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There are four little people upon the earth which are exceeding wise; the ants that prepare their meat in the summer; the conies that make their houses in the rocks; the locusts that go forth orderly in bands; and the spider that taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.

Acts.

Agur.

THIS is the day of the festival of ST. PETER'S CHAIR, at Rome, la festa di Cattedra, observed with great splendour by the Latin church. The martyrdom was under Nero, that monster in blood and profligacy.

Henry VII. of England espouses the Princess Elizabeth of York, and unites the two Roses, 1486. The chapel which this king founded at Westminster was consecrated on the same day, 1502.

The Tragedy of "Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex," written by Thomas, Lord Sackville, is represented at Whitehall, 1561; a period that has been justly named, by a pleasing female annalist, the birthday of the English Drama.

"Oh where is ruth; or where is pity now?
Whither is gentle heart and mercy fled?
Are they exiled out of our stony breasts,
Never to make return? is all the world
Drowned in blood, and sunk in cruelty?
If not in woman mercy may be found,
If not, alas! within the mother's breast,

To her own child, to her own flesh and blood;

If ruth be banished thence, if pity there

May have no place, if there no gentle heart

Do live and dwell, where should we seek it then?"-Gorboduc. Beattie writing to Sir W. Forbes, 1780;-"It gives me great pain to hear of the fate of poor Cook. I lately read his voyage for the second time; and considered him, not only as an excellent writer, an able philosopher, and the most consummate navigator that ever lived, but also as a person of the greatest magnanimity, modesty, and humanity. He was, indeed, one of my greatest favourites; and I look upon his death as an irreparable loss to his country and to mankind."-This latter sentence should be engraved in golden characters, as it tells us temperately, what few, properly, have comprehended, respecting the services of Capt. Cook, who was (in deed, and seriously,) a vast philanthropist.

Dread o'er the scene, the ghost of Hamlet stalks;

Othello rages; poor Monimia mourns;

And Belvidera pours her soul in love.-Thomson.

Day.

Nature that gave the Bee so feat a grace,

To gather honey of such wondrous fashion,
Hath taught the Spider, out of the same place,
To fetch a poison, by strange alteration.-Surrey.

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XIV. Nich. Copernicus, 1472, Thorn. Dagobert, the Great, 639. St.

Cal. 19.

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Denis.

Robert (of Naples), 1343.
Henry, E. of Surrey, beh. 1547.
John Sachs, 1578. Nuremberg.
Henry, Earl of Pembroke, 1601.
Salisbury.

Charles, Earl of Dorset, 1706.
d. Bath.
Rene Massuet, 1716.d.St.Maur.
Wm. Congreve, 1729. Abbey.
Peter II. (of Russia), 1730.
Thos. Ruddiman, 1757. Edinb.
Dr. Wm. S. Powell, 1775.
S. Gazon-Dourxigné, 1784.
Jonathan Toup, 1785. Exeter.
M. P. Bouvart, 1787. d. Paris.

This lady is the most exact economist, without appearing without tasting the praise of it; busy; the most strictly virtuous, much industry, as others do reand shuns applause with as proach.-Congreve's Aspasia.

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.-Appius.

Wisdom for a man's self is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house sometime before it fall: it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room for him: it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

Bacon.

Acts.

THE Emperor, Flavius Theodosius, surnamed the Great, from the magnitude of his exploits, is invested with the imperial purple, after the destruction of Valens by the Goths, 379.

Robert Bruce plunders and destroys the town of Perth, N. s. 1312. Henry V. of England, enters Rouen, 1420, "followed by a page mounted on a beautiful horse, bearing a lance, at the end of which, near the point, was fastened a fox's brush, by way of streamer,” which seemed to indicate to the astonished citizens, that the victor-monarch would sweep his crafty opposers from their holds and fastnesses.

