and I attribute it to the habit of our business, in which we never trust any thing to our recollection, without an entry in some book." Judge Y—, of New York, used to declare that without his notes of evidence he could not aver that this or that witness had made any observation. This agrees with what is said by old Montaigne: "I can do nothing," says he, "without my memorandum-book; and so great is my difficulty in remembering proper names, that I am forced to call my domestic servants by their offices." On the other hand, the schoolmaster relates of Hortensius, the great rival of Cicero, that he could attend a protracted auction, and then at the end of the sale give as accurate a list of items and prices as the clerks who kept minutes. I can believe this the more readily from what I have myself known of an analogous feat in an eminent merchant of a southern city.

Practise then upon the maxim, to intrust every thing to your memory which may be done so safely. What we sometimes hear about “overburdening the memory" is the mere cant of a false philosophy. Memory is not a beast of burden. No man ever realized the threatened evil. We may make our memory labour to weariness at one time; so may we do with the judgment. But in neither case is it the multitude of particulars which distresses the mind. We may again charge the memory with what is useless or injurious; but this is clearly distinct from going beyond its

capacity. We may further try to remember too much. But that any pain or other evil is consequent from the mere amount of things actually remembered, I resolutely deny. Trust your memory therefore. Beware of an inordinate use of common-place books. They have their use; but you will often find that a great transcriber into such volumes leaves all his stores behind him when he shuts his study-door. And I have heard the schoolmaster read passages out of Bayle, going to show that all common-place books were condemned by several of the most learned men of former days; as by Saumaise or Salmasius, by Menage, and by Govean; the last of whom went so far that he would not admit pen and ink into his library, lest transcription should interrupt his thinking and impair his memory.* It must be confessed that this would be ruinous to a poor writer of scraps, such as myself.

* Bayle's Dict. art. Ancillon.

XVII.

THE WORKING-MAN'S JOURNEYS.

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits."

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

THE ease with which we go from one place to another makes us a travelling people, perhaps to as great an extent as is true of any equal number of persons in the world. Go when you will upon any of the great thoroughfares, as between Boston and Providence, between Baltimore and Philadelphia, or especially between Philadelphia and New York, and you find the steamers, cars, and coaches filled with wanderers. I never cease to wonder as to what may be the impelling motive with so great a number, for so long a period. I have nevertheless been led to the opinion that our artisans do not travel a great deal, or even as much as several other classes which might be named. It is true they, like their neighbours, must sometimes change their place. When work is dull in one town they go to another, and there are thus two streams of workmen perpetually setting between our two great cities; while, in a smaller degree, a similar circulation of labour is kept up through the whole country. There is also a cur

rent of emigrants to the west, and in this there is always a considerable infusion of mechanical labour. But still, whatever may be done from necessity, mechanics as a class do not jaunt about much for pleasure, or for the purpose of gaining those particular advantages which have been supposed to result from travelling. Yet the mechanic often needs recreation and change of air; and where his business admits of it, it would be well if he could more frequently roam a little over the face of our wide land. In some countries, it is thought so important for young mechanics to travel for improvement in their craft, that it is enjoined by law. This is particularly the case in the German states, and deserves consideration from our enterprising mechanics. A German artisan is not thought to have completed his education until he has spent some months or years in working abroad. The custom is very ancient, and arose in a time when the modes of communicating knowledge which we now have were altogether unknown. There were, in that day, no Builder's or Millwright's Guides, no Manuals for Weavers, Watchmakers, or Dyers, no Tailor's Magazines. Men of trades as well as men of letters were forced to go from place to place, in order to pick up the nicer operations of their craft. The stream of travel naturally tended from the ruder to the more civilized nations. In the middle ages, when Germany was rough and Italy refined, the young men who followed in the train

of German princes and nobles on their expeditions to the south, brought back new trades and new methods from Tuscany or Venice. From being an accidental thing it grew to be imperative, and the Guilds or Trades' Unions of that day made it a condition of entrance into their bodies, that the applicant should have spent a certain number of years away from the place of his apprenticeship. They regarded this as indispensably necessary to the dignity and improvement of their calling.

This was very important when every art was a mystery, and when the sleight of a clever workman was as sacred as the nostrum of a quack. It was often but little of a trade that the masterworkman could give his boys; and even where he was skilled, he too frequently kept his own secret, or set on it an exorbitant price. To acquire the higher polish of the art, a young man must go through other countries, and pick up as much as possible of their improvements. In this wanderjahre, or year of wandering, the journeyman found many things to learn. He saw some or all the materials of his daily operations, in their place of origin, or in great factories; he consulted with celebrated artisans, or worked in favoured establishments, and beheld the highest achievements of his art. The manifest tendency of the system was to equalize information, to throw happy inventions into the common stock; to awaken emulation and quicken genius; to enlarge