634 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



preserved the contour of the everlasting mountains and the passing smoke 

 of a bandit fire. 



"Are there, then, contained in the brain more permanently, as in the 

 retina, more transiently, the vestiges of impressions that have been gath- 

 ered by the sensory organs ? Do these constitute the basis of memory — 

 the mind contemplating such pictures of past tilings and events as have 

 been committed to her custody ? In her silent galleries are there hung 

 micrographs of the living and the dead, of scenes that we have visited, of 

 incidents in which we have borne a part? Are these abiding impressions 

 mere signal marks, like the letters of a book, which impart ideas to the 

 mind, or are they actual picture-images, inconceivably smaller than those 

 made for us by artists, in which, by the aid of a microscope, we can see, in 

 a space not bigger than a pin-hcle, a whole family-group at a glance. 



" The phantom images of the retina, as I have remarked, are not percep- 

 tible to the light of day. Those that exist in the sensorium in like manner 

 do not attract our attention so long as the sensory organs are in vigorous 

 operation, and occupied in bringing new impressions in. But when these 

 organs become weary and dull, or when we experience hours of great 

 anxiety, or are in twilight reveries, or sleep, the latent apparitions have 

 their vividness increased by the contrast, and obtrude themselves on the 

 mind. For the same reason they occupy us in the delirium of fevers, and 

 doubtless also in the solemn moments of death. During a third part of our 

 lives we are withdrawn from external intluences — hearing and sight and 

 the other senses are inactive, but the never-sleeping mind, that pensive, 

 that veiled enchantress in her mysterious retirement, looks over the ambro- 

 types she has attracted — ambrotypes, for they are unfading impressions — 

 and combining them together as they chance to occur, weaves from them a 

 web of dreams. Nature has thus introduced into our very organization a 

 means of imparting to us suggestions on some of the most profound topics 

 with which we can be concerned. It operates equally on the savage as on 

 the civilized man, furnishing to both conceptions of a world in which all is 

 unsubstantial. It marvelously extracts from the vestiges of the impres- 

 sions of the past overwhelming proofs of the reality of the future ; and, 

 gathering its power from what might seem to be a most unlikely source, 

 it insensibly leads us, no matter who or where we may be, to a profound 

 belief in the immortal and imperishable, from phantoms that have scarcely 

 made their appearance before they are ready to vanish away." 



Rapid Transit through New York. 



Mr. Fisher opened the discussion on the best mode of rapid transit 

 through the city with a written opinion, of which we can only report 4he 

 leading points. After examining the question of grades involved in con- 

 struction of the proposed underground railway, the cost of the work was 

 presented as the most serious impediment to its success. Six millions 

 strikes the imagination and* makes six thousand dollars ridiculous. Mil- 

 lions are exciting, and there is a disposition to believe in a scheme so 

 respectable. But the five miles will never be made for six millions of dol- 

 lars. Even in England, where work of all kinds is much cheaper, tunnels 

 of the coarse kind used on the railways, cost nearly as much. The Box 



