, 1889-09-12
PHENOMENA OF MEMORY.
PEOPLE WHO NEVER FORGET AND
SOME WHO COULDN'T REMEMBER.

The varieties OF memory are as re-
markable as its vagaries. There is, for
instance, SO wide a range between Me
buhr, the great statesman. and a certain
divine, that nj can scarcely recognize
the same faculty in each. 1t is said Of
Niebuhr that he remembered everything
he had read at any period of his life;
and it is said of the reverend doctor that
he forgot he had peer married within an
hou or two Of the interesting event.
John Wesley had a remarkable mem
DRY, and at IS, even, it was still vigor-
GUS. Andrew Fuller could repeat a poem
of five hundred lines after hearing it
read nee or twice, could recite verbatim
a sermon or speech, and enumerate the
names of the shop signs from the Temple
to the end of Cheapside, with a descrip-
ton of the principal articles displayed
in each shop window.
Before the days of shorthand report
ing, Memory Woodfall" used to attend
h house of commons, and, after listen
ing to a debate, would reproduce the
whole without taking a single note. The
same power was possessed by William
Radcliffe, the husband of Mrs. Radcliffe,
the novelist.
Both Macaulay and Sir Walter Scott
had prodigious memories, yet neither of
them could compare with Beronicious,
Of M~iddleburg, who knew by heart the
works of Virgil, Cicero, Juvenal, Homer,
Aristophanes and the two Pilnys. If
this was an example of ''rote" only we
nave in Mezzofanti, the celebrated lin
guist of Bologna, one of the most strik-
ing instances on record of what, by dis
tinction, we call intelligent memory. He
was described by Lord Byron as "a
walking polygot, a master Of languages
and a Briareus Of parts of speech" At
the age of 90 he was thoroughly versed
in fifty languages-perfect in p%ronuncia-
ton, idiom, grammar and colloquialisms
and before his death he added twenty
or thirty more to the list. He used to
say himself that he never forgot any
thing that he either heard or read.
1t is recorded of La Fontaine, noted
for his Observation-Disclosures, that he once
attended the funeral of one of his most
intimate friends, and shortly afterward
called to visit that friend. When re-
minded by the astonished servant of the
recent death he was at first terribly
shocked, and hen remarked, "True; of
course, 1 recollect now that / went to his
funeral"
A curious instance of memor in sleep
is related by a French writer on dreams
He says he once saw in a dream a num-
Der of men passing out from n feast.
He observed them all very attentively,
and the face of one struck him 30 much
that he remembered it after waking.
Exercising his thoughts as to where he
had seen the face before he at last rec
objected having seen it some days previ-
ously in a book of fashions, which he
had carelessly glanced at and cast aside.
Reichenbach, n German writer on
mental phenomena. says:
waking, 1 cannot with whatever
effort recall the features of my wife, who
died some twenty years ago; but If l
think of her in a dream, and her image
is represented, 1 get the same with such
accuracy hat l have again before me
every expression of her fine features in
all their loneliness"
There are endless stories of the hiding
places Of missing deeds, and SO forth,
being revealed in dreams. Let us take
one as typical.
A landed proprietor in England was
involved in a lawsuit in consequence of
a claim upon his fathers estate, which
he was firmly convinced had been dis
charged. Judgment, however, was about
to go against him, as no voucher could
be found. But one night, in a dream, his
father appeared to him, and said that the
papers relating to this affair had been
placed in the hands of a solicitor he had
not generally employed, but who hap
pened to be engaged for this particular
business. In the dream the father said
that if this person had forgotten a matter
which was already rather old he would
be reminded of it by the mention of a
Portuguese gold coin, concerning the
value of which there was a dispute at the
time. The dream was curiously verified,
as the solicitor only did recollect the cir
cumstance or mention of the gold coin.
He was then able to produce the missing
papers, n the son gained the suit after
all.
Both Plato and Aristotle have noted
that in old age the re~collections of child
hood are renewed; and it is recorded of
Kant that, in his old age, when general
memory was decayed and infirm, he had
vivid recollections of his youth.
"a VS. PAODocAl nave "iAhSooSh
some affecting instance of an aged per-
son living in the scenes of the long past,
with a mind almost blank to the present.
This is latent memory reawakened, but
with powers of consciousness limited by
an enfeebled brain.
Even at the very entrance of the 'val-
ley of the shadow" the memory plays
strange tricks. Goethe told Eckermann
that he once kne an old man who in
his very last moments began to recite
beautiful Greek sentences. These he had
been made, as a boy, to learn by heart
for a special purpose, but for fifty years
had not uttered them. They were there
in his memory, though, all the same, and
some unexplainable cerebral action sud
denly gave them form and expression.
1t is computed by scientists that, since
one-third OF a second suffices to produce
an impression" in 100 years a man
must have collected in his brain 9,467,-
100000 copies of impressions; or, if we
take off one-third of the time for sleep,
6,311, 900, 900. This would give $780,
1000 o separate waking impressions TO
the man who lives to the age of 90 years.