CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



day of the year. Christmas-day was the ecclesi- 

 astical beginning of the year, till Pope Gregory 

 XIII. on reforming the calendar, ordered it, in 

 1582, to begin thenceforward on the ist of January. 

 In France and England, the same practice 

 commenced about the same time ; but in the latter 

 country, it was not till 1752 that legal writs and in- 

 struments ceased to consider the 25th of March as 

 the beginning of the year. In Scotland the change 

 was made in 1600. The English plan was found 

 exceedingly inconvenient ; for when it was neces- 

 sary to express a date between the ist of January, 

 which was the commencement of the historical 

 year, and the 25th of March, which opened the 

 legal one, error and confusion were sure to occur, 

 unless it were given in the following awkward 

 fashion : January 30, 1648-9, or 164!. Even this 

 was apt to lead to mistakes ; and it is perhaps 

 even to this day a matter of doubt with some in- 

 telligent persons, whether the execution of Charles 

 I., of which the above is the usual appearance of 

 the date, occurred in the year 1648 or 1649 : ^ m 

 reality occurred in the year which, by our present 

 uniform mode of reckoning, would be called 



1649. 



The present mode of reckoning time has ex- 

 perienced no interruption in its leading features 

 for many years, except under the French Republic. 

 In September 1793, the French nation having 

 resolved that the foundation of their new system 

 of government should form their era, instead of 

 the birth of Christ, whose religion they had in a 

 great measure shaken off, resolved also that a 

 calendar should be adopted on what was termed 

 philosophical principles. The Convention, there- 

 fore, having decreed, on the 24th November 1793, 

 that the common era should be abolished in all 

 civil affairs, and that the new French era should 

 commence from the foundation of the Republic 

 namely, on the 22d September 1792, on the day of 

 the true autumnal equinox ordained that each 

 year henceforth should begin at the midnight of 

 the day on which the true autumnal equinox falls. 

 This year they divided into twelve months of 

 thirty days each, to which they gave descriptive 

 names as follows : From the 22d of September to 

 the 2 ist of October was Vendttniaire (Vintage 

 Month) ; to the 2Oth November was Brumaire 

 (Foggy Month), and so of the rest. In ordinary 

 years there were in this scheme five extra 

 days namely, from the I7th to the 2 ist of our 

 September inclusive : these the French called 

 Jours Comple'mentaires, or Sans-culottides, and 

 held as festivals ; the first being dedicated to 

 Virtue, the second to Genius, the third to Labour, 

 the fourth to Opinion, and the fifth to Rewards. 

 At the end of every four years, forming what they 

 called a Franciade, occurred a leap-year, which 

 gave a sixth complementary day, styled Le Jour 

 de la Revolution, and employed in renewing the 

 national oath to live free or die. 



The week, though not exclusively a Christian or 

 Jewish period of time, they also abjured. The 

 thirty days of the month were divided into three 

 parts, of ten days each, called Decades; of which 

 the first nine called Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, 



Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Nonidi 

 were working or common days, while the tenth, 

 styled De"cadi, was observed as a kind of Sabbath, 

 though not exactly in the Jewish sense of the 

 word. The French, however, in indicating any 



292 



particular day, either by word or writing, generally 

 mentioned only the number of the day of the 

 month. The Republican Calendar was first used 

 on the 26th of November 1793, and was discon- 

 tinued on the 3 ist of December 1805, when the 

 calendar used throughout the rest of Europe was 

 resumed. 



CYCLES. 



A cycle, from a Greek word signifying circle,. 

 is a circulating period of time, on the completion 

 of which, certain phenomena return in the same 

 order. 



The Solar Cycle is a period of twenty-eight 

 years, during which the day of the month, in every 

 succeeding year, falls on a different day of the 

 week, from the first, till the cycle is completed ; 

 when the days of the month and week meet as at 

 first, one cycle corresponding to another. By this 

 cycle, which has no relation to the sun's course, 

 we find 'the Dominical letters,' or those letters 

 amongst the first seven in the alphabet used to 

 represent the days of the week which point out 

 the days of the month on which the Sundays fall 

 during each year of the cycle. If there were 364 

 days in the year, the Sundays would happen every 

 year on the same days of the month ; if 365 

 exactly, every seventh year ; but because the 

 additional fractional period contained in the year 

 makes an alteration of a day in every fourth year, 

 the cycle extends to four times seven, or twenty- 

 eight years. 



The first solar cycle in the Christian era having 

 begun nine years before the commencement of 

 that era, to discover what year of the cycle the 

 year 1872 forms, we must add 9, and divide the 

 sum 1881 by 28, the period of the cycle, and 

 the quotient 67 is the number of solar cycles that 

 have passed during that era, the remaining 5 

 being the year of the cycle corresponding to 1872. 



The Lunar Cycle also called the ' Golden 

 Number,' from its having been written in letters of 

 gold by the Greeks, and the ' Metonic Cycle,' 

 from its having been discovered by Meton, an 

 Athenian astronomer is a period of nineteen 

 years, at the end of which the phases of the moon 

 occur on the same days of the civil month as in a 

 previous lunar cycle, and within an hour and a 

 half of the same precise moment of time. 



The first lunar cycle in the Christian era having 

 begun one year before the commencement of that 

 era, to discover what year of the cycle 1872 forms, 

 we must add I, and divide the sum 1873 by 19, 

 the period of the cycle, and the quotient 98 is the 

 number of lunar cycles that have passed during 

 that era : the remainder, n, shewing that 1872 is 

 the eleventh year of the next lunar cycle. 



The Dionysian Period is a combination of the 

 solar and lunar cycles, forming, by the multipli- 

 cation of 28 by 19, a period of 532 years, at the 

 expiration of which it is again new moon on the 

 same days of the week and month as before : 

 chronological events are compared and tested by 

 such a calculation. 



The Indiction may here also be noticed ; though, 

 were it not for severing it from the other cycles 

 with which it is connected in the Julian period, it 

 might perhaps more properly appear under the 

 head of epochs and eras. This was a Roman 

 period of fifteen years, the first of which com- 

 menced in the year 312 after the birth of Christ. 



