not to be found. It was from the same source that Gibbon drew most of his materials for attacking morals, for a leading characteristic of the Dictionary is licentiousness, although there is much difference in their way of management. Bayle speaks of love with the curiosity of a natural philosopher and the elegance of a lettered mind. Gibbon shows the brutality, and not the mental sensibility, of the passion; but when he happens to throw round his subject the graces of elegant fiction, those graces are always borrowed from the curious disquisitions in Bayle. To Voltaire also the historian is largely indebted, and they who have waded through these voluminous authors must easily remember moments when they have.been struck with identity both of thought and diction. To establish the truth of this assertion it would be requisite to give examples far beyond my limits, and perhaps as far beyond the patience of most readers. Judgments of this nature are the slowly formed results of long and patient study, the conclusions being often more a matter of feeling than the single consequence of any particular instance of similitude.

But if Bayle has turned half-thinkers into free-thinkers, he has also helped to enlighten men of real talent. When Tonson, the bookseller, used to wait on Addison for his Spectators, he always found Bayle lying open upon the table. Johnson was accustomed to praise the Dictionary for the account given in it of the biographical part of literature, yet Addison was pious, and Johnson was both pious and learned, and either extracted the honey from the flower while he left behind the poison. It would have been well for D'Israeli, when tracing the literary character, if he had followed their example, for he would have drawn more substantial information from Bayle than from Gassendi's Life of Pieresa, or the many obscure authors,— obscure because they are worthless,-whom he is so fond

of following. Bayle traced conduct to its motives, and would have guided Mr. D'Israeli to the reasons as well as to the facts of his several subjects. Rousseau is the hero of Mr. D'Israeli's pages, and men of letters are exceedingly obliged to a writer, who draws the literary character from the life of a madman; yet surely Plotinus,* as described by Bayle, would have been a better figure in his picture, if he was resolved that eccentricity should stand for wisdom. The Platonic philosopher was at least a good man, while the contributor to impiety to the Foundling Hospital at Paris seems to have been the very opposite.

* Plotinus flourished in the third century, and belonged to the Platonic school of philosophy, his whole life being spent in a visionary attempt to make the mind independent of the body and to elevate man as nearly as possible to the Deity. The Calvinistic spirit of modern times is but another form of the same folly, which neglects the real and the sensible for a dreamy something, which exists but in the imaginations of religious enthusiasts, who fancy they are worshipping the Creator by contempt of his gifts. To such an extent did Plotinus carry this doctrine, that he professed himself ashamed of being lodged in a body, having so profound a contempt for everything material in him that he would never suffer his picture to be drawn. How childish does all this seem by the side of the Baconian philosophy, the most inestimable gift that was ever bestowed by man upon his fellow-creatures.

222

THE MONTHS-MAY.

MAY was called by our Saxon ancestors Tri-milki, because in that month they began to milk their kine three times in the day.*

Every year on this day met the folkmote of our Saxon ancestors—the annual parliament, as it is explained by Spelman, or convention of the bishops, thanes, aldermen, and freemen, in which the laymen having first sworn to defend one another and conjointly with the king maintain the laws of the realm, then proceeded to consult of the common safety.

The modern name of the month is from the Latin Maius, or Majus, which itself has been variously derived, and occasioned much dispute, as Macrobius tells us, amongst the Roman writers. According to one account it was called Majus from Majores, the elders, just as the month of June had its name from Juniores, the younger, these appellations having been respectively given in honour of the two great masses into which Romulus had divided the Roman people,-namely the elders and the juniors,

* Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, p. 66. London,

the one being appointed to maintain the republic by their counsels, and the other by their arms. Cincius however imagines that the name was derived from Maia, whom he calls the wife of Vulcan, while Piso contends that the goddess in question was called Majesta, and not Maia, whom others call the mother of Mercury. Some again derive it from Jupiter, called Majus from his Majesty ; and not a few have maintained that the Maia, to whom sacrifices were made in May, was the Earth, so named from its magnitude, as in the sacred rites she is called Mater Magna, the Great Mother. The plain inference from all these argumentary suppositions is that neither Varro, nor Cincius, nor Macrobius, nor any of the authors cited by him, knew a jot more of the matter than ourselves.*

It may now be said to be spring to the feelings as

"Majum Romulus tertium posuit, de cujus nomine inter auctores lata dissensio est; nam Fulvius Nobilior in FASTIS, quos in æde Herculis Musarum posuit, Romulum dicit, postquam populum in majores junioresque divisit, ut altera pars consilio, altera armis rempublicam tueretur, in honorem utriusque partis hunc Majum, sequentem Junium, vocasse. Sunt qui hunc mensem ad nostros fastos a Tusculanis transisse commemorant; apud quos nunc quoque vocatur Deus Majus, qui est Jupiter, a magnitudine scilicet ac majestate dictus. Cincius mensem nominatum putat a Maja, quam Vulcani dicit uxorem; argumentoque utitur, quod flamen Vulcanalis Kalendis Majis huic deæ rem divinam facit. Sed Piso uxorem Vulcani Majestam, non Majam dicit vocari. Contendunt alii Majam, Mercurii matrem, mensi nomen dedisse, hinc maxime probantes quod hoc mense mercatores omnes Maja pariter Mercurioque sacrificant. Affirmant quidam, quibus Cornelius Labeo consentit, hanc Majam, cui mense Majo res divina celebratur, terram esse, hoc adeptum nomen a magnitudine sicut et Mater Magna in sacris vocatur."-Macrobii Saturnal, lib. i. cap. xii.

If however we may believe the authorities, cited by the learned Vossius (De Origine et Progressu Idolatriæ, lib. i. cap. xii. p. 37, folio), the Bona Dea was addicted to drunkenness, and upon one oc

;

well as according to the strict letter of the almanac. The garden begins to put on its gayest robe of flowers the male orchis with its purple pyramids; narcissi of various sorts; the garden-squill; the narrow-leaved peony, beautiful, but short lived, in its blowing; the globe-flower; Solomon's seal; the lily of the valley; the asphodel; the monkey-poppy; ground ivy; the fleur-de-lis; the speedwell; the creeping crowsfoot; the wall hawkweed; and many others-till, towards the end of the month, the list of them would require a volume.*

casion got well whipt for draining a flask in the temple against her husband's knowledge. "Sed quam malè tanta pudicitia, a Varrone memorata, convenit cum ejus ebrietate, de quâ sic ex Sexto Clodio scribit Arnobius in sexto;-Faunam igitur Fatuam, Bona quæ dicitur Dea, transeamus; quam myrteis cæsam virgis, quòd marito nesciente, seriam meri ebiberit plenam, Sextus Clodius indicat sexto de diis Græcorum."

*The following is a brief index to the Vernal Flora.

The five last-mentioned flowers absolutely carpet the fields with yellow.