Note 19 — PART I. HUMANITIES. (continued 3)

It may be well to add that I am not ignorant of the discussions respecting the proper beginning of a century. Is the year 1800 the last year of the eighteenth or the first year of the nineteenth century? Our dates have been translated from the Latin ordinals, and we ought to say the eighteen-hundredth year, instead of the year eighteen-hundred. I have deliberately preferred to conform the chart to the vulgar tongue. If I did not, the numbers in the first line would contain nine units and one ten, instead of all units; the second line of tens would contain one twenty, and so on. If we are content to use the inaccurate language of daily life, bearing in mind that it requires correction, and making such corrections when we are engaged in important historical or astronomical calculations, we may well be content to do the same with the chart. I shall, therefore, consider the life of a century as that of a centenarian. We say of a child that he is in his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., year, when he is 0, 1, 2, etc., years old; so, also, a person is in his 100th year when he is 99 years old; and he has lived a century at the close of this year, for the cardinal marks the number of completed years, the ordinal the number of the year in progress. So 1799 is regarded as the closing year of the last century, 1800, 1801, as the first and second of this. For a learned and elaborate discussion on the subject, and a list of authorities for the view adopted, see An Examination of the Century Question, George Bell, Fleet Street, 1850.