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Pcootcft to Citcratuvc, Science, aui> tl)e* Sons of temperance, <Di>i> iTcUorosljip, iitasonrn, cmb oeneral intelligence.
VOLUME I.
iiiiSflßi
MEMORY—AN ESSAY.
ordinary manifestations. —phenomena.—rec-
ollection. SCHOOL EXERCISES. CONCLUSION.
I will lead you to the dwelling of Infancy. It
is the palace of a mighty monarch. In his realm,
all distinctions of rank below royalty, arc utterly
abolished. Simple or wise, buflbon or sage, un
lettered or literate, infamous or renowned, known
or unknown ; —he questions not concerning his
votaries. Is there quick compliance with his un
named wish, do they heed well his wailing voice,
more thrilling than the herald’s trump proclaim
ing the mandate of imperial mightiness? It is
enough; he sleeps, —and, perchance, dreams, if
the smiles that dimple his young face speak of
an inward working, —and wakes and looks about
him with the eyes that move no envy, unlike the”
glancing eyes of other monarchs, for whose look
of recognition all are eager,—and then he sleeps
again. Not a minister of his court holds place by
tenure of preference ; whoso cau do the service
may''minister at will. He says no farewell to the
retiring, and bids not the coming welcome. He
offers no reward, he imposes no penalty. He
calls, and few so deaf that they will not hear. He
commands, and none refuse to do his bidding.
Lo, comes a candidate for his regard, who, not
mativ days ago, was enthroned as he is. With
smiles and a voice of music, comes the little cour
tier, but he wins no notice, —he retires unknown.
Blooming girlhood cannot charm him. The hois
terous boy is tamed into gentleness in his pres
ence. Woman in her beautiful dignity, and man
in his pride, bow down and prattle,—but girl and
bov, woman and man, are alike unheeded.
Brief time has passed, and a change is come
over him. He is no less imperious, but he has
learned to elect his servants. It is not enough
now that his bidding is done. Not willingly will
he receive homage, much less service from any
whom he has not chosen to his ministry. He has
acquired with his elective ability, power to com
mend his choice with incentives to good service
more moving than the endowments or the pa
geantry of the kings of this world. Ills smile is
brighter than a coronet. His voice is more elo
quent than tame. For hours of wakefulness and
weariness, for days of anxiety and toil, they who
catch his remembering smile, and hear his loving
Jargon, are thrice remunerated, and bound to him
everlasting fealty. He wakes, and his eyes
‘Windersover his domain, and seeing but strange
dces ke wild with fear. But she, whom
among all others he has distinguished, approaches,
ii [j e peace of his heart passes into hers as she
0 . Sals tearful smiles. Beautiful as the early
spring-flowers are these first tokens of the pres-
C( a souk And as it becomes more and yet
( / e ; n y rev ealed, though we behold it with less
thouM in ® r pP I °ti° n > it is with movings of deeper
5 \ mere Pithing, in its hours of
• ose ve !T presence seemed to banish
with (merit- n °” stlrrin S llie depths of our spirits
Once it si * unanswerable by human searching.
It knew in !L aU M lngs buta cl, angeful P iclu, ' c
lavished their hearH “ orlt l , but °‘’ two , wh ”
change of nU U Wealtb l )0n u > ancl ;d ’
wonder • h,n ‘ Wa , S but tlie wakener of vague
widens ’and n °” ’ ,e Clrc ' e of its knowledge
places arp e P Grsons an d thing and times and
and reconiz?r ate . d ’ and na,ned and de3cribed
Whir ? ( i anc ever a fier known.
you knewl 7 der is the raind of ’ a chM \ When
hut lift) lrSt ’ n ka d but few impressions. It
adds to if- ? lnc l ui sitive even. Now, every day
is spe nt in knowl edge, and every moment
t C ° rn P arin g its treasures, or in seeking
ate start! store °f intellectual wealth. You
iteiitipr*?!- Wltk assurance of the permanence of
questi on^* ori no ess than by the novelty of its
time upon \ Ha PPy is he who can bestow his
There ; g ■observation of childhood and youth.
