Page:Notes and Queries - Series 3 - Volume 9.djvu/479

 3rd S. IX. JUNE 9, '66.] 469 NOTES AND QUERIES. Let no man be hasty to eat of the Fruits of Paradise before his time—which, in the folio, is expressly printed in italics as being a quotation, while in the modern edition it is absorbed in the text. In the following passage the punctuation has been strangely altered, probably by an oversight of the printer: — "This we are sure of. that what some have called Contemplation hath been nothing but Melancholy, and unnatural lengths and stillness of Prayer hath been a mere Dream."—Edit. 1693, p. 61. " . . . contemplation hath been nothing but melancholy and unnatural lengths; and stillness of prayer hath been a mere dream."—Eden's edit., vol. ii. p. 141." A few notes to this Discourse would not be amiss. The reader may profitably compare it •with the sixth book of St. Francis de Sales' Traitt de I Amour de Dieu, which Bishop Taylor un- doubtedly had before him -when writing it, and •which will explain his allusions to what St. Te- resa calls The Prayer of Quiet, or Pure Contem- plation, and what St. Francis calls The Prayer of Silence. The " saying of ^Egidius," or Friar' Giles (quoted in p. 134), is not taken from the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, but from chap. iv. of this Treatise of De Sales', where it is given with all its circumstances. That striking passage from St. Bernard, quoted in p. 142, lias not been identified oy the editor: — " I pray God grant to me peace of spirit, joy hi the Holy Ghost, to compassionate others in the midst of my mirth, to be charitable hi simplieitv, to rejoice with them that rejoice, and to mourn with them that mourn; and •with these I shall be content. Other Exaltations of Devotion I leave to Apostles and Apostolic men: the high Hills are for the Harts, the strong rocks and the recesses of the earth for the Conies." I have looked for this more than once in the works of St. Bernard, but without success. Bishop Heber has inserted in his Life of Taylor, a critical examination of his writings; but, though a poet himself, he does not dwell upon the poetry of Taylor's thought and diction, and the exquisite similes which form so characteristic a feature of our English Chrysostom. And yet he had here a fairer field for poetic contemplation than those •which Warton made his own: — " We will venture to assert that there is hi any one of the prose folios of Jeremy Taylor more fancy and original imagery, more brilliant conceptions and glowing expres- sions, more new figures and new applications of old figures; more, in short, of the body of the soul of Poetry, than in all the odes and epics that have since been pro- duced in Europe."—Edinburgh Review. "His very style — like the murmur of a deep sea, bathed in the sun—so richly coloured by an imagination that was never disunited from the affections, and at the same time so sweetly cadenced, so full of gentle and varied melodies, reflects his character."—Lecky's Ration- alitm, I860, vol. ii. p. 87.* (To be continued.) Catalogue of Mr. Quaritch's. HOW TO FIND THE DAYS OF THE WEEK FOR ANY DATE. It is obviously often of great importance to be able to tell readily on what day of the week any given day of the month fell in any given year. The following method, which I have lately worked out, seems to me so short and simple that I think many of your readers would be glad to know of it. If the day belong to the nineteenth century, the calculation by means of the Sunday letter is very easy, and any one who has a Prayer Book at hand has all that he requires. For, having found that the Sunday letter for 1866 is G, and seeing the 19th of May marked F, he knows that this day is a Saturday. I would here, however, draw attention to a short method of calculation which amounts to the same thing as finding the Sunday letter, &c., and may be useful to a person who finds himself without a Prayer Book at the time he wishes to ascertain the desired fact. Its chief recommendation is, that by a little practice, it may be all carried in the memory. 1. Let the series of numbers 1, 4, 4, 7, 2, 5— 7, 3, 6, 1, 4, 6—be called the month-numbers. This series is easily remembered by the usual distich, which I take leave slightly to alter, and to give in the form — " At Dover dwell George Brown, Esquire, Good Christian Finch, and David Friar." Where the initial G in George means 7, the month-number for the fourth month, April; and so on. 2. Let the series of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7r be called day-numbers, and represent Sunday, Monday, &c. 3. Let the number found by the Sunday letter rule be called the Sunday-number; the rule for any year in the nineteenth century being simply the following. Add to the given'year its fourth part, omitting fractions; then divide by 7, and the remainder is the Sunday-number required. These preliminaries being understood, the rule is short enough, viz.: Add the Sunday-number to the month-mimber, and the result is either the day-number for the first of the month, or exceeds the day-number by 7. The latter excess is easily perceived and allowed for. Thus: required the day of the week on which the 18th of December, 1838, fell. Process: Add to 1838 its fourth part 459, and the result is 2297. Divide by 7, and the remain- der, 1, is the Sunday-number. But the month- number for December is 6 (answering to F in Friar). Add 6 and 1, and the result, 7, means that the first of December was a Saturday. The 18th, then, must have been a Tuesday. The only difficulty which can possibly occur is when the year is a leap-year. But here, we have
 * I am indebted for these two quotations to a recent