"To count the brief and unreturning hours,
This Sun-Dial was placed among the flowers,
Which came forth in their beauty--smiled and died,
Blooming and withering round its ancient side.
Mortal, thy day is passing--see that flower,
And think upon the Shadow and the Hour!"

The whole of the small green slope is here dotted with beds of flowers;
a step, into some rock-work, leads to a kind of hermit's oratory, with
crucifix and stained glass, built to receive the shattered fragments, as
their last asylum, of the pillars of Stanly Abbey.

The dripping water passes through the rock-work into a large shell, the
gift of a valued friend, the author of "The Pleasures of Memory;" and I
add, with less hesitation, the inscription, because it was furnished by
the author of "The Pains of Memory," a poem, in its kind, of the most
exquisite harmony and fancy, though the author has long left the bowers
of the muses, and the harp of music, for the severe professional duties
of the bar. I have some pride in mentioning the name of Peregrine
Bingham, being a near relation, as well as rising in character and fame
at the bar. The verses will speak for themselves, and are not unworthy
his muse whose poem suggested the comparisons. The inscription is placed
over the large Indian shell:--

"Snatch'd from an Indian ocean's roar,
I drink the whelming tide no more;
But in this rock, remote and still,
Now serve to pour the murmuring rill.
Listen! Do thoughts awake, which long have slept--
Oh! like his song, who placed me here,