Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852.

The gentle Pleiads, shunning his fierce pursuit,

Sank late in the Ocean wave —

The length of the year, as a whole number, was early known. It was some time, however, before the disturbance created by the fraction began to be distinctly perceived, and still longer before it was reduced to any thing like satisfactory measurement. In the division of the 365 days into monthly periods, lay at first the greatest difficulty. The lunar number was in general employed, not only as the nearest marked divisor, but because the new and full moons were so generally connected with religious festivals whether this arose from convenience of arrangement, or from the idea of some deep religious meaning symbolized by the ever dying and reviving phases of this mysterious planet. We can not, however, help being struck with the superior accuracy of the Jewish, when compared with the confusion and change that prevailed in the Greek and Roman calendar.

No reader of the Bible can avoid remarking its extreme particularity of date. The oldest and, on this account, the most striking instance is in the narration of the flood: “In the 600th year of Noah, in the second month, and on the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” And so also in respect to its close. There is the same particularity, too, in the date of the Passover, of the Exodus, of the arrival at Sinai, of various events in the wilderness, of the wars and settlement of Canaan, of the building and dedication of the temple, and of the messages of the later prophets. The first would seem to present the most unanswerable proof that the Jewish computation had been derived from an antediluvian science that must have been of a higher kind than we are generally disposed to acknowledge. With all their mathematics, and with some attainments in astronomy to which the Jew could make no pretension, the calendar of the Greeks presents the appearance of far more confusion. Herodotus, after saying that the Egyptians first found out the year, and divided it into twelve parts by means of the stars, praises their arrangement (which was probably the same with, or derived from, that of the Patriarchical times) as being much more easy and correct than the division of the Greeks. “The Egyptians,” he says, “divide the year into twelve months of thirty days each; and then, by adding five days to each year, they have a uniform revolution of time; whereas the Greeks, for the sake of adjusting the seasons accurately, add every third year an intercalary month” (Herod. ii. 4). By this, however, they seem only to have made “confusion worse confounded.” The great difficulty of the Greeks arose from the attempt to do what the wiser Egyptians and Hebrews seem to have abandoned – namely, to divide the year solely by lunar months. By arbitrary intercalations, it is true, they could bring the solar and lunar years to a tolerable agreement, but then, their effect was continually to change the places of the months relatively to the seasons. The periods of intercalation were at first every two years, then three, and lastly four, and eight. In the two latter they seem to have been governed by some respect to the quadrennial return of the great Olympic games, and the Olympiads corresponding thereto. The computation of the year was afterward brought to a still greater degree of accuracy by what was called the cycle of Melon, which, by embracing a period of nineteen years brought the times of the new and full moon to fall again, very nearly, on the same days of each month.

With the Romans it was still worse. Nothing shows how much better they understood fighting than astronomy, than the way they managed their year. Under Romulus it was said to have consisted of only ten months. It is not easy to see how this could be adjusted on any mode of computation, and yet the numerical names, some of which have come down to our own calendar, would seem to present some proof of it. The last month in the year is yet called December, or the Tenth. In the days of Numa it consisted of twelve lunar months, with a system of intercalation something like that of the Greeks. The two added months were January and February, which, in numerical order would have been Undecember, and Duodecember, or the Eleventh and Twelfth. The year, however, by the clumsiness of these methods, and by the whole matter being left in the hands of the Pontifices who seem to have had little science, and still less honesty, became turned so completely topsy-turvy, that instead of being put at the end, these two new months were finally arranged at the beginning. The first was called January from the great (some say the greatest) Latin deity, Janus, whose original name was Djanus or Di-annus, The God of the Year (similar to the Greek Kronos or Time), and who was most expressively represented with two faces, one ever looking back upon the past, and the other forward to the coming period.

In the hands of the Pontifices the Roman year had again been getting more and more out of order, until, in the days of Julius Cæsar, the first of January had retrograded nearly to the autumnal equinox. This very useful despot determined to take the matter in his own hands, and make a thorough reform; but, as a preliminary, was obliged to have an extraordinary year of 445 days, which was called the year of confusion. Before this, there had been, too, a continual neglect of the fraction of a day, although its existence seems to have been known at a much earlier period. Cæsar arranged the months as they now stand, and made provision for the fraction by ordering a day to be added to February every fourth year. This seemed to answer every purpose, until, after the lapse of more than fourteen centuries, it was found that the seasons began to disagree with the almanac, and the religious festivals to fall somewhat out of place. The error was estimated to amount to eleven days; the correction of which was assumed by the Roman Pontifex, but with the aid of a science far more accurate than had been possessed by the Pontifices of the older time. The modes now adopted, for preserving accuracy in future, are known to most well-informed readers, so that we shall not dwell upon them farther than to say, that they consist generally in such omissions of the leap year, from time to time, as will correct the very small excess by which a quarter of a day exceeds the actual fraction of the tropical year.

