Various

“ How then has H. N. explained the doctrine which they are to refute—the meaning of the "cross and basilica" in India? The only witness in proof of it has disappeared "by falling into a volcanic crater." He himself professes to be quite ignorant of cathedral architecture and the English government, and English gentlemen generally, who have shamefully secreted such a treasure, are equally ignorant. Why had they not consulted the living Church of Hindooism, and shown it a little sympathy and respect with a view to getting enlightened? Whereas "the little they do know is derived from books." ”

“ I have heard them say that our childhood's hours are the happiest time of our earthly race; and they speak with regret of their summer bowers, and the mirth they knew in the butterfly chase; and they sorrow to think that those days are past, when their young hearts bounded with lightsome glee, when, by none of the clouds of care o'ercast, the sun of their joy shone cheerily. ”

“ But before a writer undertakes to cast a reflection on those great societies who have been labouring—not by coercion, but by instruction and persuasion, by the circulation of the scriptures and the preaching of the Gospel—to substitute Christianity for idolatry among those who are under the government of Great Britain, he should well understand the grounds of his censures, so as to be able "to explain to the conversionists that, unless this doctrine be openly refuted, the missionaries may in truth be fighting their own shadow." ”

“ Actual sunrise had certainly nothing to do with the technical commencement of the day in Ben Jonson's time. For convenience sake, six o'clock had long been taken as conventional sunrise all the year round; and even amongst the Romans themselves, equinoctial hours were frequently used at all seasons. Actual sunrise, in after times, had only to do with "hours inequall," which are said to have fallen into disuse, in common life, so early as the fifth or sixth century. ”

“ Thus I started with the production of affirmative evidence, to rebut which I cannot find, in the replies of Professor De Morgan, any negative evidence stronger than his individual opinion, which, however eminent in other respects, has undoubtedly the disadvantage of being two hundred years later than the contemporary evidence produced by me. I afterwards cited Arthur Hopton as authority that lawyers in England, in his time, did make use of a day which he classifies as that of the Babylonians ”

“ Now why should beginning one's birthday at noon appear so absurd to Varro? Simply because the hours of the night were not then supposed to be included in the birthday at all, and therefore Varro could not realize the idea of a birthday continued through the night.
He says that, according to the Umbrian reckoning, a person born on any day after the point of noon, would have only half a birthday on that day ”

“ This explanation might seem almost purposely written in reply to some such difficulty as occurred to Professor de Morgan (antè, p. 250.) , when he remarks that, if birthday were to be confined to daylight, "a child not born by daylight would have no birthday at all!" But since it was notorious amongst the Romans that the civil day began at midnight, such a quæri solitum as this could never have been mooted, if the birthday observance had not been known and acknowledged to have a different commencement. ”

“ The supposition of a misprint is favoured by the circumstance that Hopton was, at the time, professing to describe natural days of twenty-four hours; of these there are four great classes of commencement, from the four principal quarters of the day; viz. from midnight, from mid-day, from sun-setting and from sun-rising. Hopton had already assigned three of them to different nations, and the fourth he had properly assigned, so far as its commencement at sunrise was concerned, to the Babylonians. ”

“ It may also be true that "the mythology of the Nile agrees with that of the Ganges." But it would not follow that the cross is a myth derived from the mysteries of Egypt or the astronomy of India. It would still remain an unquestionable fact, that the cross, for ages an instrument of ignominious torture under Pagan Rome, only ceased to be so when Christianity had won its way through all ranks of society up to the imperial throne ”

“ From these words it may be observed that the arrangement of (birth) days was such, that to any person born after sunset, and before midnight, the day from which that night had proceeded should be the birthday; but to any person born during the last six hours of the night, the day which should succeed that night must be the birthday. ”

“ But there is another way of reconciling the discrepancy—Hopton may not have intended the words "holding till sun-setting" to apply to the Babylonians, but only to "the lawyers in England," whose day, he says, commenced at the same time as the Babylonian day. The transposition of the words in question to the end of the sentence would give such a meaning, viz. "The Babylonians begin their day at sun-rising, and so do our lawyers count it in England, holding till sun-setting." Altered in this way, the latter clause does not necessarily apply to the Babylonians. ”

“ WEATHER RULES. (Vol. vii., pp. 373. 522. 599. 627.)
J. A., Jun., being desirous of forming a list of weather rules, I send the following, in the hope that they may be acceptable to him, and interesting to those of your readers who have never met with the old collection from which they are taken.
English.
In April, Dove's-flood is worth a king's good.
Winter thunder, a summer's wonder.
March dust is worth a king's ransom.
A cold May and a windy, makes a fat barn and findy. ”

“ The mention of one county Society seems to call attention to another, namely, the Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society, the volume of whose Proceedings for 1852 is now before us, and affords satisfactory proof that the zeal and energy of its members, of which it numbers nearly five hundred, are by no means diminished. The papers and the illustrations of the volume are highly creditable to all concerned. ”

