on a Barn in Kent, &c. 135

tlic fourteenth century, it is fufficiently ftrange, though perhaps not quite unaccountable, that fuch a mode of reckoning fKould not fooner have been more general. The perplexity and tedioufnefs of working Roman capitals : to a perfon of an unretentive memory will appear on an examination of feveral of the iiims printed from Cuftumale RofFenfe, in which there are long firings of millings and pence in the fame column, that not many could caft up ex- actly without the affiftance of pen and paper ; or, as the clown in the play acknowledged, without counters _p. And, though there was an improvement in the ftatements of accounts by ranging the pounds, millings, and pence, in different columns [q], yet flill in long and intricate fums it was admitted by a mafter of arithmetic in the middle of the fixteenth century, that the " feat with the counters would not only ferve for them that cannot write and read, but alfo for them that can do both, but have not at fome time their pen or tables ready with them [r]." I am not aware that any reafon has been affigned for the very flow progrefs in the practice with Arabian numerals, for upwards of a hundred years after they were certainly known in this country. May it not, however, be attributed, partly to the general ftate of knowledge and literature in the fifteenth century, partly to a per- tinacious adherence to old habits and forms, which is not uncom- mon even in more enlightened times ; and perhaps, a little to pe- cuniary motives ? Frequently has it been obferved, and with truth, [p] The Winter's Tale, Aft IV. Scene III. " Clown. Let me fee, every eleven weather tods, every tod yields pounds and odd {hillings, fifteen hundred {horn, what comes the wool to ? I cannot do it without compters." [q] It however often happened that Shillings, amounting to pounds, were placed- in the {hilling column. (/] Record's Arithmetick, 12, 1658, p. 179.