properties in Scotland. The custom of carrying sprigs of it in the
pocket still obtains in the Isle of Man, where it is extensively grown
and cherished for warding off demons, witchcraft, and the evil-eye.
There, on St John's Eve, crosses are made of it and hung upon the
cattle, and placed over the doors, and in the eaves of barns and
houses, to avert the evil influences supposed to be preternaturally
active on that night. Not such the reputation of the _Lunaria_,
described by Chaucer, Spenser, and Drayton as one of the most powerful
of vegetable charms, and an ingredient in the most subtle spells of
night-hags and enchanters. This, the homely 'Honesty' of the cottage
garden, the satin flower that our grandmothers cherished, is a plant
than which none more apparently harmless is to be found in the floral
calendars of herbmen and gardeners. But in days when plants were
supposed to bear witness in many instances to their own attributes,
when certain features were sought for and believed in, as affording a
key to the sympathies and properties of herbs, its round flat silvery
frond shewed it to be under the dominion of the moon, and endowed with
magic influences.
After all, a child's hand might have clasped the plants that were under
the ban of our ancestors. Amongst the most potent of these herbal
talismans were the trefoil and the wood-sorrel, the triple leaves of
which symbolised the Trinity, and were on that account noisome to
witches. Hence arose the custom in Ireland for the lord of the soil as
well as the peasant to wear the shamrock as a preservative from evil
influences, a custom annually returned to, without distinction of creed
or rank, by all true Irishmen on the anniversary of St Patrick's Day--a
saint it will be remembered so pure that all venomous things fled
before him. In that country, as in this, there still lingers in shady,
rustic places an aged moribund belief in the occult power of plants in
the hands of weird women who know how to use them.
MEMORY.
It is maintained by many psychologists that if an impression is once
made upon the memory, it remains for ever. And it is undoubted that
there are certain seasons of life or certain circumstances when memory
is peculiarly susceptible, and when the impressions made are deep and
sharp and definite. The objects familiar in childhood and youth, the
texts, the hymns, and lessons then mastered become a lifelong bequest;
the memory has petrified them on its tablet for ever. Sometimes the
memory is in a state of spontaneous receptivity, and without any
trouble on the part of the subject, the mind retains its interesting
objects for years, perhaps through the whole life.
Memory develops in every sound mind almost as early as the powers of
observation; and the objects about which it is employed in the earlier
stage are much alike in all individuals. But very early we discern a
difference in the natural affinities: one youthful reminiscent evinces
a talent in finding his way to the infant school; whilst a bewildered
companion of the same class uses leading-strings.
In glancing through the records of all ages and all nations, we
meet with certain individuals who have been celebrated for their
extraordinary powers of memory; and some of these would appear to us so
wonderful, that we are tempted to disbelieve them, and place them in
the list of human impossibilities. But it cannot be denied that there
are numberless instances upon record, both ancient and modern, and also
in our own day, of persons retaining an almost incredible recollection
of a great diversity of matters, consisting in some cases of long lists
of dates and names, or in others, countenances and circumstances, long
since forgotten by the majority of mankind, through a lapse of time
intervening.
We propose in this paper to submit to the reader a few of the many most
authentic examples of retentive memory on record.
Within the range of their own experience, many of our readers must have
noticed examples of quick or retentive memory. Frequently, however,
these powerful memories are filled with matters of questionable value.
Of such we may mention an individual well known in London by the name
of 'Memory-Corner Thompson,' who was remarkable for an astonishing
local memory. In the space of twenty-four hours and at two sittings,
he drew from memory a correct plan of the whole parish of St James.
This plan contained all the squares, streets, lanes, courts, passages,
markets, churches, chapels, houses, stables, angles of houses; and a
great number of other objects, as wells, parapets, stones, trees, &c.,
and an exact plan of Carlton House and St James's Palace. He made out
also an exact plan of the parish of St Andrew; and he offered to do
the same with that of St Giles, St Paul, Covent Garden, St Clement, and
Newchurch. If a particular house in any given street was mentioned,
he would tell at once what trade was carried on in it, the position
and appearance of the shop, and its contents. In going through a large
hotel completely furnished, he was able to retain everything and make
an inventory from memory. He possessed a most mechanical memory; and he
could, by reading a newspaper overnight, repeat the whole of it next
morning. He died in February 1843, at the age of eighty-six. Mr Paxton
Hood knew a man in London who could repeat the whole of Josephus;
and William Lyon, like Thompson, could read the _Daily Advertiser_
overnight, and repeat it word for word next morning.