“ Several of these buildings, or the remains of them, still exist in Rome, each forum probably having had its basilica. Vitruvius, who constructed one at Fanum, says it ought to be built "on the warm side of the forum, that those whose affairs call them thither might confer without being incommoded by the weather." Yet H. N. says: "The basilica seems to have originally been the architectural plan of the Roman forum." The most perfect specimen of the antique basilica is that discovered at Pompeii, on the south side of the form and at right angles with it. ”

“ Tighe's Psyche, is the new volume of Bohn's Classical Library.—Handbook to the Library of the British Museum, &c., by Richard Sims. After the notice of this useful little volume taken by Mr. Bolton Corney in our last Number, we may content ourselves with expressing our hope that the trustees, whose desire it must be to facilitate in every way the use of the Museum library, will avail themselves of the earliest opportunity of marking their approval of this able attempt on the part of one of their officers—a junior though he be—to promote so important an object. ”

“ From it we gather that Thomas Paget, the father, named his cousin Minshull, apothecary in Manchester, overseer of his will; and that his son, Nathan Paget, eighteen years afterwards, names in his will John Goldsmith and Elizabeth Milton as his cousins, and makes bequests to them accordingly. Now, it so happens that Thomas, son of Richard Minshull of Wistaston, was an apothecary, and that he settled in Manchester, and thereupon founded the family of Minshull of Manchester. ”

“ A labourer digging up a field, which had not been ploughed or dug up in the memory of man, turned up the collar, which, being curled up at the time, sprang up, and the labourer taking it for a snake, struck it out of his way with his spade: the next morning it was discovered not to be a snake. ”

“ The want of a collection of the early antiquities of this country has long been the greatest reproach which foreigners have been able to make against the British Museum. An opportunity of removing this has lately presented itself by an offer to the trustees of the well-known and probably unique collection, The Faussett Museum. ”

“ Oxford, 1645.
A Form of Thanksgiving, to be used the Seventh Day of September, thorowout the Diocese of Lincoln, and in the Jurisdiction of Westminster.
This remarkable form has no date, but it was put forth by Williams, then Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of Westminster, in the year 1641. The House of Commons had ordered a day of Thanksgiving; but they were greatly offended with Williams, on account of this form, and, instead of going to St. Margaret's Church as usual, where it was ordered to be read, they attended divine service, after their own fashion, in the chapel of Lincoln's Inn. ”

“ Now, the misprint of "sun-setting" for sun-rising, which I am supposing in Hopton's book, would be much more likely of occurrence than these, because these form part of a series of carefully examined data from which a scientific deduction is to be drawn, while Hopton's is a mere loose description. ”

“ Consequently, Varro means by "qui Calendarum hora sexta natus est," a person born in the sixth hour of the day of the Calends; the sixth hour being that which immediately succeeded noon—the media hora of Ovid. But what Varro more immediately means by it is, not any particular point of time, but generally any time after noon on the day of the Calends. ”

“ This is far more startling than the discovery of the "cross and basilica" at Muttra. To admit it, however, would require us to disregard the testimony of a cloud of witnesses, and to ignore all our former reading. The vast systems of Asiatic superstition, it seems, are less objectionable than our own folk lore; the tremendous shades of Brahma and Budhu, of Juggernaut and the goddess Kali, with their uncouth images and horrid worship, are harmless when compared with Puck, the Pixies, and Robin Goodfellow ”

“ Two hardy Highlanders go and fetch in a kind of deal boxes the fashionable lady, who when in town never quits her bed-down before noon, the annuitant, the rich man, are all brought in the same manner in these boxes. ”

“ The anticipations of Christianity supplied by Paganism, of which Krishna "burnishing the head of the serpent" is a striking example, may be easily accounted for, and their source pointed out. As a corruption of the earliest revelation, Paganism contains, as might be expected, a portion of truth blended with much error. ”

“ And in our own anomalous repetition of twice twelve, we may still trace the remains of the twelve-hour day; we have changed the initial point, but we have retained the measure of duration.
It is, however, certain that the two methods of reckoning time continued for a long time to exist contemporaneously. ”

“ LORD HALIFAX AND MRS. CATHERINE BARTON. (Vol. viii., p 429.)
Your Correspondent Prof. De Morgan has so ingeniously analysed the facts, which he already possesses, bearing on the connexion of Sir Isaac Newton's niece with Lord Halifax, and her designation in the Biographia Britannica, that I am tempted to furnish him with some additional evidence. This question of Mrs. Catherine Barton's widowhood has often been canvassed by that portion of her relatives who do not possess the custody of Sir Isaac Newton's private letters. ”

“ POLICY HOLDERS in other COMPANIES, and intending Assurers generally, are invited to examine the Rates, Principles, and Progress of the SCOTTISH PROVIDENT INSTITUTION, the only Society in which the Advantages of Mutual Assurance can be secured by moderate Premiums. ”

“ I have supplied it in the hope that the date and place of the marriage may now be ascertained, and for the purpose of expressing my hope that we shall soon be favoured by Mr. Steinman's return to this subject.
Horace Walpole, Jun.
Life (Vol. vii., p. 429.) .—Let me give A. C. the testimony of two poets and a philosopher in support of the "general feeling" about the renewal of life, which will surely bear down the authority of three writers mentioned by him. ”