she spoke—"you and I were here, in this very place, reading these same lines: impulsive, vivacious, and very happy; we were just married; these lines struck me as full of sentiment, but it never occurred to me that they conveyed a moral lesson, for a moral lesson just then seemed quite out of place. So I thought, at least, when, with serious, almost solemn, look, you said to me, 'No, it returns no more again! Let us live so that we shall never have one regret that it does not return; let us live so that, growing wiser and happier each day, to go back to yesterday would only be a lessening of our joys.' But I did not forget what you said, Walter," she added, after a moment's pause.
"You did not, Maude," replied her husband gently; "and here we stand, before this mute monitor, to thank God that we did not pass it unheeded. Thirty years seem compressed into a day," he continued in a less serious tone; "indeed I do not feel one hour older."
"Neither do I," responded the wife; "and as for you, your heart positively seems younger than on the morning you spoke so seriously." There was an interchange of affectionate looks, when she said to him, "And yet, Walter, how insensibly events steal upon us! What agency is at work, unseen, unfelt, and unperceived, till we are taken by surprise by what is accomplished? Do you not think"———
"Holloa, there! is there any thing worth seeing up yonder?" echoed from a coarse voice below, so startlingly that our youth lost the remainder of the sentence. At the same moment, from another direction, appeared a party of young fellows, evidently students; and the lovers walked quietly away.
The young men came up in great glee. One read the inscription aloud, two or three gesticulating vigorously to his emphasis, Vociferous plaudits followed the performance. "Bravo!" cried one, "those lines are worthy of the old 'Many-Sided himself; not unlike"——— "Our subject, gentlemen, is Time," broke in another with an oratorical tone; "a very important one, when you consider how long we may be kept here, subjected to such entertainment as is served up for us at the Inferno over the way. Nevertheless it is my duty to caution you. Beware of impatience. Do well and wait. Let it be your consolation that time flies swiftly; for what says Horatius Flaccus?
'To-morrow will be one day after to-day,
and
One more day carries us a day farther on.'
That shall be the inscription on my sun-dial, when I erect one. But I am growing tedious; I perceive it myself; I beg pardon for interrupting some body, who was about to say something. Pray, proceed." "Good people," harangued another of the group, mounting a large stone for a rostrum, "permit me to arouse you to a sense of your unhappy condition. You are neglecters of the present; while you spend your precious moments here, Alfieri Fieralfi is cooking his last onion. Carpe diem. You doubt, you gainsay, you deny absolutely, you don't budge, one of you, after that onion. You are thinking of Godot's soups and Stein's fricandeaus. What a mistake! what a fatal error! Listen to me. Look not behind; the past is monumental salt; 'a living dog is better than a dead lion;' so the present living and breathing onion is worth more than a kitchen-full of have-beens, whether roasted, stewed, or fried! All which Master Schiller (catching the thought from me) indifferently well paraphrases as follows:
Who can deny, than we ourselves have seen,
And an old race of more majestic worth?
Were History silent on the Past, in sooth,
A thousand stones would witness of the truth,
Which men disbury from the womb of earth
But yet that race, if more endowed than ours,
Is past! No joy to death can glory give;
But we, we are, to us the breathing hours;
They have the best who live!'"
Immense applause succeeded the recitative, and with a general shout of
the party went frolicking on their way.
These had scarcely left before another company appeared, composed of tourists, who had evidently made each other's acquaintance en route, and their plans coïnciding, were going on together. There was a handsome girl among them, with a stylish figure, black hair, and dark eyes, who was particularly demonstrative in praise of the inscription.
"Italian!" she exclaimed; "we are really, then, in Italy—in Italy!"
"You are, Mademoiselle," said a young man, with as much admiration in his look as he dared to manifest; "this is the frontier."
"Indeed! oh! how happy I am! in Italy at last! My dreams so soon to be realized! I can scarcely contain myself with delight! And these lines: I must have a new title in my common-place book; here it is; your pencil a moment: Sun-Dial"—and the inscription was copied. "How admirable! how appropriate! 'Time, the run-away.' Ah! yes! he is a runaway; and how he keeps us chasing after him!"
While the fair one, in the exuberance of life and health, was giving play to her elastic spirits, a young girl, very pale, with hollow cheeks, attenuated form, and weak step, leaning on the arm of her father, came up and stood behind the group—a victim of consumption doubtless, on her way to a more genial climate, and—a grave. The eye of the invalid rested on the dial. Word by word she seemed to take in what was written. She did not speak, but with a gentle sigh, and a look mournful yet placid, she turned aside, and parent and child proceeded.
Meanwhile the other young lady was running on as vivaciously as ever.
"Well," she continued, "now that I have one inscription, I wish I could find another."
"Allow me to furnish one," said the young man before named; "I took it from the dial at Ununa:
All would, the last slays."
He pronounced these words in a tone so pointed that the handsome girl, although evidently used to compliment, blushed, and asked, hastily, "Where is Ununa? My geography at this instant fails me."
"It is on the Spanish frontier," replied the other.
