extracts and resets gems to tesselate our
future structures; it constitutes depth as against fluency.

To commit poetical passages to memory is a valuable contribution to our
stock of material for emotional resuscitation in after years. It also
aids in adorning our style, even although we may not aspire to compose
in poetry. But the burden of holding the connection of a long poem
should be eschewed. Children can readily learn a short psalm or hymn,
and can retain it in permanence; but to repeat the 119th psalm from the
beginning is the mere _tour-de-force_ of a strong natural memory, and a
waste of power; just as much as committing an entire book of the Aeneid
or of Paradise Lost.

* * * * *

[MAKING ABSTRACTS.]

3. Making Abstracts.--This is the plan of studying that most advances
our intelligent comprehension of any work of difficulty, and also
impresses it on the memory in the best form. But there are many ways of
doing it; and beginners, from the very fact that they are beginners,
are not competent to choose the best. If a book has an obvious and
methodical plan in itself, the reader can follow that plan, taking down
the leading positions, selecting some of the chief examples or
illustrations, giving short headings of chapters and paragraphs, and
thus making a synopsis, or full table of contents. All this is useful.
The memory is much better impressed through the exertion of picking,
choosing, and condensing, than by copying _verbatim_; and the plan or
evolution of the whole is more fully comprehended. But, if a work does
not easily lend itself to a methodical abstract, the task of the
beginner is much harder. To abstract the treatises of Aristotle was
fitting employment for Hobbes. The "Wealth of Nations" is not easy to
abstract; but, at the present day, it would not be chosen as the
Text-book-in-chief for Political Economy: as a third or fourth work to
be perused at a reading pace, it would have its proper effect. The best
studious exercise upon it would be to mark the agreements and
disagreements with the newer authority, the weak and strong points of
the exposition, and the perennial force of a certain number of the
propositions and examples. Many parts could be skipped entirely as not
even repaying historical study. Yet, as the work of a great and original
mind, its interest is perennial.

To go back once more to the example of Thucydides. Setting aside, from
intrinsic impro