in the household, perpetual joy for
the mother, and gushes of delight for the father,
w len evening calls him from the crowded world
lo the retirement of the fireside; but sometimes
even more than parents know is the experience
of the teacher, wondering at the process of ope
rations of which parents oftentimes see only the
result. A stranger entering the room where a
number of children are performing the exercises
of their daily training in study, sees but little of
that which the teacher sees. He hears them re
peat their lessons. He listens to the answers
which they make to questions proposed by their
teacher, and hears the questions which they pro
pose, and he may admire the attainments of one,
and marvel at the mental poverty of another, but
of the rate of advancement of either child he
knows nothing. Yet the teacher remembers the
hour of his first acquaintance with those who
stand in contrast, and he knows that each is de
serving of admiration. The one that fails to raise
the stranger’s commendaion, was cradled among
those who knew nothing as they should know, or
knowing, have failed to impart their knowledge ;
or discouraged or vexed at the slowness of the
child to receive impressions,—for all are not alike
impressible—have withheld their efforts to in
struct it, letting pass unheeded those golden mo
ments when the child was ready to inquire, and
when he would have been eager to learn and
sure to remember. But since the hour when he
entered the teachers’ room, he has been carefully
watched and sedulously ministered unto and en
couraged, and he is now passing through the same
mental state, that had been passed through by
the more favored child when he entered the same
room. Perhaps they came on the same day, and
were of the same age, and might from birth have
had the same advantage, but for the difference
in the mental and moral characters of their pa
rents. The more lavored child is improving ad
vantages which he has enjoyed during a long pe
riod, and, of course, he knows more thau the
other. But the two are equally wonderful. Both
exhibit manifestations of memory. The favored
child now appropriates knowledge with greater
facility than the other, because he has been longer
habituated to the process. But it is a wonder
that either can remember at all. And the greater
wonder is, that the less favored one advances in
knowledge. But suppose this visitor of the
schoolroom draws no comparison, but only just
observes what is passing before him. He is as
sured that these children remember. But below
these visible things, lies something to him enseen,
but known to the teacher. He knows that once,
all that is now familiar to the little group around
him was strange. And he has seen them storing
up, one after another, the facts and principles
which he has communicated to them, or directed
them to search for; and this result appears to
him, as haply the rich fabric of the loom may to
him who has assorted and arranged the threads
of many hues, and put in motion the complicated
machinery, and seen the tissue grow beneath bis
eye. All these are wonderful; but these are
but the ordinary manifestations of memory.—
These are not the phenomena. These are its
every day operations and results. They may be
witnessed in every schoolroom. We call them
ordinary, because they are as common as the na
tive flowers which we see in our own fields and
bv our way-sides. If we should call them p e
nomena, so might we all that we see and hear.
But we call by this name the less commonly ob
served manifestations of memory. But let us
notice more of these common things.
We have contemplated infancy and childhood,
and should we go on through every periodUf ’ hfe,
we should find the process of appropi ia V n o kn
ledge, of receiving impressions from scen.s ad
events, constantly going on. It never cease s .
But how wonderful are the results, wic PP ‘
at periods far remote from childhood, o processes
which went on at the earliest times ol file, ine
boy leaves the village where he was born. Ihe
SAVANNAH, GA.. THURSDAY, MAY 10, 1849.
playmates of his childish days are scattered the
world Over, and the scenes and events which
were Daguerrotyped upon his mind in those days,
seem to have been erased, or at least obscured.
One would think that the tablet on which were
drawn the pictures of early life, must be like the
canvass or the panel used by the modern painter,
beneath which lies the work of some old master ;
or like the palimpsest covered with new manu
script, but bearing beneath the characters in
scribed by the cloistered legendary, the half de
stroyed images of living thought, formed by some
sage or barb of olden time. But it is rather like
the voluminous roll on which the ancient chroni
cles were recorded ; and often unfolded by unseen
hands, it is presented to the astonished gaze of
the wanderer from home, and he sees, in legible
characters, the history of his life from the begin
ning, or dwells with delight, or with regret, upon
one or another passage, which he wonders to find
written there. He was guilty of some folly in
his boyhood; some pedagogue-plaguing prank,
some classmate disconcerting trick, some con
cealed delinquency, some bold rebellion, some
act which sober reason would look sternly and
rebukingly on, distinguished an hour of his school
boy time; and far away from the scene of that
drama, tragic or comic as it may have been, it is
re-enacted, and not the minutest particular of
plot, scenery or persons is wanting. Does he
wake or dream. A thousand times has he asked
this question. A thousand times is he obliged to
confess that what he sees in his mind’s eye, are
no dreams, but clear sighted visions of the past.
And then, too, how terribly clear are the memo
ries of guilt. The secret place, the stealthy step,
the mute companions, the averted looks, the hur
ried actions, are all portrayed with a faithfulness
terrific to the conscience-whipped doer of long
forgotten sin.
