in the United States of America, whence it has made its way into several other transatlantic states.  Among ourselves, the thing is approved and admired in the abstract, but we dread the trouble it would give us to fall into a method to which we are unaccustomed; and we apprehend, on very insufficient grounds, that much confusion would arise during the transition.  Moreover, it is to be feared that out of a spirit of prejudice or contradiction, many would not, even under the penalties of law, adopt the change.  At this moment, as is well known, certain classes of people persist in selling corn and other articles by old local measures, although at the risk of prosecution.  Thus, in Scotland, we still hear of firlots, bolls, and mutchkins, notwithstanding that these antiquated measures were abolished upwards of twenty years ago.  In short, it would appear that the change of popular denominations in weights, measures, and moneys, is one of the things which the law, in ordinary circumstances, has great difficulty in reaching.

This difficulty, however, ought not to be deemed insuperable.  The boon given to society by the decimal system is worth struggling for.  On this account, it appears highly desirable that the people at large should be made thoroughly acquainted with its principles, and be able to weigh the advantages against the difficulties of such a change.  Some years ago, the subject was pretty fully discussed in several literary and commercial periodicals; and recently, Mr Taylor’s little work[1] has presented it in a more permanent form.  Our own pages appear particularly suitable for giving wide circulation to a familiar and popular exposition of the subject.

The ancients used certain letters to represent numbers, and we still employ the Roman numeral characters as the most elegant way of expressing a date in typography or sculpture; but every one must see what a tedious business the calculation of large sums would be according to this cumbrous system of notation:  nor is it easy to say whereabouts our commercial status, to say nothing of science, would have been to-day, had it never been superseded.  The Romans themselves, in computing large numbers, always had recourse to the abacus—­a counting-frame with balls on parallel wires, somewhat similar to that now used in infant-schools.

It was a great step gained, and a most important preparation for clearing away the darkness of the middle ages by the light of science, when between the eighth and thirteenth centuries the use of the characters 1, 2, 3, &c. was generally established in Europe, having been received from Eastern nations, long accustomed to scientific computations.  The great advantage of these numbers is, that they proceed on the decimal system—­that is, they denote different values according to their relative places, each character signifying ten times more accordingly as it occupies a place higher.  Thus 8, in the first place to the right, is simply 8; but in the next to the left,