As a contrast to this, on the other hand we know an individual who
travelled through a considerable extent of country, and passed through
several towns he had visited before, yet was ignorant of the fact until
informed of it by another traveller!
Pliny, in the seventh book of his Natural History, makes mention of one
Charmidas or Charmadas, a native of Greece, who was the possessor of so
singular a memory that he was able to deliver word for word the entire
contents of any book which might be called out of a library, _without
having read it_. This, however, we should be inclined to take _cum
grano salis_.
Some cases are quoted of persons having a remarkable gift of learning
any number of foreign languages in an incredibly short time.
Mithridates king of Pontus had an empire in which two-and-twenty
languages were spoken; yet it is asserted that he had not a subject
with whom he could not converse in his own dialect. But in later times
the royal linguist has been eclipsed by the late Cardinal Mezzofanti,
who died in 1849. He had a wonderful memory for the retention of
words, and with a grammatical intuition which has never been property
explained, he went on acquiring languages, till at the age of seventy
he could converse in upwards of fifty, besides having an acquaintance
with at least twenty more. He was at home in both of the dialects
of the Basque language, the most difficult in Europe; also in the
different dialects of German; with Englishmen he never misapplied the
sign of a tense. Besides the foregoing, he was so far master of at
least one Chinese dialect that he delivered a set speech to Chinese
students at the Vatican. So conversant was he with all the dialects
of each tongue that he could at once detect the particular county,
province, or district to which a speaker belonged. He himself was upon
several occasions mistaken for a native of totally different countries.
According to his own words, as related to his friend Cardinal Wiseman,
his method of studying a new language was to read straight through the
grammar, and when he had arrived at the end he was master of the whole.
He never forgot anything he had once heard or read.
Sir William Jones, in spite of his many duties as a legal student,
had before his death acquired so intimate a knowledge of fourteen
languages, that he translated from the most difficult and obscure.
Dr Alexander Murray, the learned author of _The History of European
Languages_, was another of Britain's greatest linguists, who remembered
every word he ever read; he had the whole of Milton by heart. The
Emperor Claudius was another great memorist, also repeating by heart
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
It is recorded of Dr Leyden the distinguished oriental scholar, that
when at Calcutta, a case occurred in which it was necessary, before
deciding the issue, to know the exact wording of an act of parliament,
of which, however, a copy could not be found in the Presidency. Leyden
had had occasion before leaving home to read the act, and undertook
to supply it from memory; and when nearly a year afterwards a printed
copy was obtained from England, it was found to be identical with what
Leyden had dictated.
Richard Porson had a remarkable memory. Being one day in the shop
of Priestly the bookseller, a gentleman came in and asked for a
particular edition of Demosthenes. Priestly did not possess it; and
as the gentleman seemed a good deal disappointed, Porson inquired if
he wished to consult any particular passage. The gentleman mentioned
a quotation of which he was in search, when Porson opened the Aldine
edition of Demosthenes, and after turning over a few leaves, put his
finger on the passage. On another occasion he happened to be in a
stage-coach; presently there entered into it a young undergraduate
with two ladies. This young gentleman endeavoured to make himself
seem very learned; presently quoting a Greek passage, which he said
was from Euripides. The great Greek scholar, who was dozing at the
other end of the coach, awoke at the familiar sounds, and drawing a
copy of Euripides from the folds of his cloak, politely asked him to
favour him with the passage. The student could not; and the ladies
began to titter. Reddening, the youth said that on second thoughts,
the passage he was sure was in Sophocles. Porson thereupon produced a
copy of Sophocles, and again asked him to favour him with the passage.
