Another repeated a hundred decimal places, part of a conclusion arrived at by a member of the Academy of St. Petersburg as to the relation of the diameter to the circumference. Another made a classification of the first book of the Civil Code, with its divisions and titles, chapters and sections, giving the subject of each. All these wretched ones invariably answered with smiling faces and without hesitation, or at the most after an instant's reflection. But the most extraordinary case is the last. In this a child, "le jeune Chevrier, âgé de 10 ans "-his name certainly deserves, for his own memory, to be remembered-made an exposition of Jussieu's Botanical System. After dividing it into its three parts of acotyledons, monocotyledons, and dicotyledons, the child divided these each into fifteen classes, and each class into families; each family bore a name which alone would have been sufficient to frighten any ordinary child, but the young Chevrier, like a second Mazeppa, urged his way undismayed through Orobranchoides, Rhinantoides, Acantoides, Convolvulaceæ, Polemonaceæ, &c., explaining politely at intervals when called upon. Later on we read that even M. le Maire was astonished. After this success M. Feinaigle certainly deserved that increase of subscribers which his pamphlet touches on cursorily and with a side wind of signification.

Such instances of remarkable memory, generally supposed to be assisted by mnemotechny, have been given from the time of Cicero, who concludes that memory is not therefore of the heart, blood, brain, or atoms; whether of air or fire he is not, like the rest, ashamed to say he is ignorant; he undertakes, however, to swear that it is divine, having regard to such men as Cineas, the ambassador of Pyrrhus, who saluted the senate and all the people by their names the second day after his arrival at Rome; of Theodectes, the disciple of Aristotle; and of Hortensius, a man of his own time. We have most of us heard of Joseph Scaliger, who learnt the twice twenty-four books of the Iliad and Odyssey in three weeks; of Avicenna, who repeated by heart the whole of the Koran at the age of ten; of Lipsius, who was willing to recite the histories of Tacitus word for word, giving any one leave to plunge a dagger into his body if he made a mistake. -an idle license, for few would have cared to run the resultant risk; of the youth of Corsica of good appearance, mentioned by Muretus, who recited all the barbarous words the latter had written till he was tired of writing, and stopped at last, as it was necessary to stop somewhere, while the youth, like Oliver, asked for more. Certainly," says Muretus, "he was no boaster, and he told me he could repeat in that way 36,000 words. For my own part I made trial of him after many days, and found what he said true." This Corsican, as those others, was no doubt of a soul disdaining silver and gold, or he might have made his fortune by offering his services to an Emperor. Of Frances Suarez, who, after the witness of Strada, could quote the whole of Augustine (the father's works would fill a small library) from the egg to the apple. Of Dr. Thomas Fuller, who could name in order all the signs on both sides of the way from the beginning of Paternoster Row at Ave Maria Lane to the bottom of Cheapside to

Stock's Market, now the Mansion House. Of Magliabecchi, whose name is pleasantly and permanently associated with spiders and the proof of the lost MS. Of William Lyon, who for a bowl of punch, a liquor of which he was exceedingly fond, repeated a Daily Advertiser, in the morning, which he had read once only, and then in the course of a debauch, over-night.

We might extend this paper far beyond its normal dimensions by mention of such names as Jedediah Buxton, who, if his witness be true, could by some strange mnemotechny of his own, multiply 39 figures by 39, without paper, and amused himself when at the theatre by a compilation of the words used by Garrick, and at another time by that of the pots of beer drank during twelve years of his life; of Zerah Colburn, a mere child, of whom there remains on record a testimony that he could tell the number of seconds in fifty-eight years in less time than the question could be written down; or of that prodigy of parts, Pascal, to whom reference was made at the beginning of this paper, who is said to have forgot nothing thought, read, or done during his rational age. This, says the author of the essay on the Conduct of the Human Understanding, is a thing so wholly inconsistent with our experience of human nature that to doubt it is no reprehensible stretch of scepticism.

