and that much is to be ascribed to different habits of attention, and to a difference of selection among the various objects and events presented to their curiosity.

[It is worthy of remark, also, that those individuals who possess unusual powers of memory with respect to any one class of objects, are commonly as remarkably deficient in some of the other applications of that faculty. I knew a person who, though completely ignorant of Latin, was able to repeat over thirty or forty lines of Virgil, after having heard them once read to him, not indeed with perfect exactness, but with such a degree of resemblance, as (all circumstances considered) was truly astonishing; yet this person (who was in the condition of a servant) was singularly deficient in memory in all cases in which that faculty is of real practical utility. He was noted in every family in which he had been employed for habits of forgetfulness, aud could scarcely deliver an ordinary message without committing some blunder.

A similar observation, I can almost venture to say, will be found to apply to by far the greater number of those in whom this faculty seems to exhibit a preternatural or anomalous degree of force. The varieties of memory are indeed wonderful, but they ought not to be confounded with inequalities of memory. One man is distinguished by a power of recollecting names, and dates, and genealogies; a second, by the multiplicity of speculations, and of general conclusions treasured up in his intellect; a third, by the facility with which words and combinations of words (the ipsissima verba of a speaker or of an author) seem to lay hold of his mind; a fourth, by the quickness with which he seizes and appropriates the sense and meaning of an author, while the phraseology and style seem altogether to escape his notice; a fifth, by his memory for poetry; a sixth, by his memory for music; a seventh, by his memory for architecture, statuary, and painting, and all the other objects of taste which are addressed to the eye. All these different powers seem miraculous to those who do not possess them; and as they are apt to be supposed by superficial observers to be commonly united in the same individuals, they

contribute much to encourage those exaggerated estimates concerning the original inequalities among men in respect to this faculty, which I am now endeavouring to reduce to their just standard.1]

As the great purpose to which this faculty is subservient, is to enable us to collect and to retain, for the future regulation of our conduct, the results of our past experience, it is evident that the degree of perfection which it attains in the case of different persons must vary; first, with the facility of making the original acquisition; secondly, with the permanence of the acquisition; and thirdly, with the quickness or readiness with which the individual is able, on particular occasions, to apply it to use. The qualities, therefore, of a good memory are, in the first place, to be susceptible; secondly, to be retentive; and thirdly, to be ready.

It is but rarely that these three qualities are united in the same person. We often, indeed, meet with a memory which is at once susceptible and ready; but I doubt much if such memories be commonly very retentive; [for the same set of habits which are favourable to the two first qualities are adverse to the third. Those individuals, for example, who, with a view to conversation, make a constant business of informing themselves with respect to the popular topics of the day, or of turning over the ephemeral publications subservient to the amusement or to the politics of the times, are naturally led to

"His

1 [I recollect to have heard Mr. Gibbon observe, that all the royal families in Europe were remarkable for a faculty of recognising faces, and of recalling proper names. The same thing is taken notice of by the Marquis de Bouillé, in his account of the late King of Sweden, Gustavus the Third. memory was singularly retentive; a thing," the same writer adds, very common in princes, and which seems almost like a sixth sense bestowed upon them by nature." A similar remark is made by the Prince de Ligne in a letter from Kiof to the Marchioness de Coigny.

"The Empress" (Catherine Second of Russia) "received me as if I had left her six days, instead of six years ago. She recalled to my mind a thousand things which monarchs alone can remember, for their memory is always ezcellent."—(Le'ters of the Prince de Ligne, edited by Madame de Stael.) No fact can demonstrate more incontestably to what a degree the apparent inequalities among individuals in the original capacities of their minds depend on the occupations and habits of their tender years.]

cultivate a susceptibility and readiness of memory, but have no inducement to aim at that permanent retention of selected ideas, which enables the scientific student to combine the most remote materials, and to concentrate at will, on a particular object, all the scattered lights of his experience, and of his reflections. Such men (as far as my observation has reached) seldom possess a familiar or correct acquaintance even with those classical remains of our own earlier writers, which have ceased to furnish topics of discourse to the circles of fashion. A stream of novelties is perpetually passing through their minds, and the faint impressions which it leaves soon vanish to make way for others,-like the traces which the ebbing tide leaves upon the sand. Nor is this all. In proportion as the associating principles which lay the foundation of susceptibility and readiness predominate in the memory, those which form the basis of our more solid and lasting acquisitions may be expected to be weakened, as a natural consequence of the general laws of our intellectual frame. This last observation it will be necessary to illustrate more particularly.]