The undergraduate again failed; the ladies tittered greatly. 'Catch
me!' said he, 'if ever I quote Greek in a coach again.' Stung by the
laughter of his fellow-passengers, he said: 'I recollect now, sir; I
perfectly recollect that the passage is in Æschylus.' His inexorable
tormentor, diving again in the capacious folds of his cloak, produced a
copy of Æschylus, and again asked him to favour him with the passage.
The boiling-point was now reached. 'Stop! stop!' shouted he to the
coachman. 'Let me out! There is a man inside who has got the whole
Bodleian library in his pocket!' On another occasion, calling upon a
friend, Porson found him reading Thucydides. Being asked casually the
meaning of some word, he immediately repeated the context. 'But how do
you know that it was this passage I was reading?' asked his friend.
'Because,' replied Porson, 'the word only occurs twice in Thucydides;
once on the right-hand page in the edition which you are now using, and
once on the left. I observed on which side you looked, and accordingly
I knew to which passage you referred.'
Once when in the house of Dr Burney at Hammersmith, with some friends,
examining some old newspapers which detailed the execution of Charles
I., he came across various particulars thought by some of them to have
been overlooked by Rapin and Hume; but Porson instantly repeated a long
passage from Rapin in which these circumstances were all recounted.
Upon one occasion he undertook to learn by heart the entire contents
of the _Morning Chronicle_ in a week; and he used to say he could
repeat _Roderick Random_ from beginning to end. His stupendous memory,
however, on account of his excesses, failed at last.
Dr Thomas Fuller, the worthy historian and divine, was said to have
been able to repeat five hundred and nine strange names correctly
after having twice heard them; and he was known to make use of a
sermon verbatim if he once heard it. He once undertook to name
exactly backwards and forwards every shop-sign from Temple Bar to the
extremity of Cheapside, on both sides of the way--a feat of no ordinary
magnitude, when we consider that in his day every house had its sign.
'Memory' Thompson boasted he could remember every shop from Ludgate
Hill to the end of Piccadilly; and another person who had earned for
himself the prefix of 'Memory' was William Woodfall, the printer of the
famous Letters of Junius, who used to relate how he could put a speech
away upon a shelf in his mind for future reference; and he was known
to be able to remember a debate for a fortnight, after many nights'
speaking upon other matters.
Dr Johnson was in the habit of writing abridged reports of debates for
the _Gentleman's Magazine_ from memory.
Two noted frequenters of the Chapter Coffee-House in Paternoster Row,
in the last century, were Murray and Hammond. Murray had read through
every morning and evening paper published in London for thirty years,
and his memory was such that he was always applied to for dates and
facts by literary men and others.
Jedediah Buxton, who resided for some weeks at St John's Gate
Clerkenwell, in 1754, had such a memory that 'he could conduct the most
intricate calculations by his memory alone, and such was his power of
abstraction that no noise could disturb him.' Singular to relate, he
never learned to read or write, though he was the son of a schoolmaster.
Eugenia Jullian, a precocious child, well known to the writer of this,
at the age of five years had a book given her to read; and looking
through it, she at length read a poem of several hundred lines (it must
be mentioned she knew her alphabet at eleven months old, and could
read at three years of age) once through; and being asked what she had
read, she handed her mother the book, and repeated the whole without a
mistake. Unfortunately, like most precocious children, her mind proved
too powerful for a delicate constitution, and she died at an early age.
Among other possessors of very retentive memories may be mentioned the
learned Pope Clement VI.; Dr Monsey, who died at Chelsea at the age of
ninety-five; and Mozart, who almost in every case composed his pieces
before he committed them to paper.
At the present time, Elihu Burritt possesses a remarkable memory. Born
in America in 1811, he had, at the age of twenty-seven, and while
working at his trade, learned fifty languages. In 1846 he came to
England, and was for some time United States consul at Birmingham.
Gustave Doré is the owner of a good memory; and we have it from a
reliable authority, that Thomas Carlyle, 'the philosopher of Chelsea,'
lays a book aside when he has read it, it being of no more use to him,
having abstracted and stored up in his mind all the contents which he
deems worthy of retention.
