Years hence, perhaps, this warning
            You shall give again,
       In just the self-same words, dear,
            And—just as much in vain.

          THE LAGGING EASTER.

THERE may be nothing either new or
profound in the present paper; and yet, nine
people out of ten are unable to give an answer
to, much less a clear account of, the question:
Why does Lent happen this year later than
it has happened since eighteen hundred and
eleven?

To solve the problem, we are launched
into the midst of the Almanac; the meanings
of whose terms are not always easily understood.
Perhaps, instead of the Almanac we
ought to have said the Calendar; because the
calendar gives the dates, conventional or
natural, of the days of the year, with indications
of the weeks and months. Calendar
is derived from the Latin word Calendæ, the
first day of every mouth; the Roman month
being divided into three unequal periods,
called calends, ides, and nones. The Greek
almanac had no Calends belonging to it;
hence, to defer anything to the Greek Calends
was a proverbial phrase for putting it off till
"to-morrow come-never." A calendar is thus
a record of special times, comprising also, more
or less fully, the means employed for their
calculation, and for the measurement of time
in general. And this brings us to wish for
and to search after some approximate notion
or definition of time. What is Time?

Time is only motion translated into another
language. There are tables for converting
time into arc or space. Time is measured
by motion, and motion by time; a mutual
comparison of the two gives us the respective
value of each. A clock is one or more hands
in regulated motion round a dial-plate; an
hour-glass is sand in uniform motion through
a narrow hole into a transparent receptacle;
a sun-dial derives its utility from a shadow
moving from side to side. The motions of
the heavenly bodies are the foundation of all
measurement of time. If all the heavenly
bodies stood perfectly still and fixed, without
any revolution whatsoever, either in orbits
or on axes, it is difficult to imagine how any
cognisance could be taken of measured time,
even supposing inhabited worlds to exist as
at present.

Time with us is measured by years, months,
weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, and
fractious of seconds. At first hearing, it
seems like an impertinence to tell this;
but the fact is not so simple as it sounds.
There are different sorts of years, of months,
and of days, which require considerable
nicety of observation to distinguish, and
considerable clearness of head to reconcile and
dovetail together exactly; because all
measures of time must, in the long run, be exactly
commensurate at their grand starting-points
and their termini; otherwise, chronology
falls into error, which gets worse and worse
the longer it continues. There are even
metaphysical men who hold that time (as is
often supposed of matter) is infinitely divisible,
and that a quarter of a second is really
capable of as minute subdivision as we usually
acknowledge a century to be. As an
illustration: We may pass through a long and
troubled life in the course of a single half-hour's
feverish dream; on the other hand, a
long night's rest, if sound and undisturbed,
appears to consist of no more than an instant
between sleeping and waking. Time, as far
as any individual is concerned, is the trace
which a succession of events leaves upon his
memory.

To show that it is not all plain-sailing
across the bosom of Time, let us put the
question, "What is a day?" Some one will
tell you at once, "It is day when it is light,
and it is night when it is dark. A day is
the interval between sunrise and sunset."
There is no great difficulty in accepting the
definition so long as we live in a latitude
where the day and the night together make up
twenty-four hours; the shortness ot the one
compensating for the length of the other,
without any upsetting of the grand landmarks
of noon and midnight. But travel
northwards, in summer till you reach the
midnight sun, and thence proceed in the same
direction, and you will have a day of one
month, two months, three months long, until,
if you could reach the pole, you would have
but one night and one day in the year; each
of six months' duration. Those days will not
do for every-day wear.

To avoid this inconvenience, it is agreed
that the day of common life shall be the
interval of time between two successive
passages of the sun over the same meridian.
But a meridian? Listen. The earth is a
melon of the ribbed variety; only the ribs,
called meridians, are infinitely narrower and
more numerous than on any variety of melon
known. Where the blossom once grew, is
the north pole; where the stalk was attached
is the south pole; and of course the ribs run
from pole to pole. Stick a spit through your
melon, in at one pole and out at the other,
and you have, in the shape of solid iron, the
imaginary line which is called the earth's
axis. Put the melon to roast at a considerable
distance before a kitchen fire, set the
jack a-going steadily, and (if the spit were a
little inclined to the fire obliquely, instead
of being placed straight and horizontally
before it) you would have a correct image
of the way in which every portion of the
earth's surface is successively exposed to
sunshine. The moment when any rib is exactly
opposite to the fire, is the moment when the
sun crosses that meridian. But the earth
travels round the sun, and that makes a
difference in the time of the presentation of
the rib to the fire—that is, different to what