A brighter lustre and a clearer calm, 'Tis beauty all, and grateful song around, Join'd to the low of kine, and numerous bleat Of flocks thick-nibbling through the clover'd vale." A thought comes into my mind, as I shake the rain out of this lily, how calm and unpretending is the growth of everything beautiful in God's visible world! no noise! no pretension! You never hear the opening rose, nor the tulip shooting forth its gorgeous streaks. The soul grows in beauty, as its life resembles the flowers! Addison said that our time is most profitably employed in doings that make no figure in the world. He spoke from experience. Often must he have contrasted his solitary walks in the cloisters of Magdalen, with the sumptuous turmoil of Holland House; and the cheerful greeting of a college friend on the banks of the Cherwell, with the silken rustle of the imperious Warwick! And there is yet another reflection to be drawn from the vanished rainbow: it is the remembrance of that Bow of Faith which paints the rainy clouds of our life with glory: 66 the soft gleam of Christian worth Which on some holy house we mark; Dear to the pastor's aching heart, To think, where'er he looks, such gleam may have a part." JULY THE FIRST. T is impossible to read a page of literary history, without wonder at the capacity of recollection in famous men. The great Latin critic measured genius by memory. Remarkable stories are told of one of his own countrymen. Seneca, in his youth, repeated two thousand words in the order in which they had been uttered. In modern times, Mozart, with the help of a sketch in the crown of his hat, carried away the MISERERE of Allegri, which he heard in the Sistine Chapel. English theology furnishes several splendid examples of the faculty. Jewell was especially distinguished. On one occasion, the martyr Hooper wrote forty Irish words, which Jewell, after three or four perusals, repeated, according to their position, backwards and forwards. He performed a feat not less difficult with a passage from Erasmus. Saunderson knew by heart the Odes of Horace, the Offices of Cicero, and a considerable portion of Juvenal and Persius. Bates, the eloquent friend of Howe, rivalled the Greek philosopher mentioned by Pliny; and having delivered a public and unwritten address, went over it again with perfect ease and accuracy. Warburton was not inferior to his illus Р trious predecessors. His common-place-book was an old almanac, three inches square, in which he inserted occasional references, or hints of thoughts and sentences, to be woven into his compositions. But all the erudition of the Divine Legation was entrusted to memory. Pope's description of Bolingbroke is true of Warburton: "He sits like an intelligence, and recollects all the question within himself." Lord Clarendon declared that Hales, of Eton, carried about in his memory more learning than any scholar in the world. Turning into a wider path, we find men of different ages and dispositions employing this endowment in poetical acquisitions. Gassendi had on his lips the poetry of Lucretius: M. Angelo, the greater part of Dante and Petrarch; and Galileo, of Ariosto, Petrarch, and Berni. Fontenelle mentions the ability of Leibnitz, even in old age, to repeat nearly all the poetry of Virgil, word for word; an amusing contrast to Malebranche, who never read ten verses without disgust. To these instances may be added that of Pope, who had not only a general, but local memory of much strength. He recollected the particular page of the book in which the fact or story was related. "If," wrote Atterbury, "you have not read the verses lately, I am sure you remember them, because you forget nothing." Wallis, the mathematician, without light, pen, ink, or paper, extracted the square root of twenty-seven places of figures, and kept the unwritten result in his during a month. memory I will put down one case of memory ingeniously used, and another of the talent largely possessed, but without flexibility or advantage. The former refers to the renowned Hyder Ali. Unable to read or write, he had an ingenious contrivance for insuring the veracity of his correspondence. His secretary having prepared the letter, read it aloud; it was then given to another person, who repeated it, and any discrepancy between the two was punished by the execution of the scribe. The next example refers to Walter Scott's friend, Dr. Leyden. A single perusal of an Act of Parliament, or any long document, prepared him to recite it; but the collective was unaccompanied by the analytical power. He remembered the whole, not the parts. To recover a passage or sentence, he was obliged to return to the beginning. In literature and art, memory is a synonym for invention; it is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty. The saying of Reynolds has the force of an axiom : "Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded; nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate the works of his predecessors." Mozart studied the productions of every renowned composer with intense industry. The memory must be educated in order to be useful. A straggling and open field of learning affords poor and insufficient pasturage; boundary lines are indispensable. As Shenstone said, our thoughts and observations should be sorted. This art of cultivation may be condensed into four rules -1. The habit of fixing the mind, like the eye, upon one object. 2. The application of the powers of reflection. 3. The watchfulness of understanding, which is known, in a good sense, as curiosity. 4. Method. After every effort and precaution, memory is that delicate hand of the intellect which seems to be most susceptible of violence or disease; its fine nerves quickly lose their energy, and cease to obey the impulse of the mind. The muscular sense of the member decays and vanishes. Locke has illustrated the varying strength and duration of this faculty (Human Understanding, ch. x. sec. 5) by a metaphor, unsurpassed in our language for beauty of conception, aptness of application, and completeness of structure:-" Our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. How much the constitution of our bodies and the make of our animal spirits are concerned in this, and whether the temper |