y in round numbers that this period commenced 750
years B.C. And let the first chamber of history be of that duration.

B. Next let us take an equal space _after_ Christ. This will be the
second chamber of history. Starting from the birth of our Saviour, it
will terminate in the middle of the eighth century, or in the early
years of Charlemagne. These surely are most remarkable eras.

C. Then passing for the present without explanation to the year 1100 for
the first Crusade, let us there fix one foot of our 'golden compasses,'
and with the other mark off an equal period of 750 years. This carries
us up nearly to the reign of George III, of England. And this will be
the third great chamber of history.

D. Fourthly, there will now remain a period just equal to one-half of
such a chamber, viz.: 350 years between Charlemagne's cradle and the
first Crusade, the terminal era of the second chamber and the inaugural
era of the third. This we will call the ante-chamber of No. 3.

Now, upon reviewing these chambers and antechambers, the first important
remark for the student is, that the second chamber is nearly empty of
all incidents. Take away the migrations and invasions of the several
Northern nations who overran the Western Empire, broke it up, and laid
the foundations of the great nations of Christendom--England, France,
Spain--and take away the rise of Mahommedanism, and there would remain
scarcely anything memorable.

From all this we draw the following inference: that memory is, in
certain cases, connected with great effort, in others, with no effort at
all. Of one class we may say, that the facts absolutely deposit
themselves in the memory; they settle in our memories as a sediment or
deposition from a liquor settles in a glass; of another we may say that
the facts cannot maintain their place in the memory without continued
exertion, and with something like violence to natural tendencies. Now,
beyond all other facts, the facts of dates are the most severely of this
latter class. Oftentimes the very actions or sufferings of a man,
empire, army, are hard to be remembered because they are
non-significant, non-characteristic: they belong by no more natural or
intellectual right to that man, empire, army, than to any other man,
empire, army. We remember, for instance, the simple diplomacy of Greece,
when she summoned all States to the grand duty of exterminating the
barbarian from her limits, and throwing back the tides