I have already remarked, in treating of a different subject, that the bulk of mankind, being but little accustomed to reflect and to generalize, associate their ideas chiefly according to their more obvious relations; those, for example, of resemblance and of analogy; and above all, according to the casual relations. arising from contiguity in time and place; whereas, in the mind of a philosopher, ideas are commonly associated according to those relations which are brought to light in consequence of particular efforts of attention; such as the relations of Cause and Effect, or of Premises and Conclusion. This difference in the modes of association of these two classes of men, is the foundation of some very striking diversities between them in respect of intellectual character.

In the first place, in consequence of the nature of the relations which connect ideas together in the mind of the philosopher, it must necessarily happen, that when he has occasion to apply to use his acquired knowledge, time and reflection will be requisite to enable him to recollect it. In the case of those, on

the other hand, who have not been accustomed to scientific pursuits; as their ideas are connected together according to the most obvious relations; when any one idea of a class is presented to the mind, it is immediately followed by the others, which succeed cach other spontaneously according to the laws of association. In managing, therefore, the little details of some subaltern employment, in which all that is required is a knowledge of forms, and a disposition to observe them, the want of a systematical genius is an important advantage; because this want renders the mind peculiarly susceptible of habits, and allows the train of its ideas to accommodate itself perfectly to the daily and hourly occurrences of its situation. But if, in this respect, men of no general principles have an advantage over the philosopher, they fall greatly below him in another point of view, inasmuch as all the information which they possess, must necessarily be limited by their own proper experience; whereas the philosopher, who is accustomed to refer every thing to general principles, is not only enabled, by means of these, to arrange the facts which experience has taught him, but by reasoning from his principles synthetically, has it often in his power to determine facts a priori, which he has no opportunity of ascertaining by observation.

It follows farther, from the foregoing principles, that the intellectual defects of the philosopher are of a much more corrigible nature than those of the mere man of detail. If the former is thrown by accident into a scene of business, more time will perhaps be necessary to qualify him for it than would be requisite for the generality of mankind, but time and experience will infallibly, sooner or later, familiarize his mind completely with his situation. A capacity for system and for philosophical arrangement, unless it has been carefully cultivated in early life, is an acquisition which can scarcely ever be made afterwards; and, therefore, the defects which I already mentioned as connected with early and constant habits of business, adopted from imitation and undirected by theory, may, when once these habits are confirmed, be pronounced to be incurable. I am also inclined to believe, both from a theoretical view of

the subject, and from my own observations as far as they have reached, that if we wish to fix the particulars of our knowledge very permanently in the memory, the most effectual way of doing it is to refer them to general principles. Ideas which are connected together merely by casual relations, present themselves with readiness to the mind, so long as we are forced by the habits of our situation to apply them daily to use; but when a change of circumstances leads us to vary the objects of our attention, we find our old ideas gradually to escape from the recollection; and if it should happen that they escape from it altogether, the only method of recovering them, is by renewing those studies by which they were at first acquired. The case is very different with a man whose ideas, presented to him at first by accident, have been afterwards philosophically arranged and referred to general principles. When he wishes to recollect them, some time and reflection will frequently be necessary to enable him to do so; but the information which he has once completely acquired, continues in general to be an acquisition for life, or, if accidentally any article of it should be lost, it may often be recovered by a process of reasoning.

Something very similar to this happens in the study of languages. [A language caught by the ear is generally spoken with more of the ease of a native than if it had been learned by rule; but in the course of a few years, it is often as completely obliterated from the memory as if it had never been acquired. It is only by a complete possession of the principles of a language that we can hope to make it an acquisition for life. We may see this daily illustrated in the uncertain hold which girls commonly retain of the French acquired at boarding-schools, when compared with the permanent acquaintance with Latin which boys receive from a regular classical education. Few boys, however well educated, read and speak Latin with the same facility and fluency with which we daily see young ladies read and speak French; yet how seldom do they ever lose afterwards a competent knowledge of the Latin tongue ?]

A philosophical arrangement of our ideas is attended with