Letters on Astronomy: in which the Elements of the Science are Familiarly Explained in Connection with Biographical Sketches of the Most Eminent AstronomersOlmsted, Denison
Science
Letters on Astronomy: in which the Elements of the Science are Familiarly Explained in Connection with Biographical Sketches of the Most Eminent Astronomers
Olmsted, Denison
Astronomy
make the Russian dates correspond to ours, we must add to them twelve
days.
It may seem to you very remarkable, that so much pains should have been
bestowed upon this subject; but without a correct and uniform standard
of time, the dates of deeds, commissions, and all legal papers; of fasts
and festivals, appointed by ecclesiastical authority; the returns of
seasons, and the records of history,--must all fall into inextricable
confusion. To change the observance of certain religious feasts, which
have been long fixed to particular days, is looked upon as an impious
innovation; and though the times of the events, upon which these
ceremonies depend, are utterly unknown, it is still insisted upon by
certain classes in England, that the Glastenbury thorn blooms on
Christmas day.
Although the ancient Grecian calendar was extremely defective, yet the
common people were entirely averse to its reformation. Their
superstitious adherence to these errors was satirized by Aristophanes,
in his comedy of the Clouds. An actor, who had just come from Athens,
recounts that he met with Diana, or the moon, and found her extremely
incensed, that they did not regulate her course better. She complained,
that the order of Nature was changed, and every thing turned topsyturvy.
The gods no longer knew what belonged to them; but, after paying their
visits on certain feast-days, and expecting to meet with good cheer, as
usual, they were under the disagreeable necessity of returning back to
heaven without their suppers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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