This Dial, which was really no common or vulgar invention, formerly stood in Privy Garden, Whitehall, at a short distance from Gibbons’s noble brass statue of James II., which, as a waggish friend of ours said of the horse at Charing Cross, remains in statu-quo to this day.  The Dial was invented by one Francis Hall, alias Line, a Jesuit, and Professor of Mathematics at Liege, in Germany.  It was set up, as the old books have it, in the year 1669, by order of Charles II.; and in addition to the parts represented in the cut, the inventer intended to place a water-dial at each corner, which he had nearly completed when the original Dial for want of a cover, as he quaintly observes, (which according to his Majestie’s Gracious Order should have been set over it in the Winter) was much injured by the snow lying frozen upon it.  But there was no chance of obtaining this out of Charles’s coffers, and the Dial soon became useless.  Its explanation was, however, considered by many mathematical men of the period as too valuable to be lost, and the Professor accordingly printed the description at Liege, in 1673, in which were plates and diagrams of the several parts.  The matter was too grave for pleasant, anecdotical Pennant, who, speaking of the Dial, in his London, says “the description surpasses my powers:”  he refers the reader to the above work, a “very scarce book” in his time, and we have been at some pains to obtain the reprint, (London, 1685,) appended to Holwell’s Clavis Horologiae; or Key to the whole art of Arithmetical Dialling, small 4to. 1712.[3]

    [3] For the loan of which we thank our esteemed correspondent, P.T.W.

The whole Dial stood on a stone pedestal, and consisted of six[4] parts, rising in a pyramidal form, as represented in the Cut.

    [4] It need hardly be explained that the above is a section, or only
        one half of the dial.

The base, or first piece, was a table of about 40 inches in diameter, and 8 or 9 inches thick, in the edge of which were 20 glazed dials, with the Jewish, Babylonian, Italian, Astronomical, and usual European methods of counting the hours:  they were all vertical or declining Dials, the style or gnomon being a lion’s paw, unicorn’s horn, or some emblem from the royal arms.  On the upper part of the Table were 8 reclining dials, glazed, and showing the hour in different ways—­as by the shade of the style falling upon the hour-lines, the hour-lines falling on the style, or without any shade of hour-lines or style, &c.  Upon this piece or table stood also 4 globes, cut into planes, with geographical, astronomical, and astrological dials.  From the table also, east, west, north, and south, were four iron branches supporting glass bowls, showing the hour by fire, water, air, and earth.