Ben Jonson, now, alas! feeble and bed-rid, produces the last and least of its glorious race, his comedy of the New Inn, 1630, which, "was driven from the stage, and pursued with brutal hostility by his ungenerous and unrelenting enemies." This remark of that severe critic, but warm-hearted man, the late Mr. Gifford, must be weighed in the balance of human nature, and we shall then perhaps find, that detraction will always follow at the heel of arrogance, and that neither genius, adversity, uor rank, can furnish a screen against it.

Sir W. Trumbull adopts, as a birth-day poem, 1716, these verses of Pope, from Martial's epigram on Antonius Primus :—

At length, my friend (while time with still career
Wafts on its gentle wing his eightieth year),
Sees his past days safe out of fortune's power,
Nor dreads approaching fate's uncertain hour;
Reviews his life, and in the strict survey
Finds not one moment he could wish away,
Pleased with the series of each happy day.
Such, such a man extends his life's short space,
And from the goal again renews the race :
For he lives twice, who can at once employ

The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.

Lord Wellington storms and captures Ciudad Rodrigo, a Spanish town near the borders of Portugal, 1812.

He whom fortune has never failed rarely reflects upon her inconstancy.

Hannibal.

Day.

And on sweet St. Agnes' night,
Please you with the promis'd sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,

Which an empty dream discovers.-Ben Jonson.

Births.

Deaths.

1707, Hanover.

XIII. Frederick, Prince of Wales, Louis II. (of Germany), 882.
Cal.
Eusebius of Strigonium, 1270.
J. J. Barthelemi, 1716, Cassis. Peter Bembo, 1547. Bergamo.

20.

If Shakspeare were stripped of all the bombast in his passions, and dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot: but I fear that we, who ape his sounding words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is not so much as a dwarf within our giant's clothes.-Dryden.

Obits of the Latin Church. St. Fabian, Pope, M. d. 250. (See Engl. Church Calendar.) St. Sebastian, M. at Rome, 288. St. Euthymius, d. Palestine, 473. St. Fechin, Abbot in Ireland, d. 664.

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It is the very criterion of true manhood to feel those impressions of sorrow, which it endeavours to resist; and to admit not to be above the want of consolation. Pliny the Younger.

As all human things have an end, so that beautiful system of liberty, the British Constitution, will perish, when the legislative power shall be more corrupted than the executive. Montesquieu.

Acts.

THE first English Parliament assembles, devised, as a recent historian appears to corroborate, for the purpose of extending the influence, and procuring support to the projects of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, 1265.

Matthew Hale, Hugh Peters, John Rushworth, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Major Desborough, and others, are appointed of the Committee to consider of the reformation of the law, 1652.

Great Britain acknowledges the Independence of her Colonies in North America, 1783.

Sir Philip Francis writes to Mr. George Thicknesse, Master of St. Paul's School, 1785: "Though I condemn myself for neglect, believe me, I have never ceased to think of you, as of my friend and benefactor. You have the best claim to my gratitude, and a right to every service in my power. The idea of your being forced to quit a house which, I am told, you find comfortable, makes me very uneasy; and you will do me a very great favour, if you will allow me to obviate the necessity of a step which, I seriously believe, you would not feel more than I should. For the purpose of answering these last taxes, I have taken the liberty of enclosing to you a bank note of twenty pounds, which, in future, as long as you and I live, you shall regularly receive in the beginning of every year. I entreat you not to refuse this little mark of my gratitude and affection for you; and much more earnestly do I entreat you, not to attribute this offer to any motive that ought to disincline you to me." The fifth month Pluvióse of the French Revolutionary Calendar began, retrospectively, on this day, 1793, which was the first current year of the Republic.-See 22nd September. It is about the same day that the sun enters the imaginary sign Aquarius, or the water-bearer, an ancient emblem in the personifications of the present month.

A grand Requiem is performed for the service of Louis XVI. at Paris, composed for wind instruments only, by M. Robert Bochsa, 1815. This day, in the Calendar of Hesiod, is most propitious for the birth of men.

A grateful always is a generous mind.-Hawkesworth.

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