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to-day, had it never been superseded.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