My friends, I have lost a day.-Titus Vespasian.

Acts.

JOSEPHUS records the prodigies which, on the ninth day of the month, Xanthicus (Nisan), at the time of the purifications which preceded the feast of unleavened bread, foretold the burning of the House of God. The principal omen was, that a heifer, as she was led by the highpriest to the altar, brought forth a lamb, in the midst of the temple.

Lady Montagu writes, from Constantinople, to her sister, 1718: "Fatima, my lovely friend, has all the politeness and good-breeding of a court, with an air that inspires, at once, respect and tenderness :and now that I understand her language, I find her wit as agreeable as her beauty. A Greek that I carried with me, who had never seen her before, showed that surprise at her beauty and manners which is unavoidable at the first sight, and said to me, in Italian, This is no Turkish lady, she is certainly some Christian.' Fatima guessed she spoke of her, and asked what she said. When the Greek lady had told her, she smiled, saying, ' It is not the first time I have heard so: my mother was a Polonese, taken at the siege of Caminiec; and my father used to rally me, saying, he believed his Christian wife had found some gallant, for that I had not the air of a Turkish girl.' I assured her, that if all the Turkish ladies were like her, it was absolutely necessary to confine them from public view, for the repose of mankind; and proceeded to tell her what a noise such a face as hers would make in London or Paris. I can't believe you,' replied she, agreeably: if beauty was so much valued in your country, as you say, they would never have suffered you to leave it.'"

Prince Henry defeats Griffith Glendour at Grosmont, 1405.—The extraordinary arrêt is issued confirming the innocence of Calas and his family, 1763.

The battle of Laon, in which Napoleon is defeated by Marshal Blucher, 1814:-the day also of his marriage with the affectionate Josephine, 1796.

A man is neither good, nor wise, nor rich at once: to-day he learns a virtue, to-morrow he condemns a vice.- Feltham.

Day.

VI.

Id.

10.

Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,

Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt

Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,

Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.-Denham.

There is a lucky hit in reputation which some obtain by a defect in their judges rather than from the greatness of their merit.---Mrs. Evelyn on Donne.

Sky of wild beauty, in those distant ages

Of which time hath left scarce a wreck or a name,

Say, were thy secrets laid bare to the sages,

Who held that the stars were life's annals of flame?-Miss Landon.

Acts.

THE tenth day of the month Nisan was a Hebrew fast for the death of Miriam, the sister of Moses.

Alexander Severus is proclaimed Emperor of the Romans, A. D. 222. Upon the evening of this day, 1643, Evelyn observes " a shining cloud in the air, in shape resembling a sword, the point reaching to the north: it was as bright as the moon, the rest of the sky being very serene. It began about eleven at night, and vanished not till above one, being seen by all the south of England."

my Lord

Lady Montagu depicts this day the Ex-Sultana: "Her dress was something so surprisingly rich that I cannot forbear describing it to you. She wore a vest called donalma, which differs from a caftan by longer sleeves, and folding over at the bottom. It was of purple cloth, straight to her shape, and thick set, on each side, down to her feet, and round the sleeves, with pearls of the best water, of the same size as their buttons commonly are. You must not suppose that I mean as large as those of but about the bigness of a pea; and to these buttons large loops of diamonds, in the form of those gold loops so common on birth-day coats. This habit was tied, at the waist, with two large tassels of smaller pearls, and round the arm embroidered with large diamonds. Her shift was fastened at the bottom with a great diamond shaped like a lozenge; her girdle as broad as the broadest English riband, entirely covered with diamonds. Her whole dress must be worth a hundred thousand pounds sterling. She gave me a dinner of fifty dishes of meat, which (after their fashion) were placed on the table but one at a time, and was extremely tedious: the magnificence of her table answered very well to that of her dress. She assured me that the story of the Sultan's throwing a handkerchief is altogether fabulous; neither is there any such thing as creeping in at the bed's foot."

They have no wars among them; they live rather conveniently than splendidly, and may be rather called a happy nation, than either eminent or famous.-Utopia.

Day.

V. Id. 11.

The visions which arise without a sleep.---Byron's Lament of Tasso.

Births.

Torquato Tasso, 1544, Sorrento.
John Peter Niceron, 1685, Paris.

Deaths.

John Toland, 1722. Putney.
Peter Chirac, 1732.

Dr. Thomas Mangey, 1755.
Hannah Cowley, 1809. d. Tiver-

ton.

Madam, the distrust I have William Owen, 1824.

had of not being able to write
to you any thing which might
pay the charge of reading, has
persuaded me to forbear kissing

your hand at this distance: so,
like women that grow proud,
because they are chaste, I
thought I might be negligent,
because I was not troublesome.
Suckling's Letters.

Obits of the Latin Church.
St. Constantine, of Scotland,
Martyr, 6th Century.
St. Sophronius, Patriarch of
Jerusalem, d. 639.

St. Angus, the Culdee, Bishop
in Ireland, d. c. 824.

St. Eulogius, of Cordova, d.

859.

The house of Tasso's birth

stands on the edge of the cliff, and commands a magnificent view of the bay; it has been

repaired and modernized, until nothing that was rendered sacred by the poet remains. The house is large and roomy, with two fronts, one of which, at least the greater part of it, is in a narrow street, opposite the high wall of a nunnery, and the other

is

perched on the cliffs. At one angle of the house, there was formerly a bust of the poet in soldiers, during their invasion in terra cotta, which some French 1799, mistaking for a saint, discharged their pieces at, and shattered its head.-Anon.

The sensory of a man of honour is capacious and delicate, as the Tyrant's ear.

Italian Sentence.

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.-Romeo.

Acts.

THE marriage of Romeo Montecchio with Juliet Cappelletto was solemnized in the church of the Minorites, at Cittadella, on the present day, 1302. Their history scarcely survives among a people that have numbered and forgotten men, whose works are scattered as "the father-dust" about the world; Pliny, Nepos, and Catullus, and who, like this illstarred pair, living in delphick verse more durable than either marble or tradition, were natives of old Verona. Never were events so adapted for the tragick web, so unhappily twisted "to point a moral, and adorn a tale," as the guilty loves of "Romeo and Juliet:" a plot, simple and pathetic, solemn and retributive; which petrifies the tear about to flow. The poet has, however, rejected the sacrilegious fact, that Juliet is sitting in the chair of penitence at the time that Romeo was placed covertly behind the grating with her subtle confessor, in order to deceive the lady's mother, who was present; yet the catastrophe is justified, and the acute (but harsh) comment of Johnson is supported, that " Juliet played most of her pranks under the appearance of religion."

The University of Paris issues a circular addressed to all the French clergy, 1444, expressing the opinion of the Church, that the feast of fools, about the calends of January, was a well imagined institution, connected with Christianity, and that those who had attempted to suppress it should be curst and excommunicate. Although this appears to border upon the ridiculous, the party-coloured feast, we shall find, was first corrupted and abused by idolatry: it is to be traced into all climes, and the remotest ages, at the close of the year, and to hazard an opinion respecting so dark an observance, it might have been termed originally "the festival of the rainbow."-The Ass was a principal figure in these ceremonies, as in Egypt, and there it was the representative of Typho, or the evil principle. The memorable eruption of Mount Etna began about sunset of this day, 1669.

Napoleon espouses Maria Louisa, Archduchess of Austria, 1810.

This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, touches us not with pity. King Lear.