But not only do events and actions leave their
traces on the tablet of memory. The labor of
study is not lost. What has been committed to
memory is faithfully kept. The childish lesson is
re-read without the little book that lay on the lap
of the boy. The more manly studies of youth
now bring forth the fruit of knowledge. In the
practise of his art, the man recognises the prin
ciples of science learned in his early days. The
builder every day solves the problems that per
plexed his brain in the schoolroom. The mercer
practices his arithmetic. The mariner carries
with him as companions in peril, and guides
through unknown mazes, the mystic lines and
circles which he first saw in the humble abode of
science, near which he was born and bred. The
visions of home and kindred, which he sees in the
hours when memory exerts her magic power over
the past, shall be realised. From his wandering
on the deep, he shall return to that home and to
those kindred, and shall bless the faithful steward
of his mental wealth. Memory, that paints the
science of home, is whispering on his ear, the
guiding words that shall speed him unerringly
thither. All, in every walk of life, can bear wit
ness to the power of memory, manifested in these
manifold, but common ways. Nothing committed
to memory is lost. Man never utterly forgets.
That which is now concealed shall appearagain.
The history of childhood and youth and manhood,
is written, and cannot be erased ; and if old age
sometimes murmurs at failing memory, it is only
because in its leisure and inactivity, the involun
tary recollections are so many as to crowd out of
view the new scenes, events, and communica
tions of knowledge, which, as things of the pres
ent, seem not so much its own as the things of the
past.
To extend the view of the ordinary manifesta
tions of memory, would be but to relate the ex
perience of all —but we proceed, after a single
reflection, to observe some of the phenomena. Is
the record of life so perfect —what should that
life be, then, which man lives in the presence of
so accurate a witness, so faithful a recorder?
Rather should we say, does man create such a
world for himself in every act, how thoughtfully
should he act. It has been conjectured by a
speculative, indeed, but sometimes practical and
often trute-guessing writer,* that the book of re
membrance kept in the tribunal of Heaven, is no
other than the human memory. But in a matter
of such solemn moment, we are not left to con
jecture. The Word is not silent here. The
Lord himself has been pleased to describe an in
habitant of the world of spirits, who, in his life
time, lived carelessly, as having a vivid recollec
tion of the scenes ot his selfish enjoyment, and
having painful apprehensions for his brethren yet
remaining in this world. And He, who, by the
Divine Mercy, was enabled to declare the nature
of that world, has expressly told us, that the vo
taries of sin are there surrounded by the phan
tasies of their lusts, and amid vexation and dis
appointment, are living over again the very life
they lived in the flesh. Blessed are they who
turn from the miserable habitations which they
make to themselves, to the mansions prepared of
the Lord for them that love Him. Blessed are
they who, turning themselves to Him, are kept in
pure thoughts and surrounded with visions of
peace and joy. When man acts as of himself to
the Lord, then, in Divine Mercy, the effects of
his imperfect actions are concealed from him, and
trouble him not with visions of reproach. But
when man acts with all his will for himself, he
reaps the fruit of his doings, and sees ever the
work of his hands.
Among the phenomena of memory which have
been most generally observed, are those disjointed
dreams which sometimes amuse us by their lu
dicrous incongruity, and sometimes affright us
by their monstrous fearfulness. Some analogy
exists between them and those walking reveries
which make us feel as il we were listening to the
voices of a crowd, or perusing a page of cross
reading from the newspaper. Events are recalled,
and scenes are present to the retrospective eye—
but they are like dissolving tableaux, and befoae
one scene is quite gone another is arranging itself,
and the broken and breaking forms of the first
are mingled with the forming images of the sec
ond, and a succession of vanishing and appearing
scenes, in strange confusion, affect the mind with
delight, with wonder or with terror. Among
dreams of this kind, is one of setting out on a
walk and becoming bewildered at the appearance
of a place faraway from that where we began
our excursions, and this place, too, full of the
marks wich distinguish some other place —the
whole time of dreaming being occupied in a vain
endeavor to find out where we are. Another
time, we attempt to read, and the book we open
is not the one it appeared to be on taking it up.
And as we turn the leaves, each page pres<snu
some perplexing change. In Hook’s Comic An
nual there once appeared a picture designed as
an illustration of such a dream. There was a
figure of the human face, crossed with curved
lines in various directions, apparently drawn for
the purpose of partial erasure. But on a closer
inspection, or rather after looking a little while
longer,—for the picture seemed so illusory as to
baffle all inspection, —3011 see anew face, ana
again another, and soon it seemed as if the faces
were in motion. It was very like a dream..
Most persons can recollect such dreams. They
can almost always be unraveled in our waking
hours, and are then found to consist of interrupted
reminiscence. I have frequently had such
dreams. In one of them, lam placed before an
audience, with a book lying by me, from which I
am expected to read. On opening it, I find every
thing but the proper contents of the volume which
first appears. “ After much confusion, I am teased
into wakefulness, solaced only by the conscious
ness that my confusion has not been witnessed by
a multitude. Less commonly observed are those
seemingly recollective feelings which we some
*~Col*ridf*,’kit. Blog.
NUMBER 10.