CIVIL TIME being computed by an omission of one day in four thousand Gregorian years, 1900 Civil years are Twice 1900 are Thus it will be seen that nineteen hundred solar years exceed the civil measure, while twice nineteen hundred are less than the civil account. But the Metonic Cycle exceeds both the other measures, and this in different progress. Because, while its course and that of solar centuries are, 693,960 days. 1,387,921 days. popularly speaking, uniform, the course of civil centuries is not uniform. But the difference between the uniform measures being determined, that between either of them and the irregular measure may be determined by comparison, as thus: 2ndly. Civil time being in advance of Solar. 200 Metonic Cycles exceed twice 1900 solar years 8 14 6 820年 Days. Hours. 17 51 114 18 200 Metonic Cycles exceed twice 1900 civil years 16 In the general table, which exhibits the anticipation of the Metonic Cycle on civil time, the decimal figures exthe parts of an hour not exactly press as here represented. But this is solely because of the manner in which both forms of calculation are given; and not from any defect in the rule of calculation. And, when it is considered that various "anomalies," &c. cause a difference of some hours between the mean and true dates of new moon, it would be trifling to expect precision in general estimates. Now, since the course of the Metonic Cycle has been calculated for four thousand years before, and two thousand five hundred years in, the Christian era, if the average day of new or full moon, in March, for any year, for six thousand five hundred years, be required, it may at once be found by adding the number for its century to the date of new or full moon in the March of a year in the forty-first century B.c. which has a corresponding Golden number in the following table, the hours of which table refer to the division of the day from midnight to midnight. THE GOLDEN NUMBER for any year B.C. is thus found: Adopting Archbishop Usher's estimate of time elapsed since the preparation of the earth for human existence, reduce the given year B.C. to the corresponding year styled A.M. by deducting its number from 4004. To the result add 7, and divide by 19. The remainder is the golden number required. THE DAY OF THE WEEK on which any day of the year has happened, or may happen, can be determined by certain familiar tables in the Book of Common Prayer, or by tables which shew the day at once without the intervention of Sunday letters. AS TO THE DATE OF THE FIRST PASSOVER then, it is agreed, that this event happened in the beginning of the day of the first full moon after the vernal equinox, B.C. 1491; according to the Jewish division of the twenty-four hours, which commenced "between the two evenings." Now the Golden Number for this year is XII. and by adding 11 days, 14 hours, as the anticipation of the Metonic Cycle for the fifteenth century before the Christian era, to the 16th of March, at four o'clock in the afternoon, as the date of mean full moon for the golden number XII. in the forty-first century B.c. the result is the 28th of March, at six o'clock in the morning. And this date, in our account of time, is nearly the true date of THE FIRST PASCHAL FULL MOON. But THE FIRST PASSOVER embraced the evening and night of the twenty-seventh of the month in the same account; and in so far anticipated the date of full moon.* each unit contained in the first figure only of the decimal as representing a value of two hours and a half, and by counting the hours which exceed 12 as afternoon hours. Thus the first date in the above table is 347, which really expresses the third day of the month, at sixteen minutes and forty-eight seconds past eleven o'clock in the forenoon. But it may be called the same day, at four times two and a half hours, or ten o'clock instead of the later date. And in like manner the decimal 66 may be taken to express three o'clock in the afternoon, as the 15th hour of the day, and so on. *See Greswell's Dissertations, 2nd edition; Dissertation vii. and Appendix, Dissertation xi. on the computation of passovers, and the date of the first passover. A proof of the correctness of the foregoing deduction is this: Supposing civil years to have been counted as now from a very remote period, the year 1491 B.C. was the second year after leap year, and in it the vernal equinox happened on the twenty-second of March.t Now from the twenty-eighth of March B.C. 1491, to March the twenty-sixth A.D. 1842, (the second year after leap year and true date of paschal full moon,) being 3332 years less by two days in the corrected Gregorian style, is 1,216,985 days. But so many days are an exact number of lunations, and, therefore, as the moon was full at one date, so was it full at another. Again, the number of days just mentioned is an exact