Every one has a memory, but every one has not the same natural
affinities, and therefore every one does not retain with equal
facility the same sort of thing. One man, from taking a glance at an
object, will sketch it correctly; another could not give a correct
representation were he to labour for a month. The mind of another
is more for living objects, and like Cuvier or Knox, he carries in
his memory the names and forms of hundreds of plants and animals.
A third has a propensity for the faces of his fellow-creatures,
and like Themistocles, he can name each of the twenty thousand of
his fellow-citizens; or like Cyrus, he could remember the name of
every soldier in his army; the like being related of L. Scipio and
the Romans. The day following the arrival of Cinaes, ambassador of
King Pyrrhus, in Rome, he saluted by name all the senate and the
gentlemen of the city. Our own George III. had an extraordinary power
of recollecting faces. The taste of a fourth is for languages, and
like Mezzofanti or Alexander Murray, every word he hears or reads
in a foreign tongue becomes a lifelong heritage. Another retains
mathematics, the symbols of which require a peculiar cast of memory.
Such a mind is generally destitute of love of colour, music, &c.; it
wrestles with the artificial symbols that express the most extensively
important truths of the world. The natural history memory has to do
with artificial symbols, but with these it mixes the consideration of
actual appearances to the senses. The taste of another is for choice,
emphatic, and sublime diction; like Wakefield, he can repeat the whole
of Virgil and Horace, Homer and Pindar.
The faculty of recollecting places is very large in some of the
inferior animals; pigeons and some sorts of dogs have it very
prominently. The falcon of Iceland returns to its native spot from
a distance of several thousands of miles. And it seems likely that
this has at least something to do with reference to those birds which
migrate from one country to another. It seems indispensable to a
successful traveller. Columbus, Cook, Park, and Livingstone must have
been largely endowed with this faculty. These diversities have not been
sufficiently kept in view in the important business of education, and
the principle of cramming the same things into every sort of memory
still too extensively prevails.
The memory may be strong where the intellect is weak; but without
the former faculty there can be no intellectual growth; for is not
memory the power of the mind by which it retains its possessions? If
Sensation, Perception, and Attention are the collecting faculties,
Memory is 'the conservative faculty'--the retainer of the collected
treasures.
With the power of throwing our whole mental vigour into any given act
for the time being, a strong will can generally insure a strong memory;
and for understanding then and retaining afterwards, half an hour of
such absorption and concentration is worth more than the longest day of
day-dreaming--though day-dreaming, as an occasional relaxation, is not
to be despised.
Nowadays we are not at all surprised to see placarded about our towns
large announcements of an 'eminent professor' about to arrive, under
whose tuition we may be initiated into the 'Art of Memory,' whereby we
may be taught to remember at will the heights of mountains, rows of
dates, chronological events, and all things coming within the range of
memory. It may be interesting to learn that this is no new art, for
by reference to Pliny we find that the Art of Memory was invented by
Simonides des Melicus, and afterwards perfected by Metrodorus Sepsius,
'by which a man might learne to rehearse againe the same words of any
discourse whatsoever after once hearing.'
It does not fall within the scope of this paper to enter upon the
merits or demerits of this art; but we may conveniently bring our
subject to a close by relating a couple of anecdotes that bear upon it.
Upon one occasion, Fuller said: 'None alive ever heard me pretend to
the _art_ of memory, who in my book have decried it as a trick, no art;
and indeed, is more fancy than memory. I confess, some years since,
when I came out of the pulpit of St Dunstan's East, one (who since
wrote a book thereof) told me in the vestry, before credible people,
that he, in Sidney College, had taught me _the art of memory_. I
returned unto him: _That it was not so_, for I could not remember _that
I had ever seen him before!_ which I conceive was a real refutation.'
Not very long ago, a lecturer upon the art of memory, whilst dining at
an hotel in one of our provincial towns, was inquired for and called
away suddenly; upon which he immediately finished his repast and
hurried from the room. A moment or two afterwards, the waiter coming
round to the chair lately occupied by the professor, held up his hands
and exclaimed in astonishment: 'Goodness gracious, the memory man has
forgotten his umbrella!'
GOSSIP ABOUT TAILS.
