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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.