number of weeks, and, therefore, as the 26th of March, A.D. 1842, fell on Saturday, so the 28th of March, B.C. 1491, fell on a Sunday also, a fact on which as a layman I shall offer no comment, however obviously this embracing of the Jewish and Christian sabbaths in the establishment of the passover, as the great Jewish ordinance, and the subsequent escape "out of the house of bondage," may be enlarged upon with reference to the bondage of ordinances and the liberty under "Christ our passover," through whom a new covenant has been effected, and this not according to the covenant made "in the day" when the Jews prepared to leave Egypt. Hoping on an early occasion to point out the value of the Metonic Cycle in relation to certain other improfane history, I am, portant dates noticed in sacred and Yours, &c. J. R. MR. URBAN, Stamford, 25 March. The inclosed I found in a manuscript common-place book of an ancestor of mine, the Rev. John Adamson, M.A. Rector of Burton Coggles, and a Prebendary of Lincoln. He was also, I believe, one of the chaplains of King Charles the Second. I think you will agree that it is a good specimen of old English gallantry and loyalty, described with true pathos + See Brinkley's Astronomy, Sections 90-92, on precession of the equinoxes. MR. URBAN, May. ALLUDING to E. I. C.'s request (in your Minor Correspondence of February last) for information as to the situation of those places in monasteries appropriated to "outward confession," I am of opinion that a certain small aperture, now walled up, but formerly communicating from the cemetery through the lower part of the chancel wall of Hurley Priory church, and those low-silled windows often found near the western end of chancels-were the places for that "confession of all comers" denominated by Bedyll "uttward," (from the circumstance of the penitent being placed outside the church during confession,) to distinguish them from places more within the church or monastery where the priesthood privately confessed to one another, as your correspondent J. R. states. Hagioscopes, as we now term them, were also I think confessionals, although perhaps not what Bedyll would have called uttward confessionals. At Lenham, in Kent, attached to the southern side of the chancel, is a handsome stone arm-chair, having at its western side a low step-like base, as if for a person to kneel on at confession, and there is something like it in the northern porch of Redcliff church, Bristol. A reverend friend has just informed me that at about four feet from the ground, through the lower part of the southern wall of the chancel at Coombe in Sussex, was a circular hole, about eighteen inches in diameter, having splayed sides, and apparently coeval with the old wall, but certainly not made for a window, and therefore probably a confessional. In a paper read to the Oxford Architectural Society, last May, it was stated that " on both sides of Garsington chancel, under the westernmost windows, are low side openings which retain the old iron work, and have evidently been glazed, though long blocked up within." At the outside of the northern wall of the tower of Trumpington Church is a recess, having its base level with the ground, about 6 feet high, and 1 feet wide and deep, and at the back of which is a loop-hole, now closed up, but once communicating with the inside of the tower. And in St. Michael's church at Cambridge I lately saw at the back of the central sedile a small loop-hole, now glazed, but formerly opening into the eastern part of the south aisle. This hole is about 4 feet from the pavement of the aisle, but there are no remains of any step for the penitent to kneel on, as at Lenham. In Elsfield church, Oxon, is a low side window now walled up, at the inside of which is an original stone seat; and I believe there is something like a confessional in Gloucester cathedral-not to mention the socalled confessionals enumerated in the tenth volume of the Archæologia. Confessionals are not necessarily closed like those wooden latticed closets now commonly used on the continent; for I once saw on a hot Sunday in Bavaria a priest seated in the church-yard receiving the confessions of his parishioners, as they one by one reverentially passed him. " The term "uttward may also have been used in contradistinction to certain small chambers, probably sacristies, behind the altar, such as exist at Crewkerne and Hensdridge, in Somersetshire, and which have two doors, one for the entry, and one for the exit of penitents; each with an appropriate symbol and inscription over it. Outward Confessionals-originally I presume in the porch or galilee-are now only permitted to be in the nave or other generally accessible parts of the church; and I much doubt whether we ought to infer, as E. I. C. would seem to do, from Bedyll's use of the term