In what else does the beginning of the twentieth stand far in advance of that of the nineteenth century? We may contrast the tallow candle with the electric light, the science of to-day with that of a century ago, the methods and the extension of education and the dissemination of books with those of the year 1800. Discovery and colonization of the once unknown regions of the world have gone on with marvelous speed. The progress in mining has been enormous, and the production of gold in the nineteenth century perhaps surpasses that of all previous time. Production of all kinds has enormously increased, and commerce now extends to the utmost regions of the earth, bearing the productions of all climes to the central seats of civilization, and supplying distant and savage tribes with the products of the loom and the mine. Such is a hasty review of the condition of affairs at the end of the nineteenth century as compared with that existing at its beginning. No effort has been made here to cover the entire field, but enough has been said to show the greatness of the world's progress, and we may fairly speak of this century as the Glorious Nineteenth. [Illustration: DEATH OF MARAT Never was there a more worthy act of murder than that of the monster Marat, the most savage of the leaders of the Reign of Terror, by the knife of the devoted maiden, Charlotte Corday. She boldly avowed her guilt and its purpose, and suffered death by the guillotine, July 17, 1793.] [Illustration: THE LAST VICTIMS OF THE REIGN OF TERROR-- (FROM THE PAINTING BY MULLER)] CHAPTER I. The Threshold of the Century. [=The Age we Live in and its Great Events=] After its long career of triumph and disaster, glory and shame, the world stands to-day at the end of an old and the beginning of a new century, looking forward with hope and backward with pride, for it has just completed the most wonderful hundred years it has ever known, and has laid a noble foundation for the twentieth century, now at its dawn. There can be no more fitting time than this to review the marvelous progress of the closing century, through a portion of which all of us have lived, many of us through a great portion of it. Some of the greatest of its events have taken place before our own eyes; in some of them many now living have borne a part; to picture them again to our mental vision cannot fail to be of interest and profit to us all. [=True History and the Things which Make it=]