"You have been in Spain, then?" said the handsome girl, fixing her eyes on her admirer with a glance of deeper interest than she had hitherto manifested. "Oh! how I want to go to Spain! I must go to Spain, before we return—the country of"——— The company were walking on, and the rest of the conversation was lost.
"What can it be yon party were gazing at?" said one of two very solemn personages who now drew near, in charge of a courier.
"A sun-dial, Messieurs—a very famous one—erected by Charles the Great when he conquered the Alps; to show, as you perceive, the hour of the day, and also to indicate when the weather is cloudy."
"Indeed! is it possible? You will please render the lines for us?"
"With pleasure, Messieurs; very famous lines they are written by the poet Alpheus. It's Italian—Italian, Messieurs." And the courier proceeded to translate them thus:
But Time goes along, and no body is the wiser!"
"Exceedingly impressive," said one of the solemn faces.
"Exceedingly," echoed the other.
At this moment the president of the ——— Bank in ——— street, a little in advance of his family, to show his leading position, reached the spot.
"Strange," he exclaimed, "that in these old countries they should have introduced so few modern improvements!" Turning to his daughter, he demanded "The English of those words!" It was given pretty correctly, for the young lady had "attended" to the modern languages.
"Now, then," said the bank president, "this is absolutely untrue. Any body knows that the sun comes round every day; and any body ought to know, too, that in cloudy weather the shadow do n't come. Ridiculous! Preposterous! All stuff! This machine may do well enough here, but I hardly think it would answer for a rainy day at the bank. Our notary would not know when to protest."
"But, father," said the daughter, timidly, "how do we ascertain when we have the true time except by the sun? and how else can we correct our time?"
"Child!" replied the financier, in an authoritative tone, "I am astonished at this display of your ignorance after such an education as you have received. How do we correct our time? By the chronometer, to be sure!"
And the president of the ——— Bank in ——— street strode on.
The next comer was a pragmatical old gentleman, having in his charge, as pupils, two young scions, who appeared particularly to disrelish the restraint which their senior attempted to impose, and the instruction with which he was continually endeavoring to cram them.
"Ha! a sun-dial," said the old follow; "an excellent opportunity for investigating the subject of dials! They are of great antiquity—very great antiquity. The first we have any account of is the dial of Ahaz, of which we read in the Second of Kings, and on which the shadow went ten degrees backward, as a sign to King Hezekiah; and in this connection I deem it proper to observe that the miracle was probably effected by means of refraction, performed on the atmosphere by the agency of clouds or vapors rather than by an interruption of the course of the earth or any of the heavenly bodies. I will remark about the dial, first, as to its antiquity. Ahaz began his reign just four hundred years before Alexander, and twelve after the foundation of Rome. How long the dial was in use before the time of Ahaz, we know not; without doubt a considerable period. Some writers insist that Anaximenes, the Milesian, four hundred years before Christ, was the first who made a sun-dial. Others bestow this honor on his countryman, Thales, who lived two hundred years earlier. I will not now speak of Aristarchus, nor of Papyrius Cursor, and others named in history as having made dials; for the moderns have brought dialling to much greater perfection. Opportunity, however, is wanting, else I would give you a lecture on this rigidly mathematical science. Nevertheless, if you will lend me your crayon, I will teach you how to construct the common dial, referring you, at the same time, for more special scientific information, to the works of Rivard, De Parcieux, Dom. Bodos de Celles, Joseph Blaise Garnier, Gravesande, Emerson, Martin, and Leadbeater. Now for a gnomonic figure. Let A, B, C represent"———
"Tom! I say, Tom! what the deuce are you loitering there for? We are having lots of fun up this way."
Whereat the two youths, in the most abrupt manner, took to their heels, leaving pencil and paper in the hand of the astonished preceptor, who, slowly shaking his head, but without a word of comment, walked reluctantly forward.
Almost immediately after, the author of ——— passed the spot. His person was known to our youth, who watched the movements of the man of celebrity with considerable interest. A glance was given at the dial, the lines were rapidly transferred to his note-book, while he muttered, half aloud, "A good motto for the heading of a chapter. It may do for an article. Strange, often as I have been here, this should have escaped me." It seemed to our young traveller, as the author walked away, as if his heart had been taken out, and an artificial one put in its place.
A SOLITARY and sad-looking figure paused before the dial, and raising his eyes to heaven, said something about "a day's march nearer home," and pursued his course.
The young pedestrian fell into a reverie. "It is even so," he said to himself; "the world is a mirror which reflects one's own thoughts, and feelings, and hopes, and fears, and character, and disposition. Hence the great truth: 'Seek and ye shall find.' No matter what one seeks, a supply always follows the demand."
The youth was startled from his day-dream by the vigorous and healthful voice of a man, in the prime of life, who, with a companion, had approached the dial unobserved, and was in his turn reading the inscription.
"Very neat," he exclaimed; "the Italians have a most delicate way of expressing a sentiment; but after all, this does not compare with our straightforward and forcible English proverb:
So it seems, thought the youth; for, starting hastily to his feet, he threw his knapsack over his shoulder, and was presently hid from sight by an abrupt bend in the road just below the village.