“And God said – Let there be lights in the firmament of Heaven, and let them be for days, and for years, and for times, and for seasons.” It requires some thought before we can fully realize how much we are indebted, morally and mentally, as well as physically, to these time-measuring arrangements. We must place ourselves in the condition of the savage before we can know how much of our civilization comes from the almanac, or, in other words, our exact divisions of time aiding the idea and the memory – thus shaping our knowledge, or thinking, and even our emotions, so as to make them very different from what they might have been, had we not possessed these regulators of our inner as well as our outer man. How unlike, in all this, must be the life of the untaught children of the forest! Let us endeavor to fancy men living from age to age without any known length or divisions of the year – no lesser or greater periods to serve as landmarks, or, rather, sky-marks, in their history – and, therefore, without any possibility of really having any history. Summer and winter come and go, but to the savage all the future is a chaos, and all the past is

With the years beyond the flood,

unmarked by any intervals which may give it a hold upon the thoughts or the memory. The heavenly bodies make their monthly, and annual, and cyclical revolutions, but their eternal order finds no correspondence in his chaotic experience. The stars roll nightly over his head, but only to direct his steps in the wilderness, without shedding a ray of light upon the denser wilderness of his dark and sensual mind. The old man knows not how many years he has lived. He knows not the ages of his children. He has heard, indeed, of the acts of his fathers; but all are equally remote. They belong to the past, and the past is all alike – a dark back-ground of tradition, without any of that chronological perspective through which former ages look down upon us with an aspect as life-like and as truthful as the present. The phenomena of the physical world have been ever flitting like shadows before his sense, but the understanding has never connected them with their causes, never followed them to their sources, never seen in them any ground of coherence or relation, simply because time, the great connective medium of all inductive comparison, has been to him an undivided, unarranged, and, therefore, unremembered vacancy. Hence it is, he never truly learns to think, and, on this account, never makes progress – never rises of himself from that low animal state to which he may once have fallen, in his ever downward course from the primitive light and truth. Æschylus, in the Prometheus, makes such to have been the first condition of mankind. But, however false his theory in this respect – opposed as it is to the sure teachings of revelation – nothing can be truer to the life than the fancy picture he has given us —

No sure foreknowing sign had they of winter,Nor of flowery spring, or summer with its fruits.Unmarked the years rolled ever on; and henceSeeing, they saw not; hearing, they heard in vain.Like one wild dream their waste unmeasured life,Until I taught them how to note the yearBy signal stars, and gave them Memory,The active mother of all human science.

The Pulpit and the Press – the past and the present, the rising and the waning power, would be to some minds the first idea suggested by such a collocation of terms. But we trust the time has not yet come for the actual verification of any such contrast. Far be it from us to underrate the value of the very instrument through which we seek to instruct and reform the public mind; but woe to the land and to the age in which such an antagonism shall ever be realized. The Press is man’s boasted means for enlightening the world. The Pulpit is Heaven’s ordinance; and sad will it be for the Church, and sadder still for the State, when any other power on earth challenges a superiority, either in rank or influence. The clergy can safely occupy no inferior place; and such is their position, unless they are ever in advance of the age, not in the common cant of a superficial doctrine of progress, but as champions of the eternal and immovable truths, while they are, at the same time, contending in all the fields, whether of theology, or science, or literature, or philosophy, in which there may be an enemy to be subdued, or a victory won for Christ. Such rank, we believe, may still be claimed for the Church. In former centuries she had neither antagonist nor rival. Now has she hosts of both. Yet are her servants still in the “fore-front of the hottest battle.” Philosophy and science are swelling loud and long the note of triumph, and yet it is still true, even in a period the most thoroughly secular the world has ever known since the days of the Apostles, that the highest efforts of mind are connected, as ever, with the domain of theology. Science, literature, and even politics, find their most profound interest for the human soul when the questions they raise lie nearest to her sacred confines, and connect themselves with that “faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” What true worth in any problem in philosophy, in any discovery in science, the moment it is once conclusively settled, beyond a peradventure, that man has no hereafter? What becomes of art, and poetry? What meaning in “progress,” and “ideas,” and the “rights of man?” But it is this dread though all-conservative idea of a hereafter, which it is the office of the Pulpit ever to keep before the human soul, not as a lifeless dogma for the understanding, but in all those stern relations to a higher positive law, which shall ever prevent its coalescing with a frivolous creed in theology, or any boasting philosophy of mere secular reform. In doing this, there is needed for the Pulpit, first of all, and above all, the most intense seriousness of spirit, secondly the most thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, and thirdly, learning, science, and philosophy, fully equal to any thing that may be brought to cope with it in its unyielding strife for the dominion of the world.

