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A CALENDAR OF ANNIVERSARIES.
APRIL.
THE sensible ancients, who had a happy gift of naming things, called the second month of their year Aprilis, from aperire, to open, because, following close on the vernal equinox, the soft warm hands of April unlocked the world from its winter fetters. They dedicated the first day of the month to the worship of Venus, anticipating the poet's declaration ----
"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
Certainly not because they found most friendship more feigning, most loving mere folly, did this day became the festival of fools. Far off in the mysterious East the New-Year's feasts had included from immemorial time the usages which still survive in our April-fool's Day, and Yankee and European still perpetrate the flimsy jokes that Hindoo and Parsee inherited, ages and ages ago, from a long-forgotten past.
But Folly's share is small in this memorable month. Wisdom lays claim to the large remainder of its hours, and History has written them full of significance to the race. Leaving out the solemn record of those April days which are the dearest legacy of the Christian world, there yet remain events of moment, birthdays to be remembered.
It was in April, 753 B.C., that ROMULUS began the wals of lofty Rome, and set up that standard which made a cave of ADULLAM of the new settlement. It was in April, nearly five centuries later, that ALEXANDER the Great, conqueror of the globe, master of men, pupil of ARISTOTLE, mighty genius and weak-willed voluptuary, died miserably of drunkenness, when but thirty-one, and let the kneeling world rise up once more. It was in April that NERO condemned the virtuous SENECA to die, whose beautiful young wife, POMPEIA PAULINA, preferring rather death with him than life without him, accompanied him to prison, and opened the veins in her white arms when his shrunken veins were cut. In April, 589 A.D., took place that important event in the history of civilization, the promulgation of the code of JUSTINIAN.
On a soft April morning in 1429 a fair girl in armor relieved the beleaguered garrison of Orleans, changed the current of fortune for her adored king, and took her first great step toward martyrdom and immortality. Seventy-eight years later there lay in a cradle in distant Navarre a baby whose heart was to beat as loyally as hers to the call of heavenly voices, and who, as a soldier of the Prince of Peace, was to face hardships, hunger, sickness, peril of enemies, death in a foreign land, having converted thousands of heathen to the true faith,