His works, edited by A. H. Bullen, were printed at the Chiswick Press in 1881. The same editor included The Maydes Metamorphosis in vol. i. of his Collection of Old Plays. The Parliament of Bees and Humour out of Breath were printed in Nero and other Plays (Mermaid Series, 1888), with an introduction by Arthur Symons. An appreciation by Mr A. C. Swinburne appeared in The Nineteenth Century (October 1897).
DAY, THOMAS (1748-1789), British author, was born in London on the 22nd of June 1748. He is famous as the writer of Sandford and Merton (1783-1789), a book for the young, which, though quaintly didactic and often ridiculous, has had considerable educational value as inculcating manliness and independence. Day was educated at the Charterhouse and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a great admirer of J. J. Rousseau and his doctrine of the ideal state of nature. Having independent means he devoted himself to a life of study and philanthropy. His views on marriage were typical of the man. He brought up two foundlings, one of whom he hoped eventually to marry. They were educated on the severest principles, but neither acquired the high quality of stoicism which he had looked for. After several proposals of marriage to other ladies had been rejected, he married an heiress who agreed with his ascetic programme of life. He finally settled at Ottershaw in Surrey and took to farming on philanthropic principles. He had many curious and impracticable theories, among them one that all animals could be managed by kindness, and while riding an unbroken colt he was thrown near Wargrave and killed on the 28th of September 1789. His poem The Dying Negro, published in 1773, struck the keynote of the anti-slavery movement. It is also obvious from his other works, such as The Devoted Legions (1776) and The Desolation of America (1777), that he strongly sympathized with the Americans during their War of Independence.
DAY (O. Eng. dæg, Ger. Tag; according to the New English Dictionary, “in no way related to the Lat. dies”), in astronomy, the interval of time in which a revolution of the earth on its axis is performed. Days are distinguished as solar, sidereal or lunar, according as the revolution is taken relatively to the sun, the stars or the moon. The solar day is the fundamental unit of time, not only in daily life but in astronomical practice. In the latter case, being determined by observations of the sun, it is taken to begin with the passage of the mean sun over the meridian of the place, or at mean noon, while the civil day begins at midnight. A vigorous effort was made during the last fifteen years of the 19th century to bring the two uses into harmony by beginning the astronomical day at midnight. In some isolated cases this has been done; but the general consensus of astronomers has been against it, the day as used in astronomy being only a measure of time, and having no relation to the period of daily repose. The time when the day shall begin is purely a matter of convenience. The present practice being the dominant one from the time of Ptolemy until the present, it was felt that the confusion in the combination of past and present astronomical observations, and the doubts and difficulties in using the astronomical ephemerides, formed a decisive argument against any change.
The question of a possible variability in the length of the day is one of fundamental importance. One necessary effect of the tidal retardation of the earth’s rotation is gradually to increase this length. It is remarkable that the discussion of ancient eclipses of the moon, and their comparison with modern observations, show only a small and rather doubtful change, amounting perhaps to less than one-hundredth of a second per century. As this amount seems to be markedly less than that which would be expected from the cause in question, it is probable that some other cause tends to accelerate the earth’s rotation and so to shorten the day. The moon’s apparent mean motion in longitude seems also to indicate slow periodic changes in the earth’s rotation; but these are not confirmed by transits of Mercury, which ought also to indicate them. (See [Moon] and [Tides].)
(S. N.)
Legal Aspects.—In law, a day may be either a dies naturalis or natural day, or a dies artificialis or artificial day. A natural day includes all the twenty-four hours from midnight to midnight. Fractions of the day are disregarded to avoid dispute, though sometimes the law will consider fractions, as where it is necessary to show the first of two acts. In cases where action must be taken for preserving or asserting a right, a day would mean the natural day of twenty-four hours, but on the other hand, as in cases of survivorship, for testamentary or other purposes, it would suffice if a person survived for even the smallest portion of the last day necessary.
When a statute directs any act to be done within so many days, these words mean clear days, i.e. a number of perfect intervening days, not counting the terminal days: if the statute says nothing about Sunday, the days mentioned mean consecutive days and include Sundays. Under some statutes (e.g. the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883) Sundays and holidays are excluded in reckoning days, and consequently all the Sundays, &c., of a prescribed sequence of days would be eliminated. So also, by custom, the word “day” may be understood in some special sense. In bills of lading and charter parties, when “days” or “running days” are spoken of without qualification, they usually mean consecutive days, and Sundays and holidays are counted, but when there is some qualification, as where a charter party required a cargo “to be discharged in fourteen days,” “days” will mean working days. Working days, again, vary in different ports, and the custom of the port will decide in each case what are working days. In English charter parties, unless the contrary is expressed, Christmas day and other recognized holidays are included as working days. A weather working day, a term sometimes used in charter parties, means a day when work is not prevented by the weather, and unless so provided for, a day on which work was rendered impossible by bad weather would still be counted as a working day. Lay days, which are days given to the charterer in a charter party either to load or unload without paying for the use of the ship, are days of the week, not periods of twenty-four hours.
Days of Grace.—When a bill of exchange is not payable at sight or on demand, certain days (called days of grace, from being originally a gratuitous favour) are added to the time of payment as fixed by the bill, and the bill is then due and payable on the last day of grace. In the United Kingdom, by the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, three days are allowed as days of grace, but when the last day of grace falls on Sunday, Christmas day, Good Friday or a day appointed by royal proclamation as a public fast or thanksgiving day, the bill is due and payable on the preceding business day. If the last day of grace is a bank holiday (other than Christmas day or Good Friday), or when the last day of grace is a Sunday, and the second day of grace is a bank holiday, the bill is due and payable on the succeeding business day. Days of grace (dies non) are in existence practically among English-speaking peoples only. They were abolished by the French Code (Code de Commerce, Liv. i. tit. 8, art. 135), and by most, if not all, of the European codes since framed.