and the like, must be taken as they come uppermost in the sensorium. In the present volumes, however, a part of the matter they contain was designed for insertion in the "Recollections," which, though these were closely printed, would have been unwieldy had it been included in that work. If any disconnection observable here be charged upon the author he hopes that such portions, from being offered spontaneously to his mind, and given in the order in which they arose, will be deemed a sufficing apology.

The writer knows no more than other people, but he has a retentive memory little as yet impaired from advanced age. He has lived through many changes for more than two generations of mankind. Time is scanty with the most protracted existences, and we must tell what we wish while we are able to do it. Something may occur in the tale to interest others. Themistocles wished for the art of forgetfulness rather than to retain the faculty of memory. The wish was superfluous. We have scarcely time to record the events of the journey through life before we are dipped in the Lethe the great Athenian desired.

There are many persons who ask for works they can take up for a quarter of an hour without burthening the mind with a topic which requires a remembrance of the preceding part to retain the connection.

iii

Such the contents of these volumes may suit; and thus to them the order of dates and intermingling subjects of "Yesterday and To-day," may not be unwelcome. The visit to Washington is a sort of revival of the dead, and the allusion to a portion of the History of the Steam-Engine (in a county in which the largest and most magnificent of those machines have been made and used) during the interval of time from Newcomen to Watt, will furnish an incident for introduction into a history of steam during more than half a century at present little known. That wonderful power, not yet wholly developed, imparts in the connection with itself of a part of his family, a degree of pride to the writer which the boast of a descent from a Norman bandit eight centuries ago could never supersede.

In regard to the author's remarks upon particular works, and their tendencies under one class of German literature in the second volume, and repeated in regard to that of France in the third, the author is firmly convinced of the justice of his observations. He wonders, too, how those to whom the evil and its effects ought to be perceptible, and who are best able to cope with it, have kept silence so long upon the subject.

It was hardly worth while to mention Mr. Windham's intended life a second time, but it makes

the circumstance clearer.

The author must also add

that in one or two instances he has availed himself of an extract from an article he had before made public.

The heterogeneous character of the contents of the work is inevitable from the nature of the materials, and the order in which they presented themselves.

CHAPTER I.

Introductory remarks-parental affection-mode of education, mistakes regarding-a friend of Wilberforce-youthful stratagems rustic rambles - mental phenomena — favourite reading-fancies-progress in learning-local attachmentspaternal home-distaste for mercantile pursuits.

Ir is not an easy task to follow the mind in descriptions of the effects produced upon it by external things in times gone by, or to trace the impressions they once generated. The same objects delineated through the visual organs of different individuals, to go no farther, are not always alike; much less do the associations they generate uniformly resemble each other. Hence the depths of light and shade in such mental delineations are differently graduated and must be revealed for comparison with each other, if designed for amusement or instruction. This is independently of those tendencies to certain pursuits belonging more immediately to intellect, which appear spontaneously, including that denominated genius, a species of intuitive knowledge,

VOL. I.

B

20

MYSTERY IN MEMORY.

in which the mass of mankind has no participation, and to which, except in one or two insulated cases, it is only sensible by the results.

The order in which objects present themselves to the senses is perfectly natural, but how they pass from the sense to the locality of the memory for notation, is beyond the sphere of successful research. The keenest intellect has so far never been able to furnish a clue to that process of the slightest value, for it does not always depend upon volition, but upon an operation of which we are wholly unconscious of the mode. The immense storehouse of the mind, retaining with equal fidelity the more vast as well as the minuter objects of our perception, the atomic grain or the massy pyramid, the enormous world sailing through the serene of heaven, or the minuter particles of which it is composed, are received with equal facility. This sufficiently explains that the substantial and tangible may be mysteriously exchanged for the unreal and incorporeal, no matter whether it be existing and present, or the accumulation of dead ages, collected by studious aggregation. Nor is this all; we can produce and re-produce those vast or minuter objects at pleasure, from their invisible depository, where, like the host in Pandemonium, they must be reduced to minute dimensions indeed not to jostle each other in the sensorium-how is this marvel effected?