forge in the parish of St. Clement (which formerly belonged to the City, and stood in the high road from the Temple to Westminster, but now no longer exists) are then called forth to do their suit and service; when an officer of the court, in the presence of the senior Alderman, produces six horse-shoes and sixty-one hob-nails, which he counts over in form before the Cursitor Baron, who, on this particular occasion, is the immediate representative of the Sovereign."

Mr. Sheriff Hoare, in the journal of his Shrievalty, 1640-41, in his own handwriting, says: "The senior Alderman present cut one twig in two and bent another, and the officers of the court counted six horse-shoes and hob-nails. This formality, it is said, is passed through each year, by way of suit and service for the citizens holding some tenements in St. Clement Danes, as also some other lands;-but where they are situated no one knows, nor doth the City receive any rents or profits thereby."

The Court of Exchequer, be it observed, is the legal court of accounts; and, moreover, pursuant to the charter 32 Henry III., the high officers of the City are, on their appointment, to be presented to the Sovereign, or, in the absence of Majesty, to the Sovereign's Justices or Barons of the Royal Exchequer.

So many references to the Exchequer are to be found in Shakspeare, that some have supposed he must have been a clerk in that office. The process of examining the public accounts is recorded in one of his sonnets:

"She may detain, but still not keep her treasure.

The audit, though delayed, answered must be:

And her quietus is to render this."

SONNET CXXVI.

There is the stoppage of the public money-the delay in passing the account till certain answers are obtained to justify the audit—and the rendering the correct account is followed by the quietus, exactly as was practised in the Exchequer Court:

"For she hath no exchequer now but his."

SONNET LXVII.
"To make their audit at your Highness' pleasure."
MACBETH.

Again,

"What acceptable audit canst thou have?"
SONNET IV.

"It were a sin to disquiet him, since he carries his quietus est with CLETUS' WHIMSIES, p. 166.

him."

HAMLET, ACT III.

GAMESTER, ACT v.

CHAPTER VIII.

NUMERALS OF DIFFERENT NATIONS.

Ir would be quite impossible-even were the present occasion a fit opportunity to explore, still less to exhaust, those vast fields of investigation which are open to any one who seeks to trace, through the infinite variety of language and symbols, the modes adopted by different nations for communicating ideas of numbers and quantities. I have thought it might not be wholly without amusement or instruction if I selected some of the most prominent and characteristic peculiarities which present themselves in various parts of the inhabited globe; and without encumbering these pages with redundant and superfluous matter, it appeared not undesirable to connect and preserve in them some materials which might prove of more general and diffusive interest than would seem directly connected with an inquiry into the history and advantages of a decimal system. There is, however, more of association and affinity between the various branches of human knowledge, than the careless or the thoughtless inquirer may imagine. The multifarious developments of progress and civilisation are closely allied to each other; and though it can hardly be expected that many will concern themselves in the discussion of all the topics upon which this volume touches, it may be hoped that, to some readers at least, they will recommend themselves, and be suggestive of pleasing and useful objects of research.

Man is born with, and carries about him, instruments of notation, and weighing, and measuring, which serve for the common or everyday purposes of life. Most of these have passed into habitual language in the various idioms of the world, representing numbers, quantities, and proportions, with more or less accuracy, but generally with considerable approximation to the truth.*

*Sir J. E. Tennent has given us the following memorandum illustrative of the remark in the text :

"As an illustration of the expedients resorted to by the Singhalese to describe measures of distance in the absence of any standard or terms by which to define it, I may mention to you, that in my travels through

In India, gôvista, or the cries of a cow- i. e., the distance at which the lowing of a cow can be heard-is equal to two kes, or 8,000 cubits. A goshpada, cow's foot, is a measure representing what the impression of a cow's foot will hold.

The classification of numerals or decimal multiplications, or a progression in tenfold proportions, would naturally grow from the employment of the fingers as counting instruments, and is to be traced to the remotest records of history, and over a vast extent of the inhabited world, both in the words and the symbols employed. Every step in the lower gradations enables us to form clearer conceptions of the higher. Proceeding from ten units to ten times ten, we immediately perceive the value of a hundred,-which being thoroughly understood, another multiplication by ten helps us accurately to estimate a thousand, and so onward. The numeration by twenties has equally its foundation in nature, every human being having not only ten fingers, but ten toes; and it will be found that a vicenary scale is employed, not only in connection with, but sometimes, as by the ancient Mexicans, separately from, the decimal progression.

Examples will also be discovered of a quinary scale, or reckoning by fives, in the spoken languages of many rude tribes, as in written signs for numerals. Some ancient nations adopted a new series of characters at the quinary stage, as 1, v, x among the Latins, and by the inhabitants of Palmyra. A binary system, or counting by twos, presents its own explanation in the many combinations of pairs which the human frame presents,—such as two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two arms, two legs; but a multiplication by two increases the power of numbers too slowly to be available for the higher purposes of arithmetical calculation.

Humboldt has very properly remarked, that if we consider the source of the various numerals, we shall find everywhere a great resemblance in the nature of their developments.

The

the more unfrequented portions of Ceylon, I constantly heard, in reply to my inquiries as to short distances, that I was within "a dog's cry" of it,—or that it was still "a hoo" off, or a loud hoo, as the case might be, a hoo meaning the sound a man's voice exerted to the utmost in shouting that sonorous monosyllable, and thus denoting the distance at which it could be heard. The dog's cry, in the same manner, meant a shorter distance, or such as a bark of a dog could extend over."

last is generally only a wider extension of the first. Thus, if, as in many branches of the Malayan stem, the number 5 is represented by (lima) the hand (5 fingers), it might be anticipated that for the number 2, words meaning wings, arms, eyes, and so on, would be employed. Of such symbols no doubt many have been forgotten, and will be no more restored to use. Nations appear soon

to have discovered that a variety of signs for the same number was not only a superfluity but an inconvenience, and likely to lead to misunderstandings. Hence synonymes for the same numbers growing out of the same language, are of rare occurrence, though some examples are to be found in the dialects of the southern seas. Nations alive to the powers of language must, long before trained to form an accurate estimate of numbers, have felt the desirableness of establishing clear notions, and of fixing a general standard,—and the more this feeling prevailed, the less would be the desire to retain in the names of the numerals the primitive idea of its value, and thus, as the original meaning became less and less discernible, the words would be rendered by merely conventional sounds."

The word stone, for 14lb. in English, is no longer associated with its vague and normal meaning, which undoubtedly was the weight of a stone, of a generally understood size, in a particular locality. Some of the associations of definite numbers with undefined ideas, are remarkable. Out of the Sanskrit root yu,-meaning gathering together, or union, -come pra-yuta and ni-yuta, which express equally a hundred thousand and a million,—while a yuta which means "detaching" or "disuniting," is used for ten thousand, a decimal division of the larger number.

Though the richness and precision of a language in arithmetical terms is undoubtedly an evidence of the civilisation and advancement of the people employing them, such richness cannot always be referred to as a standard of civilisation, or accepted in itself alone as all-sufficient proof of superior intellectual cultivation. One language, for example, possessing high capabilities for expressing high numerals, may continue little changed where those who speak it have been declining in the scale of civilisation;—another language, wanting such facilities of expression, may be spoken by an advancing nation, and not easily lend itself to the introduction of novel terms. This is not alone the case with respect to numerals; for, as regards languages generally, there are many which, "neither in the perfectness of their grammar, nor even in their copiousness,