MEMORY. 149 



Mithridates spoke twenty-two languages or dialects accord- 

 ing to Aulus Gellius, and forty according to Pliny. Scipio 

 the Asiatic knew most of his legionaries by name; Julius 

 Caesar, Hortensius, Lucullus, Adrian, and many others, prove 

 that a powerful memory is not incompatible with a superior 

 mind. Pic de la Mirandole was a fresh example in the 

 fifteenth century, as were also Leibnitz and Haller in the 

 eighteenth. The last-mentioned cites a German, named 

 Miiller, who spoke twenty languages, and in our day we 

 have Cardinal Mezzofanti, who spoke nearly fifty, exclusive 

 of dialects, conversing with the pupils of the College of 

 the Propaganda, who had come from every quarter of the 

 globe. 



It is related also that Scaliger learned Homer by heart in 

 twenty-one days, and the other Greek poets in four months; 

 and we are assured that Magliabecchi could dictate whole 

 books after having read them once; and if some of these 

 examples of prodigious memory are not verified, they are at 

 least rendered very probable by those which are incontest- 

 able. 



It was an extraordinary memory which, enabled the young 

 Sicilian shepherd, Mangiamele, to calculate mentally with 

 such rapidity, that the members of the Academy of Sciences 

 could scarcely follow him even by the aid of the most expe- 

 ditious processes. But the very ordinary intellect of this 

 young man proves that in his case memory was a faculty out 

 of all proportion to the others, a circumstance often observed 

 especially in children. 



Memory is sometimes awakened by a sensation which 

 carries us back to the time and place where such or a similar 

 sensation was produced. This memory of the senses acts 

 upon us with extraordinary power, it is one of the most 

 effective means which writers possess of touching the human 

 heart. Eneas wept on beholding a picture on the walls of 

 Carthage, which recalled the misfortunes of his country. 

 "En Priamus" Behold Priam! said he, addressing his 

 companions in exile. Andromache watered with her tears 

 the grassy mound she had consecrated to the memory of 

 Hector on the banks of another Simois; and the Florentine 



