nster? Should I be ignorant
of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?"
--Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]

CHAPTER XI

OF CRIPPLES

'Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter
in France.--[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]--How many
changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really
moving heaven and earth at once. Yet nothing for all that stirs from its
place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the
opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days,
dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;
there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment
found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so
gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception. 'Tis said that this
regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by
subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the
Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till
we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this
correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this
means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the
revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might
be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above
four-and-twenty hours in our computation. We have no other account of
time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and
yet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that
we still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and
what was the true use of it. What does this saying of some mean, that
the heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put
us into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch
says of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to
the motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records
of things past.

I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing
human reason is. I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to
them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:
they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of
consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasant
talke