others too small; but, however this may be, it is quite clear that
the subject demands the earnest consideration of the country.

No period has been so auspicious as the present to rearrange our gold
coinage. Gold has ceased here to be a currency, and is used only in
payment of our public debt and receipts of customs.

It is important that our gold coinage (retaining the decimal system) and
that of England should be assimilated. This could be easily done by
having in our half eagle the same amount of gold and alloy as in the
British sovereign, carrying the system through our whole gold coinage.
Thus, exchange here upon England or there here, would be quoted and
governed by the same rules which regulate exchange between our own
cities, and all the mystery and losses of our present system would
disappear. This change would slightly depreciate our present gold
coinage, but would not affect individual transactions, treasury notes
being our currency and a legal tender. Should this plan be adopted,
England could stamp on her sovereign, _Equal to a U. S. half eagle_, and
we could stamp on our half eagle, _Equal to a British sovereign_, and
thus furnish a currency, which from necessity would in time be adopted
by all the world, avoiding vast trouble, loss of time, and litigation,
and saving millions of dollars every year. This measure would soon prove
the superiority of our decimal system, and render it _universal_. The
United States and England being the two great commercial and gold
producing nations, speaking the same tongue, and having the same
coinage, would make the coin and the _language of the coin_ of the world
the same, the first great step toward a universal language. This
assimilation of the value and language of coin would lead to the
decimalizing and assimilation of weights and measures, both grand
movements toward the fusion of nations and fraternity of man.

LITERARY NOTICES

THE NEW GYMNASTICS FOR MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN. By DIO LEWIS, M.D.
With three hundred illustrations. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

It is with sincerest pleasure that we commend this excellent book to the
attention of every teacher and parent in America. We might add that we
commend it as a gift book which would be most acceptable to youth, since
it teaches them several hundred exercises, the greater portion of which
require little or no apparatus, and none which cannot be very readily
fitted up in almost any house