the British Museum reading-room was an assistant librarian whose head was much better than the boasted catalogue; and what was more wonderful was the fact, that his mind was a catalogue raisonnée; he would tell you the best authors on any subject, their editions, size, place, worth, and credibility. His memory was to us as worderful as Avicenna's, Hortensius's, or Joseph Scaliger's. But the most wonderful of all memories, or rather mental faculties in that way, lies with those extraordinary men who are born with arithmetical minds such as Bidder or Jedediah Buxton. The latter, a common labouring man, could tell the acres, poles, roods, nay, even square inches and half inches, in a field by walking once or twice over it: and after his work once amused himself by calculating what the cost would be of 140 nails doubled at one farthing for the first nail, a halfpenny for the second, and so on.

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There is very little doubt that a great deal of the power of our most eminent men lay in their memory. Bacon had a prodigious faculty in that way, and a facility of arrangement which helped him amazingly in his philosophic induction. Macaulay's memory was not only immense, but accurate in the extreme. He could remember, condense, arrange, bring forward, and quote at will. He perfected this faculty by practice, taking old Fuller's advice, "And I would tell thee, scholar, not to trust everything to thy memory, but divide it between thy mind and thy note book, whence thou mayst draw out thy forces into the field, like a general his men." The greatest of all our writers, or indeed of the world, Shak

speare, must have had a memory as sound as it was fertile. He to whom the domain of all art and knowledge was as an open book, and whom Lord Campbell claims as a lawyer, the physician as a doctor, the traveller, the philosopher, or tradesman, each as one of his own craft, could only have attained this knowledge by a most accurate and subtile perception, united to a sound memory. Everything he remembered-and he forgot nothing-he turned to use. His was a

mind that held and retained the characters drawn on it like marble. There are some, says Locke, which only hold them "like sand ;” vanishing memories, exceeding but for a brief space that shortest of all endurances-the fame which Keats claimed for himself" Here lies one whose name was writ on water."

The prayer of every one is that motto of our old pictures, enlarged on by Dickens, who has curiously enough turned the sense of it upside down: "Lord, keep my memory green" —that is, as we take it, "Lord, let the remembrance of me be pleasant unto men ;" but which he reads, and we now use for our own purpose, "Lord, keep my retentive faculties vigorous." The loss of memory is a sad loss; a careless and disordered recollection is indicative of incipient insanity.

One of the difficulties which man has to struggle against is the facility which pervades his youth of remembering silly and nonsensical and even wicked rhymes and phrases, and of forgetting that which is good. This should be combated. In childhood and early youth retention is wonderfully vigorTo make it more so it should be exercised. The young

ous.

Russian nobility, brought up with French and English nurses, will acquire and retain three languages whilst our children are learning one. Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, Roger Ascham, and Lord Bacon, knew Greek and Latin fairly when ten years old. Sara Coleridge has written a little book of instructive rhymes which children of four years may acquire, and which will teach them at the same time the properties and the Latin names of animals and vegetables; once acquired they will never forget them. The sure way to have a strong memory is frequently to exercise it, just as the waterman has a strong arm by constantly pulling. We should also learn from Feinagle to assort and classify our knowledge, to strengthen it by association. When a man's or woman's head is like a kitchen drawer, full, confused, and disordered, the knowledge may be much, but it will perforce be useless.

Varied reading to no purpose and upon many different subjects is bad for the memory. After reading a book, we should review our new acquirements, and try to remember what we have read, or else the more we read the worse we shall be, like that old Cambridge scholar, who was never seen without a book in his hand, and who yet forgot everything. "That man," said Robert Hall, "has put so many books a-top of his head that his brain has not room to move." A good memory is no doubt a natural gift, but a poor one may be wonderfully improved. Sir William Jones, who more than once talked of the weakness of his, yet acquired twenty-seven languages; Cardinal Mezzofanti is said to have known ten more; Captain Burton, the African traveller, has mastered

twenty-two. We may be sure that constant and unwearied industry alone enabled these men to acquire so much. Due and precise attention is the first great requisite. "If you would only pay as much attention to these matters as you do to your dress or your dinner, you would remember them as well, young lady," said Dr. Johnson to one who complained of forgetfulness. Finally, let us remember that memory is as much an affair of will as anything else, and we should determine, all of us, to be in the rank of those good and blessed souls, who, if they have made no great names, have yet had the merit to forget evil and to remember good; whom injury does not touch; who write the remembrance of a wrong upon water, but engrave the memory of a benefit upon marble.

T is so very hard to define what happiness is, that the best way would be to begin with some sketch

of what it is not. But an attempt at definition may serve us. Happiness is the quiet and continued existence of a mild pleasure pervading the mind. It may arise from health and a clear conscience; from a sense of having done one's duty; from a satisfaction at position, security, wealth, gratification of wishes, desires, passions, legitimately indulged in, or from a variety of other causes ; but it is a state of mental calm, a halcyon peace, a quiet brooding, the soul's sunshine, arising, not physically-although physical causes can disturb it--but from the soul or mind. Hence it has been said of it that "nothing earthly gives it or can destroy" it.

Rightly to understand it, we must lift it out of the sphere of bodily and earthly enjoyments. A sick man, a cold man, a starving man, may be very happy. So far as we can understand, those who suffered the most cruel martyrdoms were not denied happiness, even at the time of martyrdom. It was certainly with Ridley, and Cranmer, and pious Rowland