st of Strasburg's
wonderful mechanical clocks full of moving figures and symbols.

In lieu of recompense, the magistrates, desiring that their city should
be the sole possessor of such a work, accused the old man of having had
resource to the aid of the devil in producing so weird a timepiece, and
condemned him to torture and the loss of his eyesight.

Upon a pretext of making some further arrangement of the works before
the execution of his sentence, the old man was allowed once more to
mount the tower. Instead of adjusting the clock, he deranged it in some
way so that its chimes never rang out as intended, and thus the
magistrates and the citizens of Strasburg were, in a way, avenged for
the injustice done the inventor. This famous clock of Strasburg's tower
is now only a memory.

The more recent works of a similar nature have a history less sordid and
unpleasant. The first clock of the cathedral, placed inside the church
at the crossing, dated from 1352, and of course was a remarkable work
for its time.

Two hundred years later it was intended to replace it with another, but
the work was never achieved, so a third was begun with an effort to
outdo the ingenuity which had made possible the fourteenth-century
astronomical wonder.

It was planned in 1571, under the direction of Conrad Dasypodius, of
Strasburg, and his friend Daniel Volkenstein, an astronomer of Augsburg.
It was completed in 1574, restored in 1669 and 1732, and ceased its
labours through the stress of time in 1790.

The present great clock, certainly an unseemly and incongruous adjunct
of a great church, was commenced on the 24th of June, 1838, and
installed on the 31st of December, 1842. Its construction is supposed to
have reflected great credit upon its designer, one Schwilgu, a
clock-maker of Strasburg. Nothing was preserved of the more ancient
timepiece, except its elaborate case, which was restored and further
embellished.

At the base of the tower, on the summit of which is placed the crowing
cock, is a portrait of the designer. "This great man," say the local
patriots, died an octogenarian in 1856.

In 1723 a subterranean tremor sent the tower of Strasburg's cathedral a
foot out of plumb. It speaks well for the solidity of the construction
that no ill effects resulted, and to-day there are no evidences, to the
casual observer, of this deflection.

The beauty of Strasburg's cathedral was in so great repute in the middle
ages that Jean