Southport Telegraph

WONDERFUL CLOCK

The Rev. Mr. Turnbull, pastor of the Harvard street church, Boston, wrote a letter during his recent tour to Europe, to the members of the Sabbath school connected with his congregation, in which he gave an interesting account of a wonderful work of art. After introducing the letter he proceeds as follows:

There is no subject that I can think of which will be so likely to interest you as the great astronomical clock, which I saw the other day in the Cathedral at Strasburg. This Cathedral, by the way, is one of the finest and oldest in Europe. It is very large and its tower or steeple is the highest in the world. It is twenty-four feet higher than the great Pyramid in Egypt, one hundred and forty feet higher than St. Paul's in London, and three or four times higher than the old South church in Boston.

The astronomical clock stands in the inside, in one corner of it, and is a most imposing and beautiful edifice. Five or six hundred people visit it every day at twelve o'clock, when it performs some extraordinary feats, which I shall mention presently, and several millions in the course of the year. There have been two or three clocks in the same place, upon the model of which the present one is formed; but it is almost a new one and was constructed by a mechanic whose name was Schwilgue, in 1838, to whom a nocturnal fete or festival was given by his fellow citizens, on the occasion of its completion.

To give you some idea of the size of this clock I will compare it with some other things with which you are familiar, instead of saying it is so many feet high or so many feet wide, &c. Well then, you remember the size of the post-office in Washington street. It is as high as that and about as wide, or at least nearly so. Its top would reach to the very summit of our meeting house and its front would go half way across the front of the meetinghouse. On the top of it is the figure of the prophet Isaiah, about as large as life; on its two sides are a couple stairs to go up into it. Its front is beautifully painted, and has placed upon with the hours of the day, the days of the week, the revolutions of the stars, the motions of the sun in the ecliptic, the days of the month, the seasons of the year, the phases of the sun and moon, and a great many other things, are indicated. Here, also, in niches prepared for them, are moveable images of the Saviour and his twelve apostles; Death, and Time with his scythe; the four ages of human life, and several other forms which I cannot mention.

To give you a little further idea of its magnitude, let me say that there are means of going inside of it, and that some ten or fifteen people, perhaps more, might stand together in its very heart and examine the machinery, Mr. Neale, two other gentlemen and myself, with the conductor, went into it and spent about an hour there. We went first into a lower, then into a higher, and then still higher apartment of it, and saw the various parts of the machinery, consisting, I should think, of more than a thousand pieces splendidly polished, and all dependent for their harmonious action upon the short, thick brass pendulum which swings in the centre.

But I must tell you what this clock does. It not only points out the hours and the days the times and the seasons, but the revolutions of the stars, the solar and lunar, equations, the conjunctions and the eclipses of the heavenly bodies, their positions at any given time, and various changes through which they pass for thousands of years. It points out apparent time, mean, or real time, and ecclesiastical time. On its face you see the motion of the stars, and the sun and planets, of the moon and her satellites. Two little cherubs, who sit on one side, the other on the other, strike the quarters of the hour—Death strikes the hour with the mace, —while four figures pass and repass before him, representing the various stages of human life.

At 12 o'clock every day, when Death strikes 12, the apostles, who are represented each with the badge of his martyrdom, come out of the clock and pass, before the image of the Saviour, bowing as they pass, and receiving his benediction, which he gives with the movement of the hand. When the Apostle Peter makes his appearance a gilded cock, which is perched on one side of the clock, flaps his wings, raises his head, and crows so loud as to make the whole Cathedral ring again. This he repeats three times in memorial of the cock that crowed three times before the fall of Peter during the crucifixion of our Saviour. Of course the cock, makes no further noise or motion till the next day at 12 o'clock when he repeats the same loud and startling crow, flapping his wings and raising his head.