The German Emperor seems to have settled in his own
mind that a new century begins on Monday, and a majority of the population of Europe will probably agree with him. The change in the designating numeral blinds them to the fact that if the century begins, as it must do, with the year 1, it cannot end till the hundredth year has expired. Any one who doubts this has only to think of a decade instead of a century, and count it on his fingers, and he will see that to make up the decade he must count the "10" in his reckoning. If that is true of ten, it is true of all multiples of ten. The error, however, is so universal that it is probably incurable, even historians writing of the year 1800 as the first of the nineteenth century instead of the last of the eighteenth. We fancy that, besides the numerical temptation, there is a latent eagerness in the public mind to be done with a division of time of which they have grown weary, and to commence a new one which may have in it more of the fulfilment of hope. They are somewhat ungrateful, for the last hundred years, if not greater than any which preceded them, have certainly secured for mankind more of the elements of happiness. There is more freedom, more justice, and more practical altruism than has ever before been visible in the history of the world.
