MERE MEMORY. 29 



uncouth juxtaposition of two matters of memory, 

 between which there is no congruity or connexion, 

 can be regarded as a sort of ludicrous originality. 

 He had been long a faithful labourer on the estab- 

 lishment, and so he attended the Upper House, 

 where the every-day duty was then easier than that 

 in the Commons. He took no notes whatever, and 

 yet, if an unexpected debate sprang up, and he was 

 left for hours before any one went to relieve him, 

 he could write out the whole verbatim. While 

 listening, he was literally " held by the ear," so as 

 not only to be incapable of thought, but almost of 

 the use of all his other senses. In the office, too, 

 he was the oracle of facts and dates ; and, as he had 

 read the newspapers diligently for many years, he 

 knew almost every parliamentary sentence, and 

 could tell by whom it was spoken, on what evening, 

 what was the subject of the debate, and who were 

 the principal speakers. His memory was chiefly 

 a memory of sounds, and probably that was the 

 reason, at least one of the reasons, why his judg- 

 ment, weak as it was for the opportunities he had 

 had, was so very much superior to that of the young 

 man previously mentioned. 



Those two instances, the one of which would be, 

 in common language, called a "natural," and the 

 other a " very soft-headed man," are not given with 

 the smallest intention of undervaluing the fact, or, as 

 it is usually called, the faculty of memory. Far 

 from it, the fact of memory is the foundation with- 

 out which there can be no structure of knowledge. 

 Those are merely instances in which there was 

 plenty of foundation, but very little structure; and 

 the perfection of the matter consists in the two 

 agreeing with and being worthy of each other. It 

 would be easy to give other instances ; but some 

 will occur to every observant reader; and indeed 

 those mentioned are decisive of the point. 



It is not from the mere fact of our being young 

 C2 



