88 Restoratmi of the Gregorian Calendar in France. 



care their inconveniences and disadvantages. The princi- 

 pal fault of the present calendar is in its intercalation. By 

 fixing the commencement of the year at the midnight which 

 at the observatory of Paris precedes the true autumnat 

 equinox, it fulfils, indeed, in the most rigovous manner, the 

 condition of constantly attaching to the same season the 

 origin of the year ; but then they cease to be periods of re- 

 gular time, easy to be decomposed into davs j which must 

 occasion confusion in chronology, already too much em 

 barrassed by the multitude of a;ras. Astronomers, to 

 whom this def«"Ct is very sensible, have severa:! times re- 

 quested a reformation of it. Before the first bissextile year 

 was introduced into the new calendar, they proposed to the 

 committee of public instruction of the National Conven- 

 tion to adopt a regular intercalation, and their demand was 

 favourably received. At that period the convention re- 

 turned to good principles ; and, employing itself with in- 

 struction aiid the progress of knowledge, showed to the 

 learned a deference and consideration, the remembrance of' 

 which they retain. They v\ill always recolletL with lively 

 gratitude, that sercral of its members, by a noble devotion 

 in the midst of the storms of the revolution, preserved front 

 total destruction the monuments of the seiencea and the 

 arts. Romme, the principal author of the new calendar^ 

 convoked several men of letters ; he drew up, in concert 

 with them, the project of a law by which a regular mode of 

 intercalation was substituted for the mode before esta- 

 blished ; but, involved a few days after in a horrid event, 

 he perished, and his project of a la'v was abandoned. It 

 would, how ever, be necessary lo recur to it, if we preserved 

 the present calendar ; which, being thereby changed in one 

 of its most essential elements, would present the irregularity 

 of a (irst bissextile placed in the third vear. The suppres- 

 sion of the decades made it experience a more considerable 

 char.ge. Tliey gave the facility of finding every moment 

 ■ the time of the montli ; but at the end of each year the 

 complementary days disturbed the order of thinss attached 

 to the diffeyt-nt davs of the decade, which then rendered ad- 

 mini>traiive measures necessary. The use of a small inde- 

 pendent period of months and years, such as the week, ob- 

 viatts this rn<,on\ei>iencc ; and already that period has been 

 re-established in France ; which, since the hisrhest anti- 

 quity, in which its origin is lost, circulates without inter- 

 ruption through centuries, mingling with the successive 

 Calendars of ditlercnt nations. 



But the greatest inconvenience of the new calendar is 



the 



