have suggested. We take not a cup in our hand without previously preparing ourselves, and the will braces the muscles for the purpose, in keeping with our preconceived notion of the weight of the body to be lifted. Let a person unacquainted with its weight attempt to take up a cup of mercury, and he will probably spill its contents. Complicated and rapid movements of the hand, in the delicate execution of works of art and manufacture, require an apt and ready memory, as well as well-trained and active muscles. An impairment of memory destroys the steady quickness that is required. We find that, in the cotton mills, the activities of the brain are tried to such a degree by steam and ingenuity, that certain fine movements of the terrible machinery can only be followed by persons possessed of a quick memory and corresponding nervous energy; and hence that these parts of the work can only be accomplished or tolerated by individuals from puberty to manhood, because at that period alone is the association between memory and action sufficiently electric to suit the market.

Mental education improves the grace and expressiveness of the body-at least, of the features-to so great an extent as to be commonly acknowledged as a powerful cause of the influence which men maintain over each other. The specific distinction between an educated and an uneducated man is in the power of reflection; the memory of the former having been trained for orderly that of the latter being left wild. This training of memory affects the whole tone, character, and bodily deportment of a man. Without it no one can be a gentleman. As a voluntary effort of memory is attended by a peculiar fixedness of the body, and a steadiness of the senses, which are necessary to preserve the attention of associated ideas, the habit of this effort imparts a deliberative expression to the features, and causes even

use,

a man's muscular movements to partake of the more measured, sedate, and observant tendency of his mind. Hence, also, it may fairly be concluded that one who has been accustomed rationally to apply this faculty, is better qualified to control his instincts, to govern his passions, and to regulate all those impulses which spring immediately from his physical constitution. Hence, too, natural philosophers, men who remember, collect, and think on facts, usually live longer and are less disposed to insanity than poets and persons who delight in imagination, without an orderly and proper cultivation of memory. There is a heart philosophy also in which it is true that 'he who believes shall not make haste,' for there is no hurry in faith's foresight, and the courage arising from reliance on what we are taught concerning Providence is very calm. Possibly impulsiveness may comport with rapid association, but to remember and not to reflect, is not to use memory aright, but to live at the mercy of any wind of doctrine that any passing quackery may stir. In short, proper application of instructed memory is the foundation of physical as well as mental and moral improvement. Those nations have heads of the best form who have been possessed of the best histories or traditions, and who have been called to the highest culture of memory; for in this consists the principal means of advancing the arts of civilisation, and of maintaining the dominion of truth and religion over both mind and body. The very act of acquiring, recording, or recollecting true knowledge, is attended by a state of brain and a sobriety of manner which tend at once to embody, impersonate, and fix its advantages in the individual so employed, and to perpetuate the benefit in his offspring; because the more excellent development of brain which judicious employment of the mind in youth produces, is so complete as to be really propagated in most cases when such individuals become parents. If, therefore, the increase of

schools did nothing more than demand a general employment of youthful memory in acquiring religious truth, it would accomplish immense good both physically and morally, for this is always associated more or less with control of the body; and it will, moreover, be the groundwork of right reason, when coming circumstances shall require severer exercise of intellect, and constrain the spirit to seek its rest above the tramp of earthquakes and of Death.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL HABIT ON THE CHARACTER OF THE MEMORY.

It is remarkable that persons endowed with an energetic and busy imagination have been frequently most defective as regards verbal memory. Thus Rousseau and Coleridge always found it difficult to remember even a few verses, although composed by themselves. The reason seems to be, that their minds quickly caught hold of the ideas expressed, and at once associated them with other ideas, much in the same manner that we find delirious persons do under certain conditions of the nervous system. Their souls, like living streams, mirrored and commingled the varying scenes amidst which, in broken light and fulness, they rushed on to the depths they loved.

The celebrated Porson was a man of a contrary stamp. Recollection was the habit of his mind, and his life was a mixed commentary on profane and sacred learning, and his genius was like a phosphorescence on the graves of the dead. It is said of him that nothing came amiss to his memory. 'He would set a child right in his twopenny fable book, repeat the whole of the moral tales of the Dean of Badajoz, a page of Athenæus on cups, or of Eustathius on Homer. He could bring to bear at once on any question every passage from the whole range Greek literature that could elucidate it; and approximate on the instant the slightest coincidence in thought or expression; and the accuracy was quite as surprising as the extent of his recollection.' This facility was the result of early and continued effort.

of

Dr. T. Arnold had a remarkable memory.* He quoted from Dr. Priestley's Lectures on History, when in the professor's chair at Oxford, from the recollection of what he had only read when no more than eight years of age. His memory extended to the exact state of the weather on particular days, or the exact words and position of passages which he had not seen for twenty years. This faculty was more particularly acute on subjects of history and geography, from the early habit of exercising it on these subjects; having been taught to go accurately through the stories of the pictures and portraits of the successive English reigns before he was eight years old, and being at that age accustomed to recognise at a glance the different counties of a dissected map of England.

The power of memory, provided the brain be in a healthy state, will be proportioned to the determination with which an individual attends to the subject he would remember; that is, in proportion to the motive. If fancy interfere, memory is disturbed. This strength of purpose has always characterised those who have been celebrated for power of memory, and this will, of course, mainly arise from the feeling of importance which habit or teaching may attach to the object in view. Thus Cyrus is said to have learned the names of all the soldiers in his army, that he might be able the better to command them; and Mithridates, for the same reason, became acquainted with the languages of the twenty-two nations serving under his banners. Themistocles knew the name of every citizen in the 'commonwealth.' (Cicero's 'Cato.') It is stated by Eusebius that Esdras restored the sacred Hebrew volumes by memory, when they had been destroyed by the Chaldeans. St. Anthony, the Egyptian hermit, could not read, but knew all the Scriptures by heart, from having heard them. Pope Clement V. im

*See Dean Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold, vol. i. p. 4.