The same remark might be well applied to other marvels, as of Cyrus, who is reported by Pliny to have possessed that necessary good of life to such a degree that he knew the names of all the soldiers in his army-an account, by the way, considerably modified by Xenophon, who substitutes generals for soldiers; and of Mithridates, a prototype of Magliabecchi, who spoke the tongues of twenty-two peoples under his rule. In the one a nomenclator was supererogatory, the other had no need of any dragoman. There was in Greece, says Pliny, a man named Charmidas, who, when a person asked him for any book in a library, related the contents of it to that person by heart. Such tales are, like those of miracles and spiritual manifestations, interesting perhaps, but supported by insufficient evidence. Though, says Quintilian, "I never had the good fortune to witness such a performance," speaking of some mental gymnastics of this kind, "I yet conceive the belief in their possibility may be well cherished if for none other reason than that some who think it practicable may go and attempt to do likewise." So Leibnitz defended the search for the Philosopher's Stone by saying it frequently discovered scientific truth.

All, then, that artificial memory does is to represent ideas by sensible signs, and co-ordinate the ideas so represented. Simply, it teaches us to write our places are paper, our images letters, the relative disposition of them the sequence, and the mind reads the result forwards, or backwards, with almost equal facility. And as the mind reads these ideal tablets, unassisted by corporeal organisms, and it may be with no perishable eyes, so it can read them alike at midnight and at noonday.

There are objections urged against mnemonics. The first touches on the confusion likely to arise from so many symbols; but, to take an example from the art of music alone, how many arbitrary signs are here

which the mind by habit reads, it would seem so instantaneously as to admit no reflection, and these symbols if arranged with intelligence and order are less difficult to understand than arbitrary signs. They are not, it is true, written in never-fading colours, but neither are those natural impressions on the mind which we must, if we would preserve them, since they are too often like shadows flying over fields of corn, again and again renew. Our artificial impressions must be deepened by repetition, as our natural impressions; and even then their duration will depend on the subjectmatter of the mental tablet, whether it be marble, freestone, or sand.

A second objection refers to the symbols themselves, and complains of them as useless lumber after they have served their purpose. But, apart from the consideration of the capacity of the intellect, these symbols disappear of themselves after the ideas transmitted by them have mingled themselves with those acquired by the unassisted memory. The house being built the scaffolding falls away, or it may be the dry bones are no more seen for the flesh that covers them. But the scaffolding must be fixed securely or we can never build. To get rid of these symbols a German author, probably the most noted of modern writers on this subject, soberly proposes to hang up a carpet over them. In this way, he says, we have a double advantage, for the figures still remain behind, and if we should wish to revert to them at any time, we have only to remove our tapestry. It nowhere seems to occur to him that this blanket of the dark is often not easily to be lifted. Another method of "evacuation," to adopt his phraseology, is to open the windows of the room, and then-supposing the images written on paper light as the Sibyl's leaves-we have only to imagine that a great storm arises, and that tempestuous wind Euroclydon will blow them about immediately into the four quarters of the world. If this imagination should be inconvenient, that astute German suggests a little maid with a besom, or a gang of thieves. Such devices as these would be of infinite service to our great Palladium of English freedom, a British jury, when told by the judge to disburden their minds of important evidence, which, after long consultation infixing it indelibly in their recollections, has been considered inadmissible.

A third objection, applying especially to the ancient method and its imitators, is its length; for, first, we must determine the edifice, then the room in the edifice, then the wall of the room, and then the position of the symbol on that wall. It becomes, in fact, a sort of inverted "Old Woman and her Pig." But that which most affects the progress of mnemonics is more a moral than an intellectual difficulty; for, though it seems a sad thing to say, in the interests of truth it must be said, that the great majority of mnemonic systems appear evidently designed to be understood by nobody. Their authors, if we are not mistaken, are desirous to sell their book and retain their secret. As those obliging conjurors who, after exhibiting some miracle of their wonder-working art, gesticulate rapidly for a season with their hands, before the mouths of their astonished audience, and then say, "There, that's how it's done!"

so these mnemonicians profess to explain all things in their book, and leave us after we have bought it—which is the gist of the matter-as much in the dark as we were before. The unhappy purchaser finds that it is given unto him to know these mysteries only in parables, and seeing, sees not, nor by hearing understands!

