A BRIEF HISTORY OF ALMANACS.

AMONG the most ancient as well as the most widely diffused productions of the press, the Almanac holds a conspicuous place. The word is generally derived from the Arabic al-manah, the reckoning; and the book commonly embraces the calendar for one year, with a more or less extended ephemeris of the movements of the planetary system, and a record of the eclipses, festivals, or special days, etc., to which is sometimes added statistical matter or general information. Frequently, however, almanacs have been made the vehicle for superstitions, weather predictions, superannuated jokes, vulgar allusions, and prophetical impostures. The credulity of the uneducated has been imposed on in all ages by prognostics of the weather, every day of the year being set down as a propitious or unpropitious season for certain transactions. Even modern almanacs prepared for country circulation continue to perpetuate this absurd and misleading practice. The utmost which science can effect in forecasting the weather barely extends to the twenty-four hours' "probabilities," now termed "weather indications," published by the Signal Office of the United States Army. The science of meteorology affords no means for almanac predictions of the weather set down a year in advance, and all such pretended forecasts are impositions upon popular credulity.

Ages before the invention of printing, something akin to the almanac was in use among all civilized nations of antiquity—the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc. The Chinese also used them from time immemorial. The earliest manuscript almanacs noticed date from A.D. 1150, and several of the fourteenth century are found in English libraries. In France, the noted astrologer Nostradamus began the publication of the almanac which bore his name in 1550; and the celebrated Almanach de Liége, by Laensberg, dates from 1635. Its great success led to numerous imitations, and the Double or Triple Liégeois, the patriarch of French almanacs, has maintained itself to this day in the favor of the common people, although representing little but tradition, ignorance, and prejudice. The French press now annually swarms with almanacs in every variety of attractiveness of

title, price, and style of manufacture. There is the Almanach comique, the Almanach pittoresque, dramatique, critique, lunatique, prophétique, chanton, satirique, démocratique, astrologique, anecdotique, astronomique, etc. There is the Almanach du laboreur, du cultivateur, du jardinier, des dames, des muses, and so on. The Almanach Royal, founded in 1699, and known variously as the Almanach Imperial, Royal or National according to the changes of the government, is the principal official almanac now printed in France, though the Almanach de France has also a large circulation.

In Germany, the celebrated Almanach de Gotha, which first appeared in 1764, and has been continuously published and enlarged for 114 years, has become recognized as an authority upon the genealogy of the royal and noble families of Europe, while its official lists and statistical information (not always accurate) regarding the organization, finances, etc., of all the governments of the world render it a much-sought-for book of reference.

The earliest English almanacs are of the sixteenth century, and for two hundred years most almanacs were issued by pretended astrologers, one of the most famous of whom was William Lilly, who began to print his Ephemeris in 1644. Another famed English almanac was that of "Francis Moore, Physician," a quack doctor of Westminster, who began his career of imposture in 1698. Poor Robin's Almanack began in 1663, and is still published. John Partridge's Merlinus Liberatus was started in 1681. R. White's Celestial Atlas or Ephemeris began in 1750, and is still published. These almanacs abounded in direful portents of the baneful effects of comets or blazing stars, and were filled with absurdities about lucky and unlucky days, nativities, judgments of things to come, epidemic diseases, murrain in cattle, prodigious shipwrecks, monstrous floods, and other events referred to supernatural or planetary agencies which are directly due to natural causes. In short, it may be said of the almanacs of earlier days (and even of some still circulated) that they are simply repositories for all the errors of antiquity.

Not until the year 1827 was there a single almanac printed in Great Britain free from these anachronisms and absurdities. In that year Charles Knight, the industrious writer and printer, and publisher for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, conceived the idea of bringing out the British Almanac. The market was then filled with Poor Robin's, Francis Moore's, Lilly's, and Partridge's astronomical almanacs, which had been published from the time of James I., under the monopoly of the London Stationers' Company, till their exclusive privilege was broken up in 1775 by a famous suit, in which the Court decided against the legality of the patent for printing almanacs. The powerful Stationers' Company, however, by buying up competitors, contrived to continue possessed of an exclusive market for stamped almanacs, and with a reckless>

ness disgraceful to the age, were still perpetuating the follies and indecencies to which we have referred. Not only so, but the British Government levied a tax of nearly thirty cents on every almanac issued in Great Britain, and the number sold, even with this heavy imposition, exceeded 450,000 copies annually. Says Mr. Knight :

