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Parliament which proscribed the slave-trade
with the West Indies, May 1, 1807; and at
eighty-two that good gray head added dignity
to the pomp and splendor of the first
World's Fair, opened May 1, 1851.

The 2d of May is dedicated to St. ATHANASIUS,
Bishop of Alexandia in the fourth
century, whose name the creed of the Episcopal
Church bears, and whose belief it embodies,
though probably of later origin. On
this day also, died, in 1520, at Fontainebleau,
LEONARDO DA VINCI, the most versatile genius
of his brilliant epoch. Not only great
painter, but master of sculpture, architecture,
music, engineering, and mechanics, he
possessed also a vast knowledge of botany,
mathematics, astronomy, and anatomy, in
which latter science he anticipated discoveries
made nearly a century later. "The
Last Supper," so familiar through engravings
and photographs, painted in 1497, when
LEONARDO was forty-five, was the greatest
work of art the world had yet seen. Yet
this sublime genius, whom HALLAM calls the
first figure of the fifteenth century, not only
constructed a remarkable canal for Milan,
but invented the wheelbarrow!

LEONARDO was seventeen when that remarkable
statesman and author NICOLO
MACCHIAVELLI was born at Florence, May 3,
1469, the day which, in 1761, saw the birth
of the German poet KOTZEBUE, and in 1845
the parting of the gentle spirit of THOMAS
HOOD, who died in poverty and sorrow at
the early age of forty-seven.

May 4, 1782, was born, in the French colony
of Louisiana, JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, the
naturalist. On that day, in 1799, Seringapatam
was taken by the English, and their
empire in India established.

On the 5th of May, 482, was born the Emperor
JUSTINIAN, whose best claim to remembrance
is his Pandects, of Body of Laws.
On that day, in 1821, the prisoner of St. Helena
ended his turbulent, lawless life.

On the 6th of May, 1585, was born at Acquoi,
in Holland, CORNELIUS JANSEN, father
of the Jansenists, whose differences with
the Jesuits made so large a part of the history
of the next century. On the 9th of
May, 1805, died JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH
SCHILLER, the greatest, after GOETHE,
of German poets. "I will make SCHILLER
as large as life--that is, colossal," said DANNEKER,
the sculptor, on hearing of his
death. On May 11, 1778, died Mr. PITT, the
great Earl of Chatham, the defender of the
rights of the American colonies. On the
12th of May, 1641, perished on the scaffold
at Tower Hill, Longon, the proud Earl of
Strafford, tyrant of Ireland, persecutor in
England, political criminal, but man of many
private virtues. On May 13, 1619, a far nobler
victim had laid his reverend head on
the block at the Hague, when JOHN of Barneveldt
suffered death for mainting an
absolute religious toleration. On May 14,
1796, EDWARD JENNER established the principles
of vaccination. On the 20th of May,
twenty-one years later, PHILIP II., great-grandson
of the good ISABELLA, bigot, persecutor,
cold-hearted schemer, entered on
his ill-starred existence in the same city.
He was a lad of sixteen when that solitary
thinking NICHOLAR COPERNICUS died t
Thorn, in Prussia, having experienced the
cost of heresy, but not the glory of his vast
discovery.

On the 23d of May, 1498, when HENRY
VIII. was a frolicsome lad of seven, and LUTHER
a fifteen-year-old rustic just entering
the Latin school at Eisenach, and pretty
ANNE BOLEYN yet unborn, the English
Reformation found one of its first unconscious
impluses in the burning of the monk
SAVONAROLA at Florence. And on that day
in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, in 1810,
was born one of the most remarkable women
of her time--MARGARET FULLER.

On the 27th of May, 1564, died JOHN CALVIN,
at Geneva. On the 29th of May, 1588,
the Invincible Spanish Armada swept down
the Tagus, bent on the conquest of heretic
England--a fleet of 136 ships, mounted with
3165 pieces of cannon, worked by 8746 mariners,
besides 2088 slaves, and carrying 31,639
soldiers. On the 29th of May, 1630, CHARLES
II. of England was born, and on that day,
thirty years later, he came to the throne of
his fathers. Until the year 1859 there remained
an ordinance of Parliament decreeing
an annual observance of the day as one
of prayer and thanksgiving for "the peaceable
restoration" of this heartless voluptuary
and easy-going scamp.

On the 30th of May, 1672, when ADDISON
was four weeks old, PETER the Great was
born at Moscow. On that day, according to
the legend, King ARTHUR of the Round Table
died, in 542. On that day JEROME of
Prague suffered martyrdom at Constance, in
1416. And on that day was wrought the
most infamous crime of a faithless age, in
the burning, as a witch, of the heroic Maid
of Orleans, in the market-place of Rouen, in
1431. As Decoration-day it has become a
national observance in a land undreamed of
by the wisest of her executioners. On May
31, 1855, died that child of genius and sorrow
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. And on some unknown
day of May, in the year 1265, was
born at Florence that greatest poet of the
modern world save SHAKSPEARE, DANTE
ALIGHIERI.