Exiguus, a Roman abbot, suggested that this reverence ought to be paid to the Saviour of the world. He therefore began so to date the years, and assumed that the first year of the Christian era was the 4714th of the Julian period. There is no historical record, by which the nativity can be precisely ascertained; he therefore decided what year it was by such indications as he could gather from comparing the sacred history with that of profane historians. But those were times in which much less was known concerning these points than in the present age; and a mistake was then made in fixing the time of our Saviour's birth which has never since been corrected.

The manner in which this mistake was brought to light is a fine illustration of the advantages of science. Who would suppose that astronomy could have pointed out an error in chronology? and yet so it was. Dionysius fixed the 1st year of Christ in the 4714th of the Julian period. But Josephus mentions that during Herod's last illness there was a remarkable eclipse of the moon. On consulting astronomical tables, we are enabled to ascertain the date of that eclipse to the day and hour; we find that it took place in the 4710th year of the Julian period, on the 13th of March, three hours past midnight at Jerusalem. Now we know that our Saviour was born before Herod died; so that he must have been born at least four years earlier than that which was fixed upon as the first of the Christian era. He must have been born sometime before the death of Herod, since his parents took him into Egypt to save him from that tyrant's malice, and kept him there till Herod died. So that astronomy makes it perfectly clear that our Saviour was born at least four, possibly five years earlier than the time assigned by the nativity; and if the Christian era had been correctly determined, the present year would be 1839 or 40, possibly 41. The reason why the mistake, though universally admitted, never has been corrected, is, that we cannot fix the precise year, in the first place, and in the second, the error has prevailed for 1200 years through the dates of all histories, so that much confusion would be made in chronology without any correspondent gain.

How perplexing this whole subject sometimes is, appears from a controversy which raged at the beginning of this century, and has lately been revived in the New-York papers. The great question was, did the year 1800 belong to the 18th or

19th century? Many intelligent men maintained that it belonged to the 19th; and this shows how easily men are bewildered in such speculations. If any one had come to pay them 1800 dollars in parcels of a hundred each, we strongly suspect that they would have claimed the hundredth of the eighteenth parcel as well as the hundredth of all the rest : why not say that ninety-nine years made the first century as well as that 1799 years made eighteen centuries? the ninetyninth year of a century is not the last: the hundredth is the last.

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The American Almanac has now been published for severyears, and is probably familiarly known to our readers, if not actually in their hands. Its most important department is understood to be in the hands of Mr. Paine, whose observations command the entire confidence of those most interested in the subject;- no ordinary honor, since this is a field in which no one can arrive at eminence without really deserving it. In addition to these observation the Almanac furnishes a vast amount of information on various subjects of immediate and public interest; it supplies a treasury to which any one can resort for those facts, which are in constant demand, and yet have never before been made easily accessible, to those who have not libraries within their reach. It is fast taking the place of those lighter publications of the kind, which have so long been in general use, simply for the want of better. We have no doubt that it will prosper; it is now very extensively circulated and every coming year will add to its success.

ART. III. Memoirs of Casanova.

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Memoires de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, écrits par luimême. 10 vols. 12mo. Bruxelles. 1833.

THIS work is a narrative, written by himself, of the adventures of the author, who flourished in the latter part of the last century, and seems from his own shewing to have belonged to the respectable class of Chevaliers d'Industrie. The details are not in all cases of the most edifying character, and

we should hesitate about the propriety of noticing the book, if we thought that our account of it would give it any additional circulation. But as there are probably not three copies in the country, there is very little chance of its being, in any event, extensively read. Though fitted, on the whole, if generally circulated, to do more harm than good, it presents a curious, and to the philosophic reader, not uninstructive picture of the state of society in Europe, at the period immediately preceding the French Revolution. It also contains some passages of great interest, of which, as far as our limits may permit, we propose to give a translation.

