y 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to-day, had it never been superseded.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, it is 80; in the
third, 800; and in the fourth, 8000. Yet we do not require to grasp
these large numbers in our thought, but deal with each figure as a
simple unit, and subject it to every arithmetical process without even
adverting to its real value. To some, it may seem superfluous to explain
a matter so familiar; but we have met with many who know pretty well how
to use our system of notation mechanically, yet do not know, or rather
have not thought of the beautifully simple principle on which it
proceeds--that of decimal ascension.

Now, we want to see the same principle applied to the gradations of our
money, weights, and measures. Instead of our complicated denominations
of money--namely, pounds, each containing twenty shillings, these each
divisible into twelve pence, and these again into four farthings--we
want a scale in which _ten_ of each denomination wou