red in this way, the
latter clause does not necessarily apply to the Babylonians.

Here again we have a lawyers' day almost verbally identical with one
assigned to them by Sir Edward Coke: "Dies artificialis sive solaris
incipit in ortu solis et desinit in occasu, and of this the law of England
takes hold _in many cases_."

Nor does Lord Coke strengthen or vary his description in the least, when
speaking of the day commencing at midnight; he uses again the same
expression with regard to it, "The Egyptians and Romans from midnight, and
so doth the law of England _in many cases_."

Hence the authority of Chief Justice Coke, is at best only neutral; for who
will undertake to prove to which of these classes of "many cases" Lord Coke
meant to assign the attainment of majority?

In support of Ben Jonson's testimony, it may be urged that the midnight
initial of the day was itself derived by us from the Romans; and it is
nearly certain that _they_ did not perform any legal act, connected with
birthday, until the commencement of the _dies solis_.

A proof of this may be observed in the discussion by Aulus Gellius (_Noct.
Attic._, iii. 2.) as to which day, the preceding or the following, a
person's birth, happening in the night, was to be attributed. He quotes a
fragment from Varro,--

"Homines qui ex media nocte ad proximam mediam noctem his horis XXIV
nati sunt, uno die nati dicuntur."

On which Gellius remarks:

"From these words it may be observed that the arrangement of (birth)
days was such, that to any person born after sunset, and before
midnight, the day from which that night had proceeded should be the
birthday; but to any person born during the last six hours of the
night, the day which should succeed that night must be the birthday."

This explanation might seem almost purposely written in reply to some such
difficulty as occurred to PROFESSOR DE MORGAN (_ante_, p. 250.), when he
remarks that, if birthday were to be confined to daylight, "a child not
born by daylight would have no birthday at all!" But since it was notorious
amongst the Romans that the civil day began at midnight, such a _quaeri
solitum_ as this could never have been mooted, if the birthday observance
had not been known and acknowledged to have a different commencement. In
continuation of the same subject, Gellius proceeds to quote another passage
from Varro, which I shall also repeat, not only as furnishing still