But although measures had thus been apparently taken to secure uniformity of observance, some centuries elapsed before all discrepancy ceased. A more intricate question remained to be solved, viz., how the full moon on which Easter depended was to be predicted. The Nicene decrees had effectually crushed the feeble remnants of the Quartodeciman usage. It was established as a rule that Easter must be kept on a Sunday, but there was no general agreement as to the cycle by which the festival was to be calculated, some churches adopting one rule, some another. We learn from St Ambrose (Epist. 23) that in 387 the churches of Gaul kept Easter on March 21, while the churches of Italy postponed it to April 18, and those of Egypt a week later still, to April 25 ; and it appears from an epistle of Leo the Great (Epist. 64 ad Marcian.} that in 455 there was eight days' difference between the Roman and Alexandrine Easter. Similar discrepancies are mentioned by Gregory of Tours in the year 577, nor did they disappear from the Galilean Church till the 8th century, although by a canon of the fourth Council of Orleans (541) it had been ordained that the Easter festival should be kept at the same time by all, according to the tables of Victorius. The ancient British Church observed the 84 years' cycle which they had originally received from Rome, and their stubborn refusal to give it up caused much bitter controversy between the fathers of Iona and the Latin missionaries. These latter unfairly attempted to fix the stigma of the Quartodeciman heresy on their opponents, and they are sometimes even now spoken of as adopting the Asiatic mode of calculation, and false inferences are thence drawn as to the Eastern origin of the British Church. This, however, is quite erroneous. The early British and Irish Church always commemorated the Crucifixion on a Friday and the Resurrection on a Sunday. The only difference between them and the Romish Church was in the cycle adopted for the computation of the festival, the British Church really adhering to the cycle originally adopted by the Romish Church itself, which had been superseded by the more accurate calculations of Victorius of Aquitaine (457), and of Dionysius Exiguus (525). This led to a double Easter being observed by the adherents of the two churches. Thus, as we learn from Bede (Ecd. Hist., iii. 25), in 651 Queen Eanfleda, adopting the Roman nile, was fasting and keeping Palm Sunday while her husband Oswy, king of Northumbria, was celebrating the Easter festival. This diversity of usage was put an end to in the kingdom of Northumbria in the council of Streaneshalch, or Whitby (654); and the Roman rule was finally established in England by Archbishop Theodore in 669. This rule may be thus briefly stated. Easter day is the first Sunday after the 14th day (not the full moon) of the calendar moon which happens on or next after March 21. This calendar moon, however, is not the moon of the heavens, nor the mean moon of the astronomers, but an imaginary moon created for ecclesias tical convenience in advance of the real moon (see Prof. De Morgan s article in Companion to the Almanac, 1845). After nine centuries a fresh discrepancy in the observance of Easter between the Roman and the English Church was caused by the refusal in England to adopt the Gregorian reformation of the calendar, 1582, apparently for no other reason than that the alteration had originated at Rome. This difference was happily put an end to in 1752, when the "New Style" was adopted in the United Kingdom. The churches of Russia and Greece, and the Oriental churches generally, still observe the unreformed calendar, their Easter falling sometimes before sometimes after that of the Western church; very rarely, as in 1865, the two coincide.
The rules on which the calculation of Easter is based are given in the article Calendar (vol. iv. p. 675).
Easter day, as commemorating the central fact of our religion, has always been regarded as the chief festival of the Christian year, and has been from the earliest times observed with a stately and elaborate ceremonial. It is not, however, the purpose of this article to enter on the ritual observances of Easter, nor on the many curious and interesting popular customs of which the sending of Pasch eggs, or Easter eggs, is one of the most wide-spread with which it is -connected in all Christian nations. For these last the reader may consult Brand s Popular Anti quities, Hone s Every Day Boole, and Chambers s Book of Days.
EASTLAKE, Sir Charles Lock (1793–1865), an emi nent painter who became president of the Royal Academy in London, was born on 17th November 1793 in Plymouth, where his father, a man of uncommon gifts but of indolent temperament, was solicitor to the Admiralty and judge ad vocate of the Admiralty Court. Charles was educated (like Sir Joshua Reynolds) at the Plympton grammar-school, and in London at the Charterhouse. Towards 1809, partly through the influence of his fellow-Devonian Haydon, of whom he became a pupil, he determined to be a painter; he also studied in the Royal Academy school. In 1813 he exhibited in the British Institution his first picture, a work of considerable size, Christ restoring life to the Daughter of Jairus. In 1814 he was commissioned to copy some of the paintings collected by Napoleon in the Louvre ; he returned to England in 1815, and practised portrait-paint ing at Plymouth. Here he saw Napoleon a captive on the " Bellerophon ; " from a boat he made some sketches of the emperor, and he afterwards painted, from these sketches and from memory, a life-sized full-length portrait of him, which was pronounced a good likeness ; it belongs to the marquis of Lansdowne. In 1817 Eastlake went to Italy ; in 1819 to Greece ; in 1820 back to Italy, where he remained altogether fourteen years, sojourning chiefly in Rome and in Ferrara. Subjects of banditti and peasant- life engaged his pencil mostly from 1820 onwards. In 1827 he exhibited at the Royal Academy his picture of the Spartan Isidas who (as narrated by Plutarch in the life of Agesilaus), rushing naked out of his bath, performed prodigies of valour against the Theban host. This was the first work that attracted much notice to the name of East- lake, who in consequence obtained his election as A.R.A.; in 1830, when he returned to England, as R.A. In 1850 he succeeded Shee as P.R.A. (his only worthy competitor being Landseer, with the elder Pickersgill and George Jones besides, to mark the poor estate of British art, or of its official representatives), and, as usual, he was knighted. Prior to this, in 1841, he had been appointed secretary to the Royal Commission for decorating the Houses of Parliament, and he retained this post until the commission was dissolved in 1862. In 1843 he was made keeper of the National Gallery, a post which he resigned in 1847 in consequence of an unfortunate purchase that roused much animadversion; in 1855, director of the same in stitution, "with more extended powers. During his directorship he purchased for the gallery 155 pictures, mostly of the Italian schools. He became also a D.C.L. of Oxford, F.R.S., Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and member of various foreign academies. In 1849 he married Miss Elizabeth Rigby, a lady of some literary distinction. In 1865 he fell ill at Milan; he died at Pisa on 24th December in the same year, and lies buried at Kensal Green.
and correct ; lacking fire of invention or of execution ; eclectic, without being exactly imitative ; influenced rather by a love of ideal grace and beauty than by any marked
bent of individual power or vigorous originality. Among