"In 1827, when the almanac stamp was fifteen pence, the people of England, calling themselves enlightened, voluntarily taxed themselves to pay an annual sum of fifteen thousand pounds to the Government for permission to read the trash which first obtained currency and belief when every village had its witch and every churchyard its ghost; when agues were cured by charms and stolen spoons discovered by incantation. * ** *

"I immediately went to work to elaborate the scheme of a rational and useful almanac. It was completed in a few days, and I took it to consult Mr. Brougham. What an incalculable source of satisfaction to a projector, even of so apparently humble a work as an almanac, to find a man of ardent and capacious mind, quick to comprehend, frank to approve, not deeming a difficult undertaking impossible, ready not only for counsel, but for action! It is now the middle of November, said the rapid genius of unprocrastinating labor; can you have your almanac out before the end of the year?' 'Yes, with a little help in the scientific matters.' Then tell Mr. Coates to call a meeting of the General Committee at my chambers at half-past eight to-morrow morning. You shall have help enough. You may have your choice of good men for your astronomy and meteorology, your tides and your eclipses. Go to work, and never fear.'

"The British Almanac was published before the 1st of January. Late as it was in the field, high as was its unavoidable price-half-a-crown, to cover the heavy stamp duty and allow a profit to the retailers-ten thousand were sold in a week. * * * *The two objects which have been always kept in view were set forth in 1828: First, That the subjects selected shall be generally useful, either for present information or future reference. Secondly, That the knowledge conveyed shall be given in the most condensed and explicit manner, so as to be valuable to every class of readers."-[Passages of a Working Life, by Charles Knight.]

The marked success of the British Almanac has been permanent; and this is due to the fact that its high character has been maintained, and many articles of permanent value have enriched its columns during every year of the half-century since its foundation. The stamp duty on almanacs (one of those odious taxes on the spread of intelligence which so long survived) was repealed in 1834, and this, with the example of the British Almanac, has tended steadily to improve the standard of these publications. Among the most useful and comprehensive of the English almanacs are Whitaker's Almanac, first issued in 1869; Thom's Irish Almanac and Official Directory of Great Britain and Ireland, begun in 1844; Oliver & Boyd's Edinburgh Almanac, established 1816; the Financial Reform Almanac, started in 1867; and the Statesman's Year-Book, first published in 1864.

The annals of almanacs in America begin with the first introduction of printing in the New World north of Mexico. In 1639 appeared at Cambridge "an Almanac calculated for New England, by Mr. William Pierce, Mariner." This was printed by Stephen Daye, and no copy of it has been preserved. It was the first book printed in the colonies, preceding by a twelvemonth the famous Bay Psalm Book, or New England Version of the Psalms, published by the same printer at Cambridge in 1640. Cambridge con tinued to issue almanacs almost every year, and in 1676 the first

Boston Almanac was printed by John Foster, who published the same year the first book ever printed in Boston. The first Philadelphia almanac was put forth in 1686, edited by Daniel Leeds, and printed by William Bradford. New York followed with its first almanac in 1697 by J. Clapp. Samuel Clough issued his first almanac in Boston in 1700, which was continued until A.D. 1708, under the title of The New England Almanac, a copy of which for 1703, a dingy little book of twelve leaves, measuring three and à half inches by five and a half, is before us. The title is as follows: "The New England ALMANAC for the Year of our Lord MDCCIII. Being Third after Leap-year, and from the CREATION, 5652, Discovery of America, by Columbus, 211, Reign of our Gracious Queen ANNE, (which began March 8, 1702,) the 2, year. Wherein is contained Things necessary and common in such a COMPOSURE. Licensed by His Excellency the GOVERNOUR. Boston, Printed by B. Green and J. Allen, for the Booksellers, and are to be sold at their shops. 1703." The second page bears the traditional and repulsive wood-cut professing to show what parts the moon governs in man's body, corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The weather predictions are curious. For April 26 is foretold "misling weather mixt with some dripling showers." The eclipses of the year 1703, "in the judgment both of Divines and Astrologers," are supposed to " portend great alterations, mutations, changes and troubles to come upon the world." The "Comet or Ethereal Blaze," seen in 1702, is said to have led to "blood-shed, droughts, clashing of armies, and terrible diseases among men."

