ved or assisted, and shew what are the practices that both by reason and experience have been found of happy influence to this purpose.

There is one great and general direction which belongs to the improvement of other powers as well as of the memory, and that is, to keep it always in due and proper exercise. Many acts by degrees form a habit, and thereby the ability or power is strengthened, and made more ready to appear again in action. Our memories should be used and inured from childhood to bear a moderate quantity of knowledge let into them early, and they will thereby become strong for use and service. As any limb well and duly exercised grows stronger, the nerves of the body are corroborated thereby. Milo took up a calf, and daily carried it on his shoulders as the calf grew, his strength grew also, and he at last arrived at firmness of joints enough to bear the bull.

Our memories will be in a great measure moulded and formed, improved or injured, according to the exercise of them. If we never use them, they will be almost lost. Those who are wont to converse or read about a few things only, will retain but a few in their memory: those who are used to remember things but for an hour, and charge their memories with it no longer, will retain them but an hour before they vanish. And let words be remembered as well as things, that so you may acquire a copia verborum as well as rerum, and be more ready to express your mind on all

occasions.

Yet there should be a caution given in some cases: the memory of a child, or any infirm person, should not be overburdened; for a limb or a joint may be overstrained by being too much loaded, and its natural power never be recovered. Teachers should wisely judge of the power and constitution of youth, and impose no more on them than they are able to bear with cheerfulness and improvement. And particularly they should take care that the memory of the learner be not too much crowded with a tumultuous heap or overbearing multitude of documents or ideas at one

time; this is is the way to remember nothing; one idea effaces another. An overgreedy grasp does not retain the largest handful. But it is the exercise of memory, with a due moderation, that is one general rule towards the improvement of it.

The particular rules are such as these:

1. Due attention and diligence to learn and know things which we would commit to our remembrance, is a rule of great necessity in this case. When the attention is strongly fixed to any particular subject, all that is said concerning it makes a deeper impression upon the mind. There are some persons who complain they cannot remember divine or human discourses which they hear, when in truth their thoughts are wandering half the time, or they hear with such coldness and indifferency, and a trifling temper of spirit, that it is no wonder the things which are read or spoken make but a slight impression on the brain, and get no firm footing in the seat of memory, but soon vanish and are lost.

It is needful therefore, if we would maintain a long remembrance of the things which we read or hear, that we should engage our delight and pleasure in those subjects, and use the other methods which are before prescribed, in order to fix the attention. Sloth, indolence, and idleness, will no more bless the mind with intellectual riches, than it will fill the hand with gain, the field with corn, or the purse with treasure.

Let it be added also, that not only the slothful and the negligent deprive themselves of proper knowledge for the furniture of their memory, but such as appear to have active spirits, who are ever skimming over the surface of things with a volatile temper, will fix nothing in their mind. Vario will spend whole mornings in running over loose and unconnected pages, and with fresh curiosity is ever glancing over new words and ideas that strike his present fancy; he is fluttering over a thousand objects of art and science, and yet treasures up but little knowledge. There must be

the

the labour and the diligence of close attention to particular subjects of thought and inquiry, which only can impress what we read or think of upon the remembering faculty

in man.

2. Clear and distinct apprehension of the things which we commit to memory is necessary in order to make them stick and dwell there. If we would remember words, or learn the names of persons or things, we should have them recommended to our memory by clear and distinct pronunciation, spelling, or writing. If we would treasure up the ideas of things, notions, propositions, arguments, and sciences, these should be recommended also to our memory by a clear and distinct perception of them. Faint, glimmering, and confused ideas will vanish like images seen in twilight. Every thing which we learn should be conveyed to the understanding in the plainest expressions, without any ambiguity, that we may not mistake what we desire to remember. This is a general rule whether we would employ the memory about words or things, though it must be confessed that mere sounds and words are much harder to get by heart than the knowledge of things and real images.

For this reason, take heed (as I have often before warned) that you do not take up with words instead of things, nor mere sounds instead of real sentiments and ideas. Many a lad forgets what has been taught him, merely because he never well understood it: he never clearly and distinctly took in the meaning of those sounds and syllables which he was required to get by heart.

This is one true reason why boys make so poor a proficiency in learning the Latin tongue, under masters who teach them by grammars and rules written in Latin, of which I have spoken before. And this is a common case with children when they learn their catechisms in their early days. The language and the sentiments conveyed in those catechisms are far above the understanding of creatures of that age, and they have no tolerable ideas under the words. This makes the answers much harder to be remembered,

remembered, and in truth they learn nothing but words without ideas; and if they are ever so perfect in repeating the words, yet they know nothing of divinity.

And for this reason it is a necessary rule in teaching children the principles of religion, that they should be expressed in very plain, easy, and familiar words, brought as low as possible down to their understandings, according to their different ages and capacities, and thereby they will obtain some useful knowledge when the words are treasured up in their memory, because at the same time they will treasure up those divine ideas too.

3. Method and regularity in the things we commit to memory is necessary in order to make them take more effectual possession of the mind, and abide there long. As much as systematical learning is decried by some vain and humorous triflers of the age, it is certainly the happiest way to furnish the mind with a variety of knowledge.

Whatsoever you would trust to your memory, let it be disposed in a proper method, connected well together, and referred to distinct and particular heads or classes, both general and particular. An apothecary's boy will much sooner learn all the medicines in his master's shop, when they are ranged in boxes or on shelves according to their distinct natures (whether herbs, drugs, or minerals, whether leaves or roots, whether chemical or Galenical preparations, whether simple or compound, &c.) and when they are placed in some order according to their nature, their fluidity or their consistence, &c. in phials, bottles, gallipots, cases, drawers, &c. So the genealogy of a family is more easily learnt when you begin at some great grandfather as the root, and distinguish the stock, the large boughs, the lesser branches, the twigs, and the buds, till you come down to the present infants of the house. And indeed all sorts of arts and sciences taught in a method something of this kind, are more happily committed to the mind or

memory.

I might give another plain simile to confirm the truth of

this. What horse or carriage can take up and bear away all the various, rude, and unwieldy loppings of a branchy tree at once? But if they are divided yet further, so as to be laid close, and bound up in a more uniform manner into several faggots, perhaps those loppings may be all carried as one single load or burden.

The mutual dependence of things on each other help the memory of both. A wise connexion of the parts of a discourse, in a rational method, gives great advantage to the reader or hearer in order to his remembrance of it. Therefore many mathematical demonstrations in a long train may be remembered much better than a heap of sentences which have no connexion. The book of Proverbs, at least from the tenth chapter and onwards, is much harder to remember than the book of Psalms for this reason; and some Christians have told me that they remember what is written in the epistle to the Romans, and that to the Hebrews, much better than many others of the sacred epistles, because there is more exact method and connexion observed in them.

He that would learn to remember a sermon which he hears should acquaint himself by degrees with the method in which the several important parts of it are delivered. It is a certain fault in a multitude of preachers, that they utterly neglect method in their harangues or at least they refuse to render their method visible and sensible to the hearers. One would be tempted to think it was for fear lest their auditors should remember too much of their sermons, and prevent their preaching them three or four times over: but I have candour enough to persuade myself that the true reason is, they imagine it to be a more modish way of preaching without particulars; I am sure it is a much more useless one. And it would be of great advantage, both to the speaker and hearer, to have discourses for the pulpit cast into a plain and easy method, and the reasons or inferences ranged in a proper order, and that under the words, first, secondly, and thirdly, however they may be now

fancied