There Titian, Tintoret, and Giambellin,

And that strong master of a myriad hues,

The Veronese, like flowers with odours keen,

Shall smite your brain with splendours: they confuse The soul that wandering in their world must lose Count of our littleness, and cry that then

The gods we dream of walked the earth like men.

About your feet the myrtles will be set,
Grey rosemary, and thyme, and tender blue
Of love-pale labyrinthine violet;

Flame-born anemones will glitter through
Dark aisles of roofing pine-trees; and for you
The golden jonquil and starred asphodel
And hyacinth their speechless tales will tell.

The nightingales for you their tremulous song
Shall pour amid the snowy scented bloom
Of wild acacia bowers, and all night long

Through starlight-flooded spheres of purple gloom Still lemon boughs shall spread their faint perfume, Soothing your sense with odours sweet as sleep, While wind-stirred cypresses low music keep.

For you the mountain Generous shall yield
His wealth of blossoms in the noon of May-
Fire-balls of peonies, and pearls concealed
Of lilies in thick leafage, glittering spray
Of pendulous laburnum boughs, that sway
To scarce-felt breezes, gilding far and wide
With liquid splendour all the broad hill-side.

Yea, and what time the morning mists are furled
On lake low-lying and prodigious plain,
And on the western sky the massy world

Contracts her shadow-for the sun-beams gain
Unseen, yet growing,-while the awful train
Of cloudless Alps stand garish, mute and chill,
Waiting the sun's kiss with pale forehead still,-

You from his crest shall see the sudden fire

Flash joyous: lo! the solitary snow

First blushing! Broader now, brighter and higher,
Shoots the strong ray; the mountains row by row
Receive it, and the purple valleys glow;

The smooth lake-mirrors laugh; till silently
Throbs with full light and life the jocund sky!

*

Farewell you pass; we tarry: yet for us
Is the long weary penitential way
Of thought that souls must travel, dubious,
With tottering steps and eyes that wane away
'Neath brows more wrinkle-withered day by day:
Farewell! There is no rest except in death
For him who stays or him who journeyeth.

J. A. S.

Artificial Memory.

WHEN the inimitable cavalier of the sad countenance was for imitating Beltenebros' madness in the Sierra Morena, he wished Sancho to learn by heart a love-letter to that Dulcinea, of whom it is recorded in the Arabic to her honour that she was the best hand at salting pork in La Mancha. But Sancho said, "Write it, your worship, for it's sheer nonsense to trust anything to my memory, since my noddle is such that very often I can't even remember my own name." There are, in fact, those whose capacity is so confined that they can only follow one particular science, and by applying his mental powers to more than the study of refranes Sancho might have been in the unenviable position of that Biscayan who forgot his own language, and did not learn the Castilian. So, whether the father of proverbs, by the aid of the thread now about to be spun, might have succeeded in tracing the idea of his own name through the labyrinth of oblivion, is extremely doubtful, but between him and Pascal, who is said never to have forgotten anything-an intellectual Corinth not given to all to attain there are very many orders of minds, and to the amusement or instruction of these the following pages may perhaps somewhat conduce. To say that Sancho's memory was that of a beast would neither be true nor a compliment to the brute creation. It is certain that other animals than man are endowed with memory-excellent memory sometimes—and use it unaided by the gospel preached of Simonides and Cicero, Kästner and Feinaigle. When a cow is bereaved of her calf she remembers that accident, and laments her misfortune with familiar lowing, and when a horse, rejoicing in his strength, hears the jangle of his harness, and sees his well-known trappings, he snorts, rolling (as Virgil says) "under his distended nostrils collected fire," pawing the ground for very impatience and pricking his ears at his master's voice, possessed by a memory of, and a passionate yearning for, his accustomed course. Parrots, doubtless, retain the pattern or idea of Pretty Poll in their minds, during their repeated essays and gradual approach to perfection in the enunciation of that familiar formula. Cats or dogs, who are supposed to be without reason, yet remember and return to their accustomed homes, though transported from them by night, and to a considerable distance. Horne Tooke thought it would have been well if Monboddo had imitated the example of Porphyry's partridge, quoted by his lordship, and foreborne his noise until he was spoken to.

Once upon a time a barber at Rome possessed a very clever magpie.

Through the street in which he lived a rich man was carried out to burial, accompanied by much music. After this the bird remained for a season mute, not even uttering those cries by which he was wont to express his desire for food. Those who before wondered at his voice were now amazed by his silence. Some supposed witchcraft was at work, others deemed the pie deafened by the sound of the music. But nothing of the kind was the cause. The bird was occupied in meditation, busied, in fact, about vocal and instrumental harmony. For suddenly it burst out, not into its old familiar phrases, but into an exact imitation of all the songs and orchestral pieces played at the rich man's funeral. This story, told by Plutarch, may be collated with several in Jesse's Gleanings.