outward, that any other kind of confessionals existed, (except for the priesthood as above mentioned,) and more especially since such must in Bedyll's opinion have, "a fortiori," been more objectionable than open confessionals. Yours, &c. PLANTAGENET. Mr. Dyce's Remarks on Collier's and Knight's Editions of Shakespeare. MR. URBAN, MR. DYCE has accumulated so many proofs of the absurd incompetency of these two editors of Shakespeare that very little is left for any one else to say; and even that little may possibly have been rejected already by Mr. Dyce, along with the other notes, which want of room has (most unfortunately) compelled him to omit. I must venture, however, to contribute my mite. There are two cases in which Shakespeare appears to have had reference to the works of others, which certainly merit mention among the many quotations of that description which have been brought together by his various editors. 1. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, the jest of Pistol, Then did the sun on dunghill shine," is a caricature of a line in Robert Southwell's S. Peter's Complaint (1595) "As spotlesse sunne doth on the dunghill shine (p. 15, ed. 1599). It is possible that an expression in Fletcher's Queen of Corinth (Works, vol. v. p. 438, ed. Dyce) may be an imitation from Shakespeare; but it seems far more certain that Shakespeare himself was, in this passage, unconsciously joining Bp. Hall in throwing unmerited ridicule on Southwell. 2. In As you Like it, the line "Sans teeth, sans eyes," &c. is copied from Garnier's Henriade, 1594. See Censura Literaria, ix. p. 337, second edit. As Mr. Dyce (p. 107) has taken the trouble to set Mr. Collier right about the meaning of "Lady, my brach," I wonder that he did not give him a hint on "Ay, Sir Tyke, who more bold?" (Collier, vol. i. p. 258.) Mr. Collier's note,-" Falstaff calls simple 'Sir,' and then corrects himself in order to give him a derogatory appellation," &c. is one of the most entertaining pieces of folly I ever read. Mr. Collier's life of Shakespeare is left untouched. But fairness is so great a virtue, that I heartily wish some one would give him a little advice on the proper way of treating former editors and biographers. Any one who compares his remarks on pp. Ixix. and cxix. with the original passages in Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, vol. ii. pp. 63 and 169, (as well as 168,) will fully understand what I mean. But Mr. Collier is so systematic in his blunders, when he has occasion to give a reference to Malone, that one can scarcely help suspecting him of a desire to avoid comparisons. Thus, on p. lxxvii. he refers to “ii. 90,” meaning ii. 95; on p. xci. he refers to "ii. 266," meaning ii. 566, as he elsewhere gives it rightly (viz. on pp.clxiii. and ccxi.); on p. clxxxii. he refers to "ii. 585," meaning ii. 485; and on p. cclxvii. he refers to "i. 601," meaning ii. 601. Of course all these (and many like them) may be mere misprints, just as in his note on p. lxvii. "Mary Arden" is a misprint for "Agnes Arden;" but, if so, what becomes of Mr. Collier's character for correctness? or how can we trust him where we cannot trace him, if he is found to be so unsafe a guide where we can ? Mr. Dyce (p. 294) has referred to one emendation (!) in Mr. Collier's reprint of Armin's Nest of Ninnies. Let me call your attention to another; on p. 7, line 23, of the reprint, we read, "loude of any," i. e. of course "loved of any." Mr. Collier (p. 58) suspects a misprint; otherwise he would ex plain it "allow'd of any"!! an interpretation which will most certainly be allowed" of none. In like manner, in his reprint of Patient Grissil, for the same most luckless Shakespeare Society, we meet with a misprint in his original—“ Alabaster bowels" (reprint, p. 54, line 6), which the meanest critic would at once correct to "bowle." Mr. Collier (p. 95) proposes " vessel" !! I will just add that another instance of the misprint, "away” for “awry,” mentioned by Mr. Dyce, p. 212, may be found in Davison's Poeticall Rhapsodie, p. 301, ed. Nicolas, where Sir Egerton Brydges (vol. i. p. 118) had silently corrected it; and that a specimen of another misprint, also mentioned by Mr. Dyce, p. 220, that of yet" for "yt" or "it," occurs in the Appendix to Laud's Troubles and Tryal, p. 561, where it has been lately remarked that "yet being his first visitation" is a misprint for "it being," &c. Yours, &c. A COUNTRY PARSON. When will Mr. Dyce give us an edition which may hereafter be regarded as the textus receptus of Shakespeare? RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW. Salt upon Salt. By George Withers, Esq. 1659. Withers mentions the rule of his own obedience to the government. To that power which supremacy doth bear, And, whether he comes in by right or wrong, To him what I may fear he knows too well, |