CHRONOLOGY. 



Samstag. The Arabs have the seven-days period, 

 and count the individual days instead of naming 

 them, as do the Slavonic nations, and Quakers 

 among ourselves. In England, the Latin names 

 of the days are still retained in legislative and 

 judiciary acts. 



YEARS AND SEASONS. 



The year, properly so called, or the solar or 

 astronomical year, is that portion of time which 

 elapses while the sun passes through the twelve 

 signs of the zodiac, or rather, while the earth 

 revolves once completely round the sun in its 

 orbit ; thus producing an alternation of the seasons 

 (see ASTRONOMY). 



The distinction of the seasons would soon be 

 found to depend upon the alternate approach and 

 departure, or elevation and depression, of the sun 

 in the heavens at stated and regularly recurring 

 intervals ; but the exact division of time into solar 

 years could not have been effected till astronomy 

 had made some progress ; when it would imme- 

 diately appear, in the endeavours at length made 

 to measure the year by revolutions of the moon, 

 that as an exact number of days, or times of the 

 earth's rotation, is not contained in ' a moon/ or 

 lunar month, so an exact number of moons, or 

 even of days, is not contained in a year, or revolu- 

 tion of the seasons. Such observations as these 

 led to methods of accommodating the one period 

 to the other ; or, in other words, to the 



ADJUSTMENT OF THE CALENDAR. 



Almost all the nations of antiquity originally 

 estimated the year, or the periodical return of 

 summer and winter, by twelve lunations a period 

 equal to 354 days 8 hours 48 minutes 36 seconds. 

 But the solar year is equal to 365 days 5 hours 48 

 minutes 49 seconds; or 10 days 21 hours 13 

 seconds longer than the lunar year, an excess 

 named the epact; and, accordingly, the seasons 

 were found rapidly to deviate from the particular 

 months to which they at first corresponded ; so 

 that in thirty-four years, the summer months would 

 have become the winter ones, had not this enor- 

 mous aberration been corrected by the addition or 

 intercalation of an extraordinary month now and 

 then. Thus was the calendar first adjusted, and 

 the solar year estimated to consist of twelve 

 months, comprehending 365 days. But no account 

 was taken of the odd hours until their accumula- 

 tion forced them into notice ; and a nearer approxi- 

 mation to the exact measurement of a year was 

 made about forty-five years before the birth of 

 Christ, when Julius Caesar, being led by Sosigenes, 

 .an astronomer of his time, to believe the error to 

 consist of exactly six hours in the year, ordained 

 that these should be set aside, and accumulated 

 for four years, when of course they would amount 

 to a day of twenty-four hours, to be accordingly 

 added to every fourth year. This was done by 

 doubling or repeating the 24th of February ; and, 

 in order to commence aright, he ordained that 

 year, which was called the last ' year of confusion,' 

 to be made up of fifteen months, so as to cover 

 the ninety days which had been then lost. The 

 'Julian style' and the 'Julian era' were then com- 

 menced ; and so practically useful and compara- 

 tively perfect was this mode of time-reckoning. 



that it prevailed generally amongst Christian 

 nations, and remained undisturbed till the renewed 

 accumulation of the remaining error of eleven 

 minutes or so had amounted, in 1 582 years after 

 the birth of Christ, to ten complete days ; the 

 vernal equinox falling on the nth instead of the 

 2ist of March, as it did at the time of the Council 

 of Nice, 325 years after the birth of Christ. 



This shifting of days had caused great disturb- 

 ances, by unfixing the times of the celebration of 

 Easter, and hence of all the other movable feasts. 

 And accordingly, Pope Gregory XIII. after deep 

 study and calculation, ordained that ten days 

 should be deducted from the year 1 582, by calling 

 what, according to the old calendar, would have 

 been reckoned the 5th of October, the I5th of 

 October 1582. The Catholic nations, in general, 

 adopted the style ordained by their sovereign 

 pontiff ; but the Protestants were then too much 

 inflamed against Catholicism in all its relations, 

 to receive even a purely scientific improvement 

 from such hands. The Lutherans of Germany, 

 Switzerland, and, as already mentioned, of the 

 Low Countries, at length gave way in 1700, when 

 it had become necessary to omit eleven instead of 

 ten days. It was not till 1751, and after great 

 inconvenience had been experienced for nearly two 

 centuries, from the difference of the reckoning, that 

 an act was passed (24 Geo. II. 1751) for equalising 

 the style in Great Britain and Ireland with that 

 used in other countries of Europe. It was enacted, 

 in the first place, that eleven days should be omitted 

 after the 2d of September 1752, so that the ensuing 

 day, the 3d, should be called the I4th ; and, in 

 order to counteract a certain minute overplus of 

 time, that 'the years 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300, 

 or any other hundredth year of our Lord which 

 shall happen in time to come, except only every 

 fourth hundredth year of our Lord, whereof the 

 year 2000 shall be the first, shall not be considered 

 as leap-years.' A similar change was about the 

 same time made in Sweden and Tuscany ; and 

 Russia and Greece are now the only countries 

 which adhere to the old style; an adherence which 

 renders it necessary, when a letter is thence ad- 

 dressed to a person in another country, that the 



date should be given thus : April ^- or j'^' \ ; for 



it will be observed, the year 1800, not being con- 

 sidered by us as a leap-year, has interjected 

 another (or twelfth) day between old and new 

 style. 



In the Julian arrangement, the odd months 

 the first, third, fifth, c. were to have thirty-one 

 days, and the even numbers thirty days, except 

 February ; but Augustus altered the disposition for 

 that which now holds. The names of the twelve 

 months are strictly Roman ; the origin of several 

 of them is obscure. 



The commencement of the year, till a com- 

 paratively very recent period, was the subject of 

 no general rule. The Athenians commenced it in 

 June, the Macedonians in September, the Romans 

 first in March, and afterwards in January, the 

 Persians on nth August, the Mexicans on 23d 

 February, the Mohammedans in July, and astron- 

 omers at the vernal equinox. Amongst Christians, 

 Christmas-day, the day of- the Circumcision, the ist 

 of January, the day of the Conception, the 1 5th of 

 March, and Easter-day, have all been used at 

 various times, and by various nations, as the initial 