"In the Republic of Letters," says Bayle, "memory is almost as necessary as life." The proposition that it is useless to read books unless memory take charge of their contents requires no proof; and it is equally futile to hear any worthy thing with one ear which goes out speedily at the other. It is obvious, since we only know so much as we remember, that without this secondary perception no intellectual improvement could result from the most enlightened and extended experience. Plato, indeed, goes so far as to suppose that all human knowledge is but a recollection, after long oblivion, of what the soul knew before its imprisonment in matter. Without this spiritual spigot of memory we should, like the virgin daughters of Danaus, fill our urns at the fountain of the waters of wisdom in vain. And at the best, memory is like that bridge in the Vision of Mirza, which serves to carry only a few of our ideas in safety over the deep dark sea of oblivion, while the great majority fall through its hidden holes and fissures. The most retentive mind but resembles, to quote the elegant words of Locke, the tomb to which it is fast approaching, where, though the brass and marble may remain, yet too soon the inscription is effaced by time, and the imagery mouldered away.

It would be but filling many pages, and doing that which is already done, to write more about natural memory. It is enough that mythology makes the Muses the daughters of Mnemosyne, and the old poet Afranius Memory and Use the parents of Wisdom. Without entering into the Cartesian theory of broad and strait traces in the brain worn by spiritual footsteps, it may be said that the keynote of the music of all fantasias on artificial memory is association. The influence of this, Bacon's "binding of thoughts," need scarcely be enlarged on to anyone who has shifted the position of a finger-ring, or in Berlin put pieces of paper in a snuffbox, or in London tied a knot in a handkerchief. Some there are, indeed, who have converted that article into a Laocoon without attaining the object of their desire; considering their knots, when the time for action is come, with a blank despair akin to that engendered by a continental Bradshaw; while others, forgetting alike both knots and handkerchief, leave for disentanglement to the weeping hands of the wordy washerwoman these linen witnesses of their wasted labour. Passing over Coleridge's mackerel and gooseberry sauce, how often recollections which we thought

cold, dead, and buried without hope of resurrection are roused into warm and instant being by the fortuitous sound of some old and once familiar song, by the faint perfume of some faded rose. Did not Peter immediately remember the word of Christ when the cock crew? and how few persons there are who having once seen that noble piece of frozen music in the Strand known as Northumberland House will not when they think thereon remember also, in obedience to the law of objective suggestion, the lion with his outstretched tail!

Here let us intercalate on the lucus a non lucendo principle a word or two about a mystery which seems to have nothing to do with association. How is it that which is old remains in our recollection, while that which is recent we are unable to retain ? That we forget what happened yesterday, and yet remember many of the deeds of our childhood, like those who, looking back on their journey, see the hills left behind them in the far distance, but can, for the grey mist which covers them, discern but little of those low-lying lands and valleys which are interposed between their present resting-place and those distant hills? Returning to the theory of association, how often are we at a loss to find the name of a person or an idea, though we send out emissary eyes of the soul to spy in what dark cell it lies concealed, seeking it carefully and with tears, and yet this same name, by some subtle connecting link, will rise before us like a ghost, unsolicited, and when we least expect it. The link may be of any of the senses in the following instance it is a sharply defined note of sound. For it is difficult to forget that Ahiman was one of the sons of Anak, though no etymologist, other than Ménage, would conclude from this fortuitous relation of syllables, that our English "a high man” was connected with the Hebrew. It may be said that the mind naturally seeks some assistance of this kind for the memory. Not seldom are we surprised on finding a person of whom we had before only heard, fat, instead of thin, short, instead of tall, contrary in some respect to the imaged associations which the mind had spontaneously clustered about his name.

Simonides is supposed to have been the inventor of the first mnemonic art. The story entitled, "Simonides saved by the Gods," which led to the invention, is told by Phædrus with the moral that mortals are honoured by the divinities. On an occasion this Simonides was asked to write a panegyric on a certain pugilist. The name of the pugilist was, according to Cicero, "Scopas," but there is considerable dispute among the ancient grammarians both as to his name and the scene of the circumstances about to be narrated, the latter being as uncertain as the birthplace of Homer, and the former as great a subject of dispute as the original and family appellation of Don Quixote. This Scopas, however, had conquered in a boxing match. The poet agreed for a certain price to write his praise, and leaving the reek of the city, with its riches and its roar, sought a retired spot suited to composition. But finding little inspiration on his subject, and feeling himself uncomfortably hampered by the narrow limits of Scopas's fame, he by a poetic license ventured on a slight