over a page in the words of the author. It is probable that this way of cultivating the memory does injury to the intellectual powers. Persons who thus exercise themselves in the remembrance of words, often make good linguists, but are rarely men of invention. Sometime ago, a young man was noticed at a boardinghouse table, pale, emaciated and entirely silent. After some time the company discovered in him a great linguist. He had studied all the dead languages, most or all the European, and was then applying himself to the Chinese. With all these tongues he very rarely spoke a word, and it could not be ascertained that he used language in any other other way than in the employment as compositor in a printing-office.

Zerah Colburn from a child had an astonishing faculty of remembering the associations of numbers, but we do not find that in after life his mental powers, though respectable, were much superior to those of other men. It may be that

this case and some others similar, do not come under the laws of emotion, association or habit. Cyrus the Great is often mentioned among the men of remarkable memory. He could, it is asserted call every man in his army by name; but might not this ready recollection have been induced by attention and habit? Historians represent Cyrus as one of the kindest as well

as the most polite men of ancient days. What is a greater mark of attention to personsthan the remembrance of their names and circumstances? Coleridge it is said was remarkably deficient in the technical memory of words, yet so great was his love for the Scriptures, that he could repeat from memory much of Isaiah. He studied that part of Scripture with unremitting attention and reverential awe.*

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Jerome of Prague also affords an instance of this kind of remembrance turned to good acBefore his martyrdom, he was confined three hundred aad forty days in the bottom of a dark tower, where it was impossible for him to read, yet when called to his trial, he quoted as many testimonies of the most learned men in favor of his own principles, as if in that time he had been confined to a good library and favoured with every convenience for study.

The importance of correct remembrance and ready recollection is seen every day in our lives. Sad mistakes sometimes arise from forgetfulness in the common affairs of life, for our daily duties are, after all, those which should be most faithfully remembered. To forget our friends, our households and our Maker, would give sad evidence that our thoughts were but little occupied with them. La Fontaine, a noted French

*Table Talk.

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poet, was remarkable for this carelessness. He was absorbed in his own imaginings, and his biographer remarks that this emotion took from him his memory and judgment. Sometime after having attended the burial of one of his friends, he called to visit him. At first he was shocked at the information of his death, but recovering from his surprise, he observed, it is true enough, for now I recollect having attended his funeral. At another time being in company, he much -admired a young man who was present.

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is your son," said some one of the persons present. "I am glad of it," answered La Fontaine. This same indolent carelessness, say his memoirs,* rendered him inattentive to the worship of God and the duties of religion. It is to be feared that many a one without the plea of poetry, or even of mathematics, is equally negligent of the common duties of social life, and of religion; and happy will it be, if, as is said of this poet, such should wake to repentance before it be too late.

Many artificial helps have been contrived for the cultivation of the memory, but nature itself points out to the observing mind the best directions. Children easily learn words, their minds not being so capable of exercising the reasoning or imaginative powers; but persons as they * Dictionnaire Historique.

advance in age do not readily learn by rote, because the ripened intellect is more concerned in abstraction, judgment and imagination. Childhood, therefore, and early youth, should be employed in acquiring such knowedge as may be got by the repetition of words, and by the use of figures or signs. In infancy poetic numbers help to fix much useful truth upon the mind. Witness the poetry of Dr. Watts, Mrs. Barbauld and others. Children easily learn languages, events and dates; this sort of study then is most proper at that period, and if their attention be not divided among an incongruous variety of studies, it is wonderful how much they may learn of what belongs to language, and to facts. By the skilful association and combination of words, they will soon come at the meaning of the terms most used in their own language; also at the prominent facts that belong to History, Geography and Chronology; together with some of the easier branches of Natural Science, as well as the dead and foreign Languages. It is, said Montaigne, without doubt a fine accomplishment to understand Latin and Greek, but it is bought too dear; we labour much to fill up the memory, and leave the understanding and conscience empty." Should this be so, the accomplishment would indeed

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be bought too dear, but one of these positions does not necessarily involve the other.

Young persons as well as others should cultivate a habit of attention to things useful in themselves. The most cultivated minds do not disdain to enquire of those much below them in attainment. This was notable in a learned Professor of one of our most eminent literary Institutions. Though Professor of languages, he often spent time in making enquiries of a farmer respecting the best method and time for planting and sowing his fields, and never did he neglect to obtain any information that might benefit himself or others. This he laid up in his . memory and used when opportunity required, for this gentleman, who will long be held in grateful remembrance, had a most benevolent disposition, and this was the secret of his attention to matters beside his Latin and Greek. loved mankind, he loved the cause of Christ, and and nothing that could be beneficial to men or subservient to religion, passed by him unnoticed, or was considered unworthy of his remembrance.

He

Correct associations of things and ideas in all their relations should be carefully cultivated; thus will they best be remembered and afterwards be brought up by recollection, for memory and recollection depend much upon asso