irst great regulator of the calendar; his work
in that way was not the least wonderful of his achievements. The
calculations of his astronomers, however, were discovered in much later
times to be "out" by eleven minutes in each year. When Pope Gregory
the Thirteenth came to the throne of the papacy, in 1572, he found that
the eleven minutes had grown by mere process of time to eleven days.
He started a new reform of the calendar, which was adopted at once in
Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It gradually commended itself to France
and Germany, and it was adopted by Denmark and Sweden in 1700. England
only came into line with the reform of the calendar in 1751. The Act
of Parliament which sanctioned the change brought in the use of the
words "new style" and "old style." Only Russia and Greece now of
European countries cling to the old style. But the new style, as we
have said, was bitterly resented by the mob in England, and every one
remembers Hogarth's picture of the patriot drunk in the gutter with his
banner near him bearing the inscription, "Give us back our eleven days."

Chesterfield laughed at the success of his speech on the {276} reform
of the calendar, and made little of it. Perhaps he helped thus to
explain the comparative failure of his whole career. Life was to him
too much of a gibe and a sarcasm, and life will not be taken on those
terms.

Lord Chesterfield was then out of the running, and Lord Granville's
active career had closed. The men of the older school had had their
day; the new men had pushed them from their stools. The age of Walpole
is closed. The age of Chatham is about to open.

[Sidenote: 1751--Fred's epitaphs]

Early in the year 1751 death removed one of the elements of discord
from the family circle of George the Second. The end had come for
Frederick, Prince of Wales. The long, unnatural struggle was brought
very suddenly to a close. On the 12th of March, 1751, the prince, who
had been suffering from pleurisy, went to the House of Lords, and
caught a chill which brought on a relapse. "Je sens la mort," he cried
out on the 20th of March, and the princess, hearing the cry, ran
towards him, and found that he was indeed dead. The general feeling of
the country was perhaps not unfairly represented in the famous epigram
which became the talk of the town:

"Here lies Fred,
Who was alive and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather;
Had it been his brother,