complish whatever was required. We recited
from it three times a day, the four first days of the week, the
recitation of Thursday afternoon being a review of the rest. We were
expected to give the substance of the author's remarks, but were at
liberty to condense them, and to use our own words. Although the style
of Mr. Locke is not remarkably compact, it required a greater maturity
of mind than is possessed by many boys of fourteen to abridge his
paragraphs, or state his principles or their illustrations more
concisely than he does himself. I had at that time a memory which
recoiled from nothing; and I soon found that the shortest process was to
learn the text by heart nearly _verbatim_. I recollect particularly, on
one occasion of the review on Thursday afternoon, that I was called upon
to recite early, and, commencing with the portion of the week's study
which came next, I went on repeating word for word and paragraph after
paragraph, and finally, not being stopped by our pleased tutor,[E] page
after page, till I finally went through in that way the greater part of
the eleven recitations of the week. The celebrated passage on the Memory
happened to be included. A portion of it, after the lapse of forty-seven
years, remains in my recollection as distinctly as it did the day after
I learned it. I refer to the passage beginning, 'Thus the ideas, as well
as children, of our youth often die before us; and our minds represent
to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where, though the brass
and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the
imagery moulders away.'

"I may observe, that, beautiful as is this language beyond anything else
in the work of Locke, it will not stand the test of criticism. There is
no resemblance between what befalls the ideas and the children of our
youth; and supposing there were such a resemblance, there is not the
slightest analogy between the premature decease of the ideas and the
children of our youth and the disappearance of monumental inscriptions
and imagery from the brass and marble of tombs. But I feel ashamed of
this attempt to pick flaws in this beautiful passage."

But I must not dwell on these reminiscences. I am tempted to refer any
reader interested in his work in the education of the people to an
article on that subject in the seventh volume of Mr. Barnard's "Journal
of Education."

I once heard him say that the mental faculty which had been of most use