In urging this, however, we should never forget, that while the power of the periodical Press is often unduly enhanced by a falsely coloring medium of estimation, the glory and influence of the Pulpit are diminished by a similar cause. Apparent variety of topic, an apparent freshness in the mode of treatment, a skillful adaptation to the ever varying excitements of the hour, all aided by the ceaseless craving in the human soul for mere intellectual novelty, give to the one an appearance of superiority it does not really possess, while, in respect to the other, the necessary repetition of the same great truths, from age to age, has produced just the contrary effect.

There is no way, therefore, in which we can better employ the imagination than in helping us to get away from such a false and blinding influence. How would the mightiest minds of the ancient world now estimate the two prime powers of which we are speaking. Let us imagine Cicero, or Aristotle, to be permitted to revisit the earth, and study its new modes of thought as they would strike them from their old and, therefore, unbiased point of observation. Lay before them all the wonders of the modern newspaper press. They would doubtless be startled with many things it would reveal to them in the discoveries of modern physical science. But take them in those wide fields of thought in which mere physical discovery avails not to give superiority, and we may well doubt whether they would yield to us that triumph we so loudly claim. There is nothing in any modern declamation on the rights of men, or rights of women, that would make Aristotle ashamed of his Politica. Cicero might hear discussed our closest questions of social casuistry, yet think as proudly of his Offices, and his Republic, as he ever did while a resident upon earth. No modern political correspondence would make him blush for his Letters to Brutus and to Atticus. The ablest leader in any of our daily journals, would not strike them as very superior, either in thought or style, to what might have been expected from a Pericles, a Cleon, an Isocrates, or a Sallust. Our profoundest arguments for and against foreign intervention might, perhaps, only remind him of the times when democratic Athens was so disinterestedly striving to extend her “liberal institutions,” and aristocratic Sparta, with just about equal honesty, was gathering the other Hellenic cities to a crusade in favor of a sound conservatism. Modern Europe, with its politics, would be only Greece on a larger scale; and our own boasts of universal annexation might only call up some sad reminiscences of the olden time, when “the masses” did their thinking through the sophist and the rhetorician, instead of the lecturer and the press.

But now let fancy change the scene from the reading room to the ministrations of the Christian temple. To present the contrast in its strongest light, let it be the humblest church, with the humblest worshipers, and the humblest preacher of our great city – some obscure corner which the literary and editorial lights of the age might regard as the last place in which there could be expected any thing original or profound. Yes – the poorest sermon of the poorest preacher in New York could hardly fail to strike the great Roman, and the greater Greek, with an awe which nothing of any other kind in the modern world could ever inspire. What wondrous truths are these, and whence came they! Whence this doctrine of eternal life, so far beyond what we ever dared to think – this preaching of “righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come,” so far transcending all the ancient moralists had ever taught! Whence these new and startling words, these superhuman ideas of grace, of prayer, of redemption, of a new and heavenly birth! And then again, the sublimity of that invocation – the heavenly thought, and heavenly harmony, of that song of praise and love! All is redolent of a philosophy to which our most rapt contemplations never ventured to ascend. Even the despised hymn-book may be soberly supposed to fill their souls with an admiration that Dryden and Shakspeare might fail to inspire. How transcendent the conceptions on every page! How far beyond all ancient or modern poetry that is alien to its spirit, or claims no kindred with its celestial origin. Here, indeed is progress. But we must close our sketch. Is the picture overdrawn? Or have we truthfully presented the highest although, in spirit, the least acknowledged aspect of the real superiority of the modern mind – even the humblest modern mind – over the proudest intellects of the ancient world?

EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR

Between Congress, Kossuth, and Christmas – an alliterative trio of topic – we hardly know where to find the handle of a single other moving hammer of gossip. The hunt for chit-chat is after all a very philosophical employ; and we do not know another colaborateur, in the whole editorial fraternity, who has smacked the turbulence of congressional debaters, the enthusiasm of the Hungarian Patrick Henry, and the cadeaux of our Noel, with more equanimity and composure than ourselves.

Our chair, as we have hinted, is an easy one; and throwing ourselves back into its luxurious embrace, we have raced through the swift paragraphs of morning journalism, or lingered, as is our wont, upon the piquancy of occasional romance, with all the gravity of a stoic, and all the glow of Epicurus. We are writing now, while the street and the salon are lighted up with the full flush of the Hungarian enthusiasm. It amounts to a frenzy; and may well give to the quiet observer a text on which to preach of our national characteristics.

And firstly, we are prone to enthusiastic outbursts, we love to admire with an ecstasy; and when we do admire, we have a pride to eclipse all rivals in our admiration. We doubt if ever at Pesth, in the best days that are gone, or that are to come, of Hungarian nationality, the chief of the nation could receive more hearty and zealous plaudits than have welcomed him upon our sunny Bay of New York. A fine person, an honest eye, and an eloquent tongue – pleading for liberty and against oppression – stir our street-folk – and we hope in Heaven may always stir them – to such enthusiasm as no Paris mob can match.

