ion of time.]
[Sidenote: Change effected by Caesar.]
[Sidenote: The old and new styles.]

One great change which he effected continues in perfect operation
throughout Europe to the present day. It related to the division of
time. The system of months in use in his day corresponded so imperfectly
with the annual circuit of the sun, that the months were moving
continually along the year in such a manner that the winter months came
at length in the summer, and the summer months in the winter. This led
to great practical inconveniences; for whenever, for example, any thing
was required by law to be done in certain months, intending to have them
done in the summer, and the specified month came at length to be a
winter month, the law would require the thing to be done in exactly the
wrong season. Caesar remedied all this by adopting a new system of
months, which should give three hundred and sixty-five days to the year
for three years, and three hundred and sixty-six for the fourth; and so
exact was the system which he thus introduced, that it went on unchanged
for sixteen centuries. The months were then found to be eleven days out
of the way, when a new correction was introduced,[4] and it will now go
on three thousand years before the error will amount to a single day.
Caesar employed a Greek astronomer to arrange the system that he
adopted; and it was in part on account of the improvement which he thus
effected that one of the months, as has already been mentioned, was
called July. Its name before was Quintilis.

[Footnote 4: By Pope Gregory XIII. at the time of the change from the
old style to the new]

[Sidenote: Magnificent schemes.]
[Sidenote: Caesar collects the means to carry out his vast schemes.]

Caesar formed a great many other vast and magnificent schemes. He
planned public buildings for the city, which were going to exceed in
magnitude and splendor all the edifices of the world. He commenced the
collection of vast libraries, formed plans for draining the Pontine
Marshes, for bringing great supplies of water into the city by an
aqueduct, for cutting a new passage for the Tiber from Rome to the sea,
and making an enormous artificial harbor at its mouth. He was going to
make a road along the Apennines, and cut a canal through the Isthmus of
Corinth, and construct other vast works, which were to make Rome the
center of the commerce of the world. In a word, his head was filled with
the grandest schemes, and he