Everybody knows that tails serve a great variety of purposes. To
mention a few: The horse and ox use their tail to drive off troublesome
insects. Some kinds of apes have long prehensile tails with which they
swing themselves from branches or reach distant fruit. The kangaroo's
tail forms a kind of extra leg, and is also serviceable in jumping.
The beaver is said to beat with its tail the mud of which its house or
dam is built, as well as to use the organ in swimming. The tails of
fishes act like rudders, and in whales, for example, they are powerful
propellers, as also a means of attack or defence. Birds of high flight
have their tail feathers adapted as a steering apparatus; while the
tails of parrots, toucans, and climbers generally, incline downwards,
and aid in laying hold of trees. The tail in some reptiles is important
for locomotion. Scorpions have in their tail a formidable weapon; and
the noise made by the rattlesnake when roused is given from its tail.
There is a good deal of expression in tails. A cat when unexcited
has her tail bent towards the ground and quiet; but when the animal
is under lively emotion, the tail shews movements which are not of
chance character, but predetermined by nature--such and such an
emotion causing such and such a movement. When the cat feels afraid
when seized, for example by the neck, the tail goes down between her
legs. On sight of an agreeable morsel of meat, the tail is raised
straight up. When angry, the cat bends her tail into two curves of
opposite direction--the greater curve at the base, the lesser at the
extremity--while the fur is erect throughout. When on the alert for
prey, she lashes her tail from side to side. On the other hand, the
dog wags his tail to testify joy; while (as with the cat) fear sends
it down between his legs. We are all familiar, again, with the comical
appearance of a herd of cattle, driven to despair by insects, rushing
about a field on a hot day with their tufted tails erect as posts. Dr
John Brown, in one of his racy sketches, tells of a dog of his whose
tail had rather a peculiar kind of expressiveness. This tail of Toby's
was 'a tail _per se_; it was of immense girth, and not short, equal
throughout like a policeman's baton; the machinery for working it was
of great power, and acted in a way, as far as I have been able to
discover, quite original. We called it his ruler. When he wished to
get into the house, he first whined gently, then growled, then gave
a sharp bark, and then came a resounding mighty stroke, which shook
the house. This, after much study and watching, we found was done by
his bringing the entire length of his solid tail flat upon the door
with a sudden and vigorous stroke. It was quite a _tour de force_ or
a _coup de queue_, and he was perfect in it at once, his first _bang_
authoritative having been as masterly and telling as his last.'
There seems to be good reason for believing that rats sometimes
use their tails for feeding purposes where the food to be eaten is
contained in vessels too narrow to admit the entire body of the animal.
A rat will push down his tail into the tall-shaped bottle of preserves,
and lick it after he has pulled it out. A gentleman put two such jars
of preserves covered with a bladder, in a place frequented by rats; and
afterwards found the jelly reduced in each to the same extent, and a
small aperture gnawed in the bladder just sufficient to admit the tail.
Another experiment was more decisive. Having refilled the jars to about
half an inch above the level left by the rats, he put some moist paper
over the jelly and let it stand in a place where there were no rats or
mice, till the paper got covered by mould. Then he covered the jars
with a bladder and put them where the rats were numerous; as before,
next morning the bladder had again been eaten through, and on the
mould there were numerous distinct tracings of rats' tails, evidently
caused by the animals sweeping these appendages about, in the fruitless
endeavour to find a hole in the circle of paper which covered the jelly.
An example of the practice of vivisection (which is happily less common
in this country than on the continent) is presented in an experiment
made lately by an eminent French physiologist with the tail of a young
rat. Readers are doubtless aware of the curious results that may be
obtained by skin-grafting. The experimenter referred to skinned a
little portion of the tip of the rat's tail, made an incision in the
back of the animal, inserted the skinned tip in this hole, and fixed it
there. In course of time the wound healed, and the animal went about
with its tail thus transformed into something like the handle of a
teapot. After eight months the savant cut the handle in two; then on
pinching the end of the part left in the back, the rat appeared to feel
pain, and tried to escape. It was thus shewn that the sensitive nerves
in the end of the tail had formed a true connection with the nerves
in the back issuing from the spinal cord; and that they conveyed an
excitation in an opposite direction to that in which they convey it
normally.