as she
chooses to suppose. Even the era of our Saviour's birth oscillates
through an entire Olympiad, or period of four years; to that extent it
is unsettled: and in fifty other ways I could easily make out a title to
a much more considerable change. In reality, when the object is--not to
secure an attorney-like[31] accuracy--but to promote the _liberal_
pursuit of chronology, a teacher of good sense would at once direct her
pupil to record the date in round terms as just reaching the
three-quarters of a thousand years; she would freely sacrifice the
entire twenty-six years' difference between 776 and 750, were it not
that the same purpose, viz., the purpose of consulting the powers or
convenience and capacity of the memory, in neglect and defiance of
useless and superstitious arithmetic punctilios, may be much better
attained by a more trifling sacrifice. Three-quarters of a millennium,
that is three parts in four of a thousand years, is a period easily
remembered; but a triple repetition of the number 7, simply saying
'_Seven seven seven_' is remembered even _more_ easily.[32]

Suppose this point then settled, for anything would be remarkable and
highly rememberable which comes near to a common familiar fraction of so
vast a period in human affairs as a millennium [a term consecrated to
our Christian ears, (1) by its use in the Apocalypse; (2) by its
symbolic use in representing the long Sabbath of rest from sin and
misery, and finally (3) even to the profane ear by the fact of its being
the largest period which we employ in our historical estimates]. But a
triple iteration of the number 7, simply saying '_Seven seven seven_,'
would be even more rememberable. And, lastly, were it still necessary to
add anything by way of reconciling the teacher to the supposed
inaccuracy (though, if a real[33] and demonstrated inaccuracy, yet, be
it remembered, the very least which _can_ occur, viz., an error of a
single unit), I will--and once for all, as applying to many similar
cases, as often as they present themselves--put this stringent question
to every woman of good sense: is it not better, is it not more
agreeable to your views for the service of your pupils, that they should
find offered to their acceptance some close approximation to the truth
which they can very easily remember, than an absolute conformity to the
very letter of the truth which no human memory, though it were the
memory of Mithridates, could retain? Good se