Of Almanacs which have been published in long series in this country, the following list embraces some of the more notable: Nathaniel Ames's Astronomical Diary and Almanac, started at Boston in 1725, and continued more than half a century, about 60,000 copies of which were sold annually; Titan Leeds's American Almanac, Philadelphia, 1726; T. Godfrey's Pennsylvania Almanac, begun at Philadelphia in 1729; Poor Richard's Almanac, by Richard Saunders (Benjamin Franklin), continued by others as "Poor Richard improved," Philadelphia, 1733-1786; Father Abraham's Almanac, by Abraham Weatherwise, Philadelphia, 1759-1799; Nathanael Low's Astronomical Diary or Almanac, Boston, 1762-1827; Isaiah Thomas's Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont Almanac, Worcester, Mass., and Boston, 1775-1822; R. B. Thomas's Farmer's Almanac, Boston, 1793-1877; the Massachusetts Register. and Almanac, Boston, established by Mein and Fleming, 1767-1877; Webster's Calendar, or the Albany Almanac, 1784-1877, the oldest family almanac continuously published extant in the United States; Bickerstaff's Boston and New England Almanac, 1768-1814, continued as Bickerstaff's Rhode Island Almanac, Providence, 1815-1877; Poor Will's Almanac,

Philadelphia, 1770 to 1840, or later; the Virginia Almanac, Williamsburg and Richmond, 1751 to 1829, and later; the South Carolina and Georgia Almanac, Charleston, 1760 to 1800, and later; North American Calendar, Wilmington, Del., 1796 to 1844, and later; Dudley Leavitt's New England Almanac, Exeter and Concord, N. H., 1797 to 1877; Thomas Spofford's Farmer's Almanac, Boston, 1817 to 1845; John Gruber's Town and Country Almanac, Hagerstown, Md., 1822 to 1877; the Maine Farmer's Almanac, by D. Robinson, Hallowell, 1818 to 1877; Daboll's New England Almanac, New London, Conn., 1777-1877; and Allen's New England Almanac, Hartford, 1806 to 1833, or later. Many of these almanacs are preserved in private families, though but few are to be found in our public libraries. It was an early habit in New England to preserve the almanacs from year to year, carefully stitched together, and to annotate them frequently with family records or current events. The generally worthless character which has been attributed to the English almanacs of the last century must be modified as regards some of the American family almanacs. Benjamin Franklin, the illustrious printer and statesman, is justly declared by a French encyclopædist to have put forth the first popular almanac which spoke the language of reason. In truth, the homely maxims and pithy proverbial counsels of Poor Richard, although not all originated by Franklin, constitute to this day a breviary of life and conduct admirable in most respects for the use of the young.

In the later days of the American Revolution, the almanacs put forth by Nathanael Low, at Boston, price "4 coppers single," contained political articles vigorously defending the liberties of the people, and exerted a great influence at the New England fireside in inspiring young and old with the love of freedom.

Virginia was early in the field with Warne's Almanac, printed at Williamsburg, in 1731. The first almanac printed in Connecticut was issued at New London in 1765, by T. Green. The first Rhode Island Almanac was issued at Newport in 1728, by James Franklin, and the first Providence Almanac, by Benjamin West, in 1763. The first in Maryland of which we have any trace appeared at Annapolis in 1763.

Of Agricultural and Medical Almanacs, the latter an outgrowth of the present century, the name is legion. Comic almanacs appear to have been first published in the United States about 1834, and have had an enormous circulation. Of the religious or denominational almanacs, the Church Almanac of the Protestant Episcopal Church was begun in 1830; the Catholic Almanac and Directory (continued under various names to the present time) in 1833; the Methodist Almanac in 1834; the Universalist Register in 1836; the Baptist Almanac in 1842 (?); the Congregational Almanac in 1846; the American Unitarian Register and Year-Book in 1846; the Presbyterian Histori