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After leaving England, Bruno went to Germany, where he resided for several years. For the learning which he found there, the readiness to entertain new ideas, the devotion to art, and the general kindliness of the people, he was filled with unbounded admiration. Speaking of the seven branches of university education, he called them the seven pillars of wisdom. On these pillars, he said,

wisdom built her home, first in Egypt, then in Persia under Zoroaster, next in India, then in Thrace, Greece, and Italy, and finally in Germany.*

Before leaving the subject of scientific education in England, we may well pause for a moment to consider an event which occurred in the year preceding Bruno's arrival-an event which forms a landmark in history, and the reception of which among the English is of great significance.

When Julius Cæsar made his famous reform of the calendar, the scientific men of Rome calculated that the year consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and they therefore provided for the addition of a day in every fourth year. After some sixteen centuries this calculation was found to be slightly erroneous, and for some time the scholars of Italy had been work

more genius Again, he re

"Since the empire has been in this land," he says, and art is to be met with than among other nations." marks that there is something "truly divine in the spirit of that nation." These and other remarks of a like character in Bruno's writings, showing the contrast between England and Germany in the sixteenth century, before the devastation of the Thirty Years' War wiped out German civilization, seem to have escaped the notice of the English biographer of the great Italian. Some of them will be found quoted in an article on Bruno, by Karl Blind, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1889. See also as to England, Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences," article "Bruno."

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ing over the problem of its correction. Finally, in 1581, they solved the problem, arrived at the exact length of the solar year-within some thirty seconds-and discovered that the world was ten days behind the true time. Accordingly, Pope Gregory XIII. issued a proclamation, which provided for dropping these ten days in October, 1582, and also pointed out to future generations that by the omission of three days in each four hundred years thereafter all substantial errors would be obviated. In the Netherlands, full as they were of scholars, this reform was at once adopted. Already they had changed the day for beginning the new year from the 25th of March to the 1st of January.* And now, however they might differ from Italy in questions of religion, they purposed to keep touch in mere scientific matters.

The English, however, who knew and cared nothing about astronomy, saw no necessity for an alteration of the calendar. For nearly two centuries thereafter their country occupied towards the greater part of Europe the position in this matter which semi-barbarous Russia holds to day. It was not until 1752 that, by an act of Parliament, her calendar was corrected by the omission of the superfluous days, and that the beginning of the legal year was fixed at the 1st of January instead of at the 25th of March. Hence, during this whole period we have to calculate the dates in English, as compared with those in Continental history, by changing them from Old to New Style. The preamble to the act of Parliament by which the change was finally brought about in England reads as if a great discovery had just been

*Davies's "Holland," ii. 30; Brodhead's "Hist. of New York," i. 443.

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made. It begins: "Whereas, the Julian calendar hath been discovered to be erroneous, by means whereof the spring equinox, which at the Council of Nice, a. D. 325, happened on the 21st of March, now happens on the tenth day of the same month; and the said error is still increasing." Then follows the enactment providing for dropping eleven days in September and for beginning the next legal year with the 1st of January. It took nearly two centuries for the Parliament of England to discover that the Julian calendar was erroneous, but even then it displayed great courage in correcting the mistake. The people could not understand the matter, and complained bitterly that their rulers were robbing them of a portion of their lives. In fact, as is shown by Hogarth's picture of the "Election Entertainment" engraved in 1755-"Give us our eleven days," became a regular party cry of the opposition.*

Such was the condition of learning at the English universities, and among the highest classes at the court while Elizabeth was on the throne. A few scholars, very few in number, studied Latin and Greek imperfectly and

It is interesting to notice the way in which the matter of reforming the calendar in England is treated by modern English writers, who, in this as in most other matters, overlook the comparative backwardness of their forefathers, and so, by insinuation if not directly, attribute the delay to the intense Protestantism of the country which objected to a measure originating with the pope. But Scotland, much more intensely Protestant, which was under the influence of Continental scholars, reformed her calendar in 1600, and Denmark and Sweden, the last of the Protestant states in 1700, more than half a century before England took her action. It is greatly to the credit of Lord Burghley that be urged the adoption of the change in England when it was first introduced upon the Continent. Strype's "Annals,” ii. 355.

little else. Of the poets I shall speak hereafter, when I come to discuss the outburst of national energy which followed the destruction of the Spanish Armada; but it may be noticed here that in prose literature nothing of any importance appeared until the publication, in 1594, of the first four books of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity." Up to that date England was about as barren of prose authors as of scholars.*

Taking it all in all, this is not a lofty nor an extensive elevation, but it springs from a valley very dark and deep. Looking at the intellectual condition of the people at large, we shall find that it corresponds with everything else which we have noticed in their life. In 1547, only eleven years before Elizabeth ascended the throne, Parliament passed a law, giving the benefit of clergy to peers of the realm who should be convicted of certain crimes, even though they could not read. If some of the peers of the realm, only about sixty in number, did not know their letters, what should we expect of the men next below them? The fact is, that in the rural districts to read and write were esteemed rare accomplishments all through the reign of Elizabeth, and, even among the gentry below the first degree, there was little difference in literary accomplishments between the master and his boorish attendants.‡

*Hallam's "Const. Hist.," i. 217.

"It must be owned by every

one, not absolutely blinded by a love of scarce books, that the prose literature of the queen's reign, taken generally, is but very mean.”— Hallam's "Literature of Europe," ii. 256.

+1 Edward VI., cap. 12.

Drake, p. 210. In the time of James I., as Burton tells us, though there was a sprinkling of the gentry, here and there one, excellently well learned, yet the major part were bent wholly on hawks

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When now we descend one step lower, we reach a class almost wholly illiterate. Shakespeare's father belonged to this order. He was High-bailiff of Stratford, but could not even write his name; neither could the poet's daughter Judith, nor even the eldest daughter of the immortal Milton.* Out of nineteen aldermen in Stratford, when Shakespeare was born, 1564, only six could write their names. Nor was this ignorance confined to the laymen. In 1578, according to Neal, out of one hundred and forty clergymen in Cornwall belonging to the Established Church, not one was capable of preaching, and throughout the kingdom those who could preach were in the proportion of about one to four.+

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and hounds, " and carried away many times with intemperate lust, gaming, and drinking." If they read a book at any time, "tis an English Chronicle, Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaule, etc., a play book, or some pamphlet of news, and that at seasons only when they cannot stir abroad."-Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy," fol. ed. p. 84. Even in the reign of James II., the average country squire had not made much improvement. "Many lords of manors," says Macaulay, "had received an education differing little from that of their menial servants. The heir of an estate often passed his boyhood and youth at the seat of his family, with no better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough to sign his name to a mittimus." - Macaulay's "Hist. of England," chap. iii. These were the men who, elected to Parliament, formed the House of Commons. But if they knew little of books, they had some fixed ideas regarding civil freedom.

*Drake, p. 629. Masson's "Milton," vi. 447. Milton's younger daughters, after his blindness, read to him books in various foreign languages, but they did not understand a word of what they read. "Memoir of Milton," by his nephew, Edward Phillips, 1694.

+ Knight.

Neal's "History of the Puritans." Hallam says that "this may be deemed by some an instance of Neal's prejudice. But that his