Don

Although the work was originally written in French, the author was not a native of France, but was born at Venice, in a family of Spanish extraction and respectable standing. The other members of it in several preceding generations seem, however, by his account of them, to have been, like himself, more remarkable for talents and enterprise than for a strict observance of the old-fashioned rules of morality. The seat of the family in Spain was Saragossa. Don Jacob Casanova, one of our hero's ancestors, was private secretary to the king, Saragossa being at that time the capital of the independent kingdom of Aragon. In the year 1428, Don Jacob carried off from her convent Donna Anna Palafox, a nun, the day after she had taken the veil. She was probably of the family. of the present distinguished general of that name. Jacob went with his prize to Rome, where his uncle Don Juan held the high employment of Master of the Palace to the Pope, and, by his influence at court, relieved the lady from her vows and legalized the union. Don Juan, the only offspring of this marriage that reached maturity, having killed in a duel an officer of the king of Naples, was obliged to quit Rome, and took refuge with his wife and her infant son, Mark Antony, at Como. He afterwards accompanied Columbus on his voyage to America, where he died in 1493. His son, Mark Antony, was secretary to Cardinal Colonna, and a good poet, but was compelled in his turn to quit Rome, where he had given offence by a violent satire against the Cardinal de Medicis, afterwards Pope Clement VII. This prelate, on his accession to the sacred tiara, forgave Mark Antony, and recalled him to Rome, but when the city was sacked by the imperial army, under the Constable de Bourbon, in 1526, he lost every thing. He afterwards died of the plague. Vale

rian, in his work on the misfortunes of learned men, mentions him as one of the striking examples of the truth which he intended to illustrate. James, a posthumous son of Mark Antony, was a colonel in the army of Henry IV, king of France, and died in France at a very advanced age. He left a son of the same name, who established himself at Parma, and was the immediate progenitor of the author of the work before us, who was born in 1725. Before that time, however, the social position of the family had somewhat changed. Our hero's parents were actors at Venice: he had two brothers of some distinction as painters; one of them was director of the Academy of Painting, at Dresden.

Our author was intended for the church, and for some time wore the dress of an abbé. Not feeling a strong vocation for the ecclesiastical profession, he, after a while, abandoned it, and took the title of the Chevalier de Seingalt. The order of knighthood to which he belonged seems, however, as we remarked before, to have been substantially that of the Chevaliers d'Industrie. He passed his life in travelling from city to city, living in great splendor, principally on the product of his skill in gaming, although he was at times employed in different ways by several of the governments. He also numbered among his other ways and means the art of predicting future events by the aid of a familiar spirit, to whom he gave the name of Paralis, and who made answer through the intervention of cards and numbers, in a way not particularly explained, to any question which our author thought proper to propose. His success in this kind of necromancy seems to have given him a complete ascendency over the minds of certain very respectable old ladies, in France and Italy, who placed the contents of their strong boxes entirely at the discretion of him and his familiar. His fine person and engaging manners were equally successful with the younger part of the fairer portion of the creation, and a large part of the book is occupied by a narrative, in much freer language than suits the taste of the present day, of his adventures of gallantry. His achievements in the line of fortune-telling, attracted at one time the attention of the Inquisition, and he was confined by order of that tribunal in the prison called the Leads,les Plombs,-it being the attic story immediately under the Leaden roof of the ducal palace at Venice. The character and situation of this prison-house have lately been rendered familiar

to the public by the work of Silvio Pellico, who was also confined in it. Casanova's apartment was immediately above the hall where the tribunal of the inquisition held its sessions. After a confinement of more than a year he succeeded, in a way that certainly does infinite credit to his address, perseverance, and physical power, in making his escape. He published at the time an account of his imprisonment and escape, which is incorporated in the present work, and forms one of the most amusing passages. Casanova combined with his other qualities a strong taste and aptitude for literature, but has not, we believe, left any work of value.

It is not our purpose to follow our author through the long career of his adventures. Having given our readers a general idea of his character and history, we proceed to lay before them some of the most entertaining passages in the work before us. In his travels about Europe he more than once visited Voltaire at Ferney; and gives the following account of the conversation at one of these visits.

"After dinner we went to see Voltaire, who was rising from table as we entered. He was surrounded by a sort of court of ladies and gentlemen, which made my introduction rather a formal one. After being presented, I said to him: M. de Voltaire, this is one of the happiest days of my life. I have been for twenty years your pupil, and I am truly delighted with the opportunity of paying my respects to my master.

"Sir,' said he, in reply, after you have been my pupil for twenty years more I hope you will begin to think of paying me for my tuition.'

"Certainly,' said I, if you will promise me to wait so long.' "Voltaire's sally produced a laugh at my expense, but I paid no attention to it, and waited for an occasion to take my revenge. Soon after, he addressed me again, remarking 'that as I was from Venice I was probably acquainted with Count Algarotti.'

"I know him,' said I, 'not however because I am from Venice, for seven eighths of my excellent countrymen are entirely ignorant of his existence.'

"I should have said that you probably knew him as a man of letters.'

"I know him because I passed two months with him at Padua seven years ago. What particularly attracted my attention about him was the admiration which he professed for M. de Voltaire.'

"This was flattering to me, but it is not necessary for him to be the admirer of any one in order to obtain the admiration of all.' VOL. XLI. No. 88.

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