The manipulating of the calendar was in the hands of the College of Pontifices and they arranged things to suit themselves They attempted to do to Cesar as they had done to others, and Crear consented thereto, as he was one of the College.- But when they tried to trick him out of the command of his armies he woald not consent to their subtlety, ashe was chief pontifex at that time. When the College insisted on having its own way Cesar gathered his ammies, crossed the Rubicon, marched to Rome and seized the supreme power. He then set about' making such trickery impossible, and he first of all made public when the year began and ended, and in the end, by the aid of "Sosigenes, an astronomer whom he brought from' Alexandria, he gave us the calendar as we have it to-day. To commemorate his service he changed the month Quintilis to July, the month of his birth, so July is doubly interesting. As we have already pointed out he gave February twenty-nine days and Sextilis thirty, and the change was made by his successor when he changed the name of the month and called it by his own name.
Caesar's calendar then was in use fron 47 B. C. till 1582, when Pope Gregory changed it to what is known as the few Style. He made the change because according to the clergy Easter was not falling due at the proper time. It was shown that the year instead of being 365 days, six hours, was only 365 days, five hours forty-eight minutes forty-six seconds and so during all these years an error of ten days had crept in. These ten days were, therefore, thrown out and for the fatare it was decided that only every fourth century year should bea leap year. Thus last century year 1990 was not a leap year, nor were the two previous century years 1800 and 1700, but 2,000 will be one; which gives us the old rale that a year that i in divisible by four is" leap year, only this case we take only the number of century and not the whole dat The New Style was adopted in all Roman Catholic countries at once, and in 1700 Germar Denmark and Sweden fell into line. In 1584 the attempt was made to introduce the New Style into Britain, but Reglad ander Queen Elizabeth, would nothing to do with the works of the Pope, and as we have seen she coutinued in error for nearly two hundred years. In Scotland it was otherwise The fre of the reformation had measure spent itself and papal fluence in 1600 was strong enough to force the New Style upon the country.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.