The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-09-08
MARVELLOUS MEMORIES.
Welcome.

minister during the great civil war, had very retentive money and was especially very we'll up in Dickens works. One evening in the early part of 1868 Dickens, then on a reading tour in the States, was dining with Charles Sumner, when MT. Stanton and some others were present. The war minister was put to the test, and when started could repeat from mem- ory chapter of any of Dickens books, showing a much greater knowl- edge of the works than their author could boast. MT. Stanton accounted for this intimate knowledge of Dick ems by mentioning the habit which he had formed during the war of invari- ably reading something by the author of "Pickwick," before going to bed at night.
 The late Bishop Prince Lee, first bishop of Manchester, was similarly gifted. It is related of him that being once at an evening party, started by lady with line quoted from "Mar- mion," he went right on with the po- em from memory, and could have re- cited the whole. AS a further test the same lady quoted few words from conversation in "Ivanhoe," whereupon the bishop repeated the whole chapter correctly from mem- Ory.
 But greater than any of these was Lord Macaulay. From a very early age the retentiveness of his memory was extraordinary. When only three or four years of age his mind mechan- ically retained the form of what he read, so that, as his maid said, he talked "quite printed words" Once as child, when making an afternoon cali with his father, he picked up Scott's Clay of the Last Minstrel" for the first time, and quietly devoured the treasure while his seniors were en- gagged in conversation. When they returned homo tho boy went to his mother, who at the time was confined to her bed, and sitting down at the bedside repeated what he had been reading, by the canto, until she was tired.
 Later in life his wonderful memory was always a subject of interest to his friends, and occasionally was put to searching tests. One day at board meeting at the British museum Ma caulay wrote down from memory in three parallel columns on each of four pages of foolscap 8 complete list ot the Cambridge senior wranglers, with dates and colleges attached, for the one hundred years during which rec- ord of the names had been kept in the university calendar.
 "On another occasion," says Trevel- van. "Sir David Dundas asked:
 "'Macaulay, do you know your Popesp'
 "No,' was the answer. I always get wrong among the Innocents.'
 "'But can you say your archbishops of Canterbury?'
 "'Any tool,' said Macaulay, could say hls archbishops of Canterbury backward and he went of at score, drawing breath only once in order to remark on the oddity of there having been both an Archbishop Sancroft and an Archbishop Bancroft, until Sir David stopped him at Cranmer." Ma caulay once said that if by any possi- ble chance all the copies of "Paradise Lost" and the "Pilgrim's Progress" in existence were destroyed, he could write both out again complete from recollection.
 When O'Connell made his motion in 1884 for the repeal of the Union MT. Tennant, member of parliament for Belfast, delivered speech lasting for three and half hours, full of fig ures and calculations entirely from memory, in which he trusted so con- pletely that he sent the manuscript oi his speech to the newspapers before he delivered it. His confidence wal not misplaced, for the oration wal spoken without 8 mistake, or even a momentary hesitation.
 Another Irish M. F., Robert Dillon Brown, member for Mayo, had the same useful faculty. He would die. tate speech to an amanuensis, and twenty-four hours afterwards, with. out looking at it or thinking of tho matter in the meantime, could repeat it word for word.
 Wo0dfall, the editor of the MornsaS Chronicle, and brother of "Junius' , publisher, was able to report accu. rately in the morning the debate o1 the previous evening without taking notes.
 In some cases the mental action in. volved In feats of thi nature would