Schenkel's Gazophylacium is a work of such determined obscurity, that succeeding commentators have met with a difficulty in explaining even its explanation, which was published by one of his pupils, probably as much a child of Mammon as his master. The Ars Magna of Raymond Lully is well known to be a night without a star, and the student may run, with his torch in his hand, searching among many of his successorsthose tombs of buried sense-and gain as much information on the subject of his search as instruction in modern gastronomy by gazing on the hieroglyphics of an Egyptian obelisk.

In conclusion we see that the path of mnemonics is scarcely that shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. We may suppose, taking a middle path, that a good system of mnemotechny is of advantage, but not of such great advantage as is generally supposed. The parasitic puffs which encumber the art, clinging to it like the wrappers of Holloway's pills, without which none are genuine, prove little or nothing. How many brave authors bore witness to the Philosopher's Stone, its conversions of iron into gold, circumstanced by place, time, and testimony, and withal the subject of their panegyric not more real than, as Cervantes said of his hero's favourite romances, "the miracles of Mahomet!" Natural and artificial memory must run together. Utraque alterâ separatá minus erit firma, says the author of the address to Herennius. Both are enriched by sobriety and attention, as both are impoverished by distraction and drunkenness. Both are attracted by that which is pleasant, and repelled by that which is uninteresting. For pleasure is the sauce of all things, the seasoning of affection, the spur of talent, the food of volition, and the strength of memory. Nor must we conceive of memory as of the stomach, that it is only capable of containing a certain quantity. The idea that the memory may be overcharged and destroyed is thus answered by Cicero: Quare hac exercitatione non eruenda est memoria, si qua est naturalis, sed certe si latet, evocanda. Extremes, however, are always to be avoided. Our memory, like iron, if used too little turns rusty, and if too much is worn away.

Town and Country.

ONE of the questions which newly-married couples whose income is derived from the husband's work in London most commonly put to themselves is, whether they shall go and live in the country. Railways, and the untiring enterprise of suburban builders, have made it easy for them to do so if they like. There are houses of every degree of capacity to be had in all directions round London; and, as regards getting to business in the morning and home again in the afternoon, the train puts the dwellers in them nearly on a level with the inhabitants of Tyburnia or South Kensington. It is practically as easy now to live in the country as it is to live in London. Indeed, were it not for this, the subject would hardly be worth discussion. A generation ago men who chose to settle themselves twenty miles away had to submit to very appreciable sacrifices in point of comfort. The railways only came to the outskirts of London, the service of trains was very incomplete, the distance between the station and their home was often considerable. Men who submitted to the small but constant annoyances which this state of things implies had usually some solid reason for living out of town. They had a real love for the country or a genuine dislike to London. It was only when the facilities for the two modes of life became pretty equally balanced that the question which to choose came to be a matter of serious debate. Before that time it was a question that settled itself. It does in some cases still; and as the object of this paper is to render to those who are debating it such aid as can be given by a fair statement of the advantages on each side, it will be convenient first of all to mention what these exceptional cases are. The most obvious are those in which considerations of health point decidedly to one alternative or the other. There are some women and more children to whom London air or London ways seem positively hurtful; there are some men who are made ill by constant railway journeys, however short. There is no room for nicely balanced argument here. It is better to be well in a place you do not care for than to be an invalid in a place you like. Another class of cases is those in which the husband's occupation takes him away from home at night. The editor of a morning paper, for example, unless he can afford to have two houses going at once, has no choice but to live in Lon. don. There are people, again, with exceptionally strong tastes, who are in much the same position-people with a passion for their garden which makes them feel homeless in the best appointed house if there is no lawn or greenhouse into which they can step from their drawing-room window;