Dials of Distinction:
On the southern side of [Charles Waterton's] mansion on a slightly elevated mound, stands a most complete and very beautiful sun-dial, deserving of careful observation, inasmuch as it deflects great credit on the sculptor, the late George Boulby, who was a common mason at the contiguous and rural village of Crofton, in 1813.
As a work of art and especially when it was well known to have been executed by a totally uneducated man - by a common mason, not only devoid of inculcated Iiterary attainments, but by one having had no guiding artistic instruction - by a man having to earn, "by the sweat of his brow,'' the few shillings sufficient to enable him to secure some of the works of the philosopher of Athens - by one having to entirely depend on self counsel so as to elevate him in his financial and social position. I venture to say, considering all these formidable disadvantages and impediments, that this specimen of sculpture is a wonderful development of innate talent, and must be admired and applauded, for generations in futurity, as a relic of the scientific execution of this common mason.
This dial is composed of twenty equilateral triangles, which are disposed as to form a similar number of individual dials, ten of which, whenever the sun shines out, and whatever may be its altitude in the heavens, are always in use, and ever faithful time keepers. On these separate dials are engraven, severally, the names of cities in all parts of the globe, which are placed in accordance with their different degrees of longitude, by which arrangement, the solar time, at each of the cities recorded on the different dials, can be simultaneously ascertained. Boulby was truly a self-taught sculptor. Abnormis Sapiens, wise without instruction. In early life he saved a little money, with which he purchased some of Plato's works, and was so struck with Plato's observation, that every solid contained twenty equilateral triangles, that he hewed out a globular stone, and reduced that very stone to the dial here described. On one occasion Mr. Waterton, having to pass Boulby's house, on returning home from the hunting field, accidentally saw this dial in the stonemason's yard, for which Boulby asked a mere trifle. The Squire, delighted with the execution and the ingenuity of this simple minded man, generously presented Boulby with twenty guineas by way of purchase, when the ingenuous and unaffected mason was infinitely more delighted to have the honour of his own artistic skill exhibited at Walton hall, under the patronage of the Squire, than with the douceur which the sculptor erroneously considered far beyond its value.