Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/603

 FACT that sun-dials will soon be a thing completely of the past, and the interest which attaches to their usually beautiful forms and their quaint mottoes, makes one wish to put on record at least a few of those that may still be found in out-of-the-way places—sometimes perched aloft on crumbling porches, sometimes hidden away in old-world gardens.

Through the courtesy of General the Hon. Sir J. Co Cowell, K.C.B., and with the kindly help of Mr. Nutt, the well-known architect of Windsor, I have been enabled to give to the readers of a presentment of a Royal sun-dial, which stands on the cast terrace in Her Majesty's private gardens at Windsor Castle. It was erected by Charles II., was designed and carved by the famous Grinling Gibbons, and its gnomon—which is an especially beautiful one—bears the King's monogram and crown. The dial-plate is graven with the Star of the Garter, with its motto, "Honi soit qui mal y pense," and with the maker's name, "Henricus Wynne, Londinii, fecit."

At Tunbridge Wells, on the Church of King Charles the Martyr, painted on a board, and in excellent preservation, within shadow of "Ye Pantiles," where walked and talked good old Dr. Johnson, Beau Nash, Cumberland the dramatist, and their following, will be found a dial bearing the motto "You may waste, but cannot stop me"; below it is the maker's name, Alex. Rae, but it is not dated. At Ferox Hall, Tonbridge, beneath the shadow of a magnificent cedar of Lebanon, more than four hundred years old, and almost