Russian nobility, brought up with French and English nurses, will acquire and retain three languages whilst our children are learning one. Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, Roger Ascham, and Lord Bacon, knew Greek and Latin fairly when ten years old. Sara Coleridge has written a little book of instructive rhymes which children of four years may acquire, and which will teach them at the same time the properties and the Latin names of animals and vegetables: once acquired, they will never forget them. The sure way to have a strong memory is frequently to exercise it, just as the waterman has a strong arm by constantly pulling. We should also learn from Feinagle to assort and classify our knowledge, to strengthen it by association. When a man's or woman's head is like a kitchen drawer, full, confused, and disordered, the knowledge may be much, but it will perforce be useless. Varied reading to no purpose and upon many different subjects is bad for the memory. After reading a book, we should review our new acquirements, and try to remember what we have read, or else the more we read the worse we shall be, like that old Cambridge scholar who was never seen without a book in his hand, and who yet forgot everything. "That man," said Robert Hall, "has put so many books atop of his head that his brain has not room to move." A good memory is no doubt a natural gift, but a poor one may be wonderfully improved. Sir William Jones more than once talked of the weakness of his, yet acquired twenty-seven languages. Cardinal Mezzofanti is said to have known ten more. Captain Burton, the African traveller, has mastered twenty-two. We may be sure that constant and unwearied industry alone enabled these men to acquire so much. Due and precise attention is the first great requisite. "If you would only pay as much attention to these matters as you do to your dress or your dinner, you would remember them as well, young lady,” said Dr. Johnson to one who complained of forgetfulness. Finally, let us remember that memory is as much an affair of will as anything else; and we should determine, all of us, to be in the rank of those good and blessed souls who, if they have made no great names, have yet had the merit to forget evil and to remember good; whom injury does not touch; who write the remembrance of a wrong upon water, but engrave the memory of a benefit upon marble. HAPPINESS. T is so very hard to define what happiness is, that the best way would be to begin with some sketch of what it is not. But an attempt at definition may serve us. Happiness is the quiet and continued existence of a mild pleasure pervading the mind. It may arise from health and a clear conscience; from a sense of having done one's duty; from a satisfaction at position, security, wealth, gratification of wishes, desires, passions, legitimately indulged in, or from a variety of other causes; but it is a state of mental calm, a halcyon peace, a quiet brooding, the soul's sunshine, arising not physically-although physical causes can disturb it—but from the soul or mind. Hence it has been said of it that "nothing earthly gives it or can destroy" it. Rightly to understand it, we must lift it out of the sphere of bodily and earthly enjoyments. A sick man, a cold man, a starving man, may be very happy. So far as we can understand, those who suffered the most cruel martyrdoms were not denied happiness, even at the time of martyrdom. It was certainly with Ridley, and Cranmer, and pious Rowland Taylor, who walked (poor old man!) shivering in his long night-shirt to the stake. It was not absent from "Luke's iron crown, or Damien's bed of steel ;" and the stern deathlight of the face of Charlotte Corday had something of its glow. Certainly it was in the heart of our first martyr, Stephen, even whilst the heavy stones rained down upon him. "Cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones," he heeded not his persecutors "But, looking upward, full of grace, If we agree in this definition, then we shall find that Pope, in his material list, has missed the right meaning :— "O happiness! our being's end and aim, Good, pleasure, ease, content, whate'er thy name—' because it is exactly neither. Yet there still remains the question, What is it? In that great and very beautiful work, Romola, “George Eliot," as the authoress styles herself, has given us the picture of a man, good, generous, handsome, nay, beautiful; a fine companion, pure in youth, and with all the appliances and means of doing good and securing happiness; who once indeed never thought of doing anything base; but, “because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds; such as make men infamous." Here we see that pleasure is not happiness. If we ensue (to use an excellent word) that, we shall be sure to miss real happiness. Nor is it quite what we call "good,” although it is good in itself, and is produced by that which is good. At the same time it is not content; yet it produces content; and a righteous—not a stupid-content may, after long years, slide into happiness. To be great and happy active and happy, rich and high up in the world and happy-to be one or all of these is extremely difficult. How calmly and how truly these sentences fall from the pen of the author of Romola! Is she who wrote them happy? "It is not easy, my Lillo, to be something that will make you a great man, and very happy besides-something that will not hinder you from having a good deal of pleasure. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling with the rest of the world, as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being that we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in this world, that no man can be great-he can hardly keep himself from wickedness -unless he gives up thinking much about pleasures and rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful." |