Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns.-Paradise Regained.

Acts.

THE Emperor John Paleologus, on his passage to the great synod of Ferrara, makes his triumphal entry at Venice on this day, 1438. "He sailed in the Bucentaur, which was accompanied by twelve stately gallies the sea was overspread with innumerable gondolas of pomp and pleasure; the air resounded with music and acclamations; the mariners and even the vessels were dressed in silk and gold; and in all the emblems and pageants, the Roman eagles were blended with the lions of St. Mark. The procession ascending the great canal, passed under the bridge of the Rialto; and the eastern strangers gazed with admiration on the palaces, the churches, and the populousness of a city, that seemed to float on the bosom of the waves. This florid water-piece by Gibbon agrees very well with the object of the imperial visit, a reunion of the two churches, which hinged upon the following points: 1. The use of unleavened bread in the communion. 2. The nature of purgatory. 3. The supremacy of the Pope. And, 4. The single, or double procession of the Holy Ghost. Thus, the simple formula of the Christian religion has ever been rendered subservient to the meddling ambition of its principal ministers, whose duty, if rightly understood, is to teach its precepts, and not to cavil about precedence and ceremonies. Had they turned their polemical swords with the same zeal against the cardinal sins as they did against each other, the world had been better. "A house divided against itself, it falleth," is a maxim worth attention, although one of the precepts of the divine founder of the Christian Temple. This may, indeed, be shaken, as the oak, which concentres its strength by concussion, but can never be destroyed, either by the indifferency of its pretended supporters, or the more subtile pens of infidel besiegers.

Mr. Harley (afterwards Earl of Oxford) is chosen speaker of the House of Commons, 1701.

Lord Amherst sails from England in the ship Alceste, on his embassy to China, 1816. The passage from Rio de Janeiro to the Cape, a distance of more than three thousand miles, was performed in nineteen days.

A peace between Austria and France is concluded at Luneville, 1801. This day is marked in the Roman calendar as the beginning of Spring.

In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature, not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. Milton.

Day.

IV.

But the world's Time is Time in masquerade,
With motley plumage, tinctur'd black and red
With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguin'd hearts, clubs typical of strife,

And spades, the emblem of untimely graves.-Cowper.

Aaron Hill, 1685, Beaufort Dr. G. Langbaine, 1658. Oxford.

St. Scholastica, V. d. Plomba- tenance; whereas Heraclitus,

Every man will be happy; and none, by the constitution of nature, is capable of being so we are capable of few pleasures; and reason and reflection cut off many of those.

The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,

Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,

Now pays to trusted man his annual visit.-Thomson.

Acts.

WALLERAN, Count of St. Pol, issues against Henry IV. of England his famous cartel of defiance, 1402.

All Souls' College at Oxford is founded by the gift of Archbishop Chicheley, 1437. In the quadrangle, which was roofed, 1440, is a curious dial, contrived by Wren, which shows the time to a minute.

Ferdinand Cortez sails from Cuba, with five hundred and eight soldiers, one hundred and ten sailors, sixteen horses, thirty-two cross-bow men, thirteen musketeers, and ten pieces of artillery, on his expedition against the Mexicans, 1519. The first English vessel ever seen in the West Indies arrived at Porto Rico the same year.

Peter the Great signs the plan which he had projected of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Petersburgh, 1724.

The French pillage the town of Loretto, and send the Madonna to Paris, 1797. No pious feeling could prevail with an insolent soldiery, where so much of the grossest superstition was unveiled. In all kinds of adversity we find a purifying virtue, and that people are surely the most happy who have the sense to profit by their sad experience.

In Addison's“ Freeholder" of this day is a humorous assemblage of patriot fans: "A pretty young lady will very soon appear with a fan, which has on it a nunnery of lively black-eyed vestals, who are endeavouring to creep out at the grates. Another has a fan mounted with a fine paper, on which is represented a group of people upon their knees very devoutly worshiping an old ten-penny nail. A certain lady, who has a good satirical turn, has filled her fan with the figure of a huge tawdry woman, representing the whore of Babylon. The following designs are already executed on several mountings. The ceremony of the Holy Pontiff opening the mouth of a cardinal in a full consistory. An old gentleman, with a triple crown upon his head, and big with child, being the portrait of Pope Joan. Bishop Bonner purchasing great quantities of faggots and brush-wood, for the conversion of hereticks with a distant view of Smithfield."

The comic muse holds to the world a picture of itself, raising the fair impartial laugh. Thomson.

The grand debate,

The popular harangue, the tart reply,

The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit,

And the loud laugh-I long to know them all.-Winter Evening.

Herman Witsius, 1626, Enck- Lord G. Dudley, beheaded, 1555.

Youth prefer beautiful to profitable conduct; for they live more from moral precepts, than from reasoning; but reasoning is directed to that which is profitable, and virtue to that which is beautiful.

That is bad, saith Aristotle, which either from defect or excess, prevents us from contemplating God; and it is an universal proverb that the liar, who possesseth the courage to mock Heaven in the face, will turn his back, when he contendeth with men.---Anon.

Acts.

THOMAS PLANTAGENET, surnamed De Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, is invested with the office of Earl Marshal of England, 1335. This title was conferred afterwards, in 1383, upon Thomas, Lord Mowbray; and 28th June, 1483, it was granted to Lord John Howard, on his receiving the Dukedom of Norfolk, in which noble house it is now hereditary.

The battle of Roveray, or of Herrings, 1429, in which that renowned rogue, Sir John Falstaff, with his little convoy of fifteen hundred archers, entrenched by four hundred waggons of Yarmouth herrings, repulses a body of five thousand French cavalry, and kills six hundred Scotch infantry; but whether these were salted and eaten by his tall fellows, is a problem, and the despatch which our poet had surely seen is not extant.

The dignity of Viscount is created in England by letters patent in favour of John Baron Beauchamp, 1440. The second Viscounty was conferred, 14th December, 1446, upon Henry Lord Bourchier.

This day is memorable for the murder, on the scaffold, of Lady Jane Grey: "Good Christian people, you come to see me die; not for any thing I have offended, for I will deliver to my God a soul as pure from trespass, as innocence from injustice."

The immortal Milton is admitted a Pensioner of Christ's College, Cambridge, 1625. The entry is as follows: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mro. Gill, Gymnasii Paulini præfecto. Admissus est Pensionarius minor, Feb. 12, 1624, sub Mro. Chappell, solvitque pro ingressu 10s." His tutor Mr. William, afterwards Bishop, Chappell, is the reputed author of the "Whole Duty of Man ;" and Dr. Gill, Master of St. Paul's School, and a composer as it appears of ballads, was the father of Dr. Alexander Gill, Ben Jonson's scurrilous opponent, but whom the poet did not live to see degraded from the Mastership, in 1640, for his "cruelties and his crimes." General St. Martin achieves the independence of Chili, 1817.

The Hilary and Candlemas Terms of law in the English and Scotch courts, conclude with the present day.

It is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle, or building, not in decay; how much more to behold an ancient noble family, which hath stood against the waves and weathers of time. Bacon.