But the shadow of the Holy Empire, immemorially associated with the house of Habsburg, still darkened the counsels of German statesmen.
They were, on the other hand, probably acquainted, a couple of millenniums before Meton gave it his name, with the nineteen-year cycle, by which solar and lunar years were harmonized; 1 they immemorially made observations in the meridian; regulated time by water-clocks, and used measuring instruments of the nature of armillary spheres and quadrants.