Note 5 — THE CENTURY OF INVENTIONS.

A popular author, to one of whose mistatements we alluded in a preceding note, describes the Marquis as "a fantastic projector," and his "Century as an amazing piece of folly." Having however, in the notes appended to this work, fully demonstrated not only the practicability of applying the major part of the inventions there described, but the absolute application of many of them, though under other names, to some of the most useful purposes of life; we shall leave it to the public to judge, whether the man who first discovered a mode of applying steam as a mechanical agent, an invention alone sufficient to immortalize the age in which he lived, deserves the name of a fantastic projector.

The second edition of the "Century" was published in 1746; the third in 1767: while the fourth, which may be considered as the best edition, is a reprint from the first, and is furnished with an appendix "containing an Historical Account of the Fire Engine for Raising Water." It is dated Kyo, near Lancaster, June 18, 1778. The fifth is a reprint from the Glasgow copy, "by W. Bailey, Proprietor of the Speaking Figure, now showing, by permission of the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, at No. 42, within Bishopsgate," 1786. The sixth edition was confined to 100 copies, and dated London 1813.