But, secondly– since we are speaking sermonwise – our enthusiasm is only too apt to fall away into reaction. We do not so much grow into a steady and healthful consciousness of what we count worthy, as we leap to the embrace of what wears the air of worthiness; and the very excess of our emotion is only too often followed by a lethargy, which is not so much the result of a changed opinion, as of a fatigue of sentiment. Whether this counter-action is to follow upon the enthusiasm that greets the great Guest, we dare not say. We hope – for the sake of Hungary, for the sake of Liberty, and for the sake of all that ennobles manhood – that it may not!

Thirdly, and finally, as sermonizers are wont to say, we are, at bottom, with all our exciting moments, and all our fevers of admiration, a very matter-of-fact people. We could honor Mr. Dickens with such adulation, and such attention as he never found at home; but when it came to the point of any definite action for the protection of his rights as an author, we said to Mr. Dickens, with our heart in his books, but with our hands away from our pockets, “we are our own law-makers, and must pay you only in – honor!”

How will our matter-of-fact tendencies answer to the calls of Kossuth? We are not advocates or partisans – least of all – in our Easy Chair: we only seek to chisel out of the rough block of every day talk, that image of thought which gives it soul and intent.

That the enlarged ideas of Kossuth – independent of their eloquent exposition from his lips – will meet with the largest and profoundest sympathy from the whole American people, we can not have a doubt. Nor can we doubt that that sympathy will lend such material aid, as was never before lent to any cause, not our own. But the question arises, how far such sympathy and individual aid will help forward a poor, down-trodden, and distant nation, toward the vigor of health and power. Sympathies and favoring opinion may do much toward alleviating the pains of wounded hearts and pride; they may, by urgency of expression, spread, and new leaven the whole thought of the world; but he is a fast thinker who does not know that this must be the action of time.

We can not but believe that the strongest sympathy, and the most generous proffers of individual aid will, after all, help very little toward practical issues, in any new endeavor of Hungary to be itself again. Poor Poland is a mournful monument of the truth of what we say. How then is our great Guest to derive really tangible aid in the furtherance of what lies so near his heart?

We pose the question, not for political discussion, but as the question which is giving a slant to all the talk of the town. To break peace with Austria and with Russia, and openly to take ground, as a government, with the subdued Hungarians, is what very few presume to hint – much less to think soberly of. The great Hungarian, himself, would hardly seem to have entertained such a possibility. We suppose his efforts rather to be directed toward the enkindling of such a large love of liberty, and such international sympathy among all people who are really free, as shall make a giant league of opinion, whose thunders shall mutter their anathemas against oppression, in every parliament and every congress; and by congruity of action, as well as congruity of impulse, fix the bounds to oppression, and fright every tyrant from advance – if not from security.

In all this we only sketch the color of the Hungarian talk.

Winter gayeties, meantime, have taken up their march toward the fatigues of spring. Furs, and velvet mantillas float along the streets, as so many pleasant decoys to graver thought. The opera, they say, has held its old predominance, with a stronger lift than ever, in the fashion of the town. Poor Lola Montes, shadowed under the folds of the Hungarian banner, has hardly pointed the talk of an hour. We can not learn that any triumphal arch graced the entry of the Spanish Aspasia, or that her coming is celebrated in any more signal way, than by the uncorking of a few extra bottles of Bavarian beer. That many will see her if she dances, there can hardly be a doubt; but that many will boast the seeing her, is far more doubtful. We can wink at occasional lewdness at home, but when Europe sends us the queen of its lewdness to worship, we forswear the issue, and like Agamemnon at the sacrifice of Iphigenia – hide our faces in our mantles.

We observe that our usually staid friend M. Gaillardet, of the Courrier, records in one of his later letters, an interview with the witching Lola; and it would seem that he had been wrought upon to speak for her an apologetic word. With all respect, however, for the French Republican, we think it will need far more than his casual encouragement, to lift the Bavarian countess into the range of American esteem.

Speaking of the French Republic, we can not forbear putting in record a little episode of its nice care for itself. M. Dumas, the favorite dramatist, publishes a letter in one of the Paris journals, in way of consolation for the imprisoned editor of the Avenement.

“My dear Vacquerie,” he says, “while I am on the lookout for sundry notices of what may touch the honorable institution of our Press censorship, I send you this fact, which is worthy to stand beside the official condemnation of the verses of Victor Hugo. M. Guizard, the director in such matters, has refused me, personally, the request to reproduce my Chevalier de la Maison Rouge; and the reason is, that my poor play has contributed to the accession of the Republic!”

Ever yours,