The international coinage arrangement, on the decimal system, so long in use between England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, will be extended next year, by agreement, to Spain, Russia, Denmark, and Greece. It is wonderful how our fathers, even almost down to the present generation, were satisfied with any scheme of weights and measures other than the metrical, now so universally in use.
From the South African Dutch-English Federal States we hear of settlement and progress. The Australian Republic also is thriving. Melbourne has now 600,000 inhabitants. How many millions of people to-day speak the English language! All North America (except a part of the people of Mexico); Australia; India; South Africa; and, this month, after long consideration, Japan has officially adopted English as the language of public affairs, to be taught in all the common schools. By the way, the newly elected Secretary of Education of the Japanese Commonwealth is an American; a graduate of the High School at Chicago. The extension of the use of spoken, written, and printed English in China is quite rapid, and so it is in Egypt, on the Continent of Europe, and in South America. It truly bids fair within a century to become the universal language.
The purchase of Jerusalem and the greater part of Palestine by an association of wealthy Jews, headed by the Rothschild, Montefiore, and Belmont families, is an accomplished fact. Along with this it may be noted that very many Jews have recently been converted to Christianity. There is a large tabernacle for the worship of evangelical Jews just built upon the Mount of Olives. At one of the first meetings of the Sanhedrim after the Russian municipal government had been withdrawn, a rabbi, bearing the significant name of Nicodemus, proposed this question for discussion: "Ought we now to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah?" By a small majority, the question was indefinitely postponed without debate.
Jerusalem is now lit by gas, except an electric light in one of the central streets. Horse-cars are running in every direction; and a steam-train passes daily to and from Jaffa on the Mediterranean. The Mosque of Omar has been purchased by the Young Men's Christian Association, which has within its walk a Bible-School of nearly 1000 pupils of all ages. A college for both sexes is in full operation at Jericho. An English weekly and an American daily newspaper are issued in Jerusalem, and an English daily paper also in Smyrna.