valuable to a traveller, but all intellectual labor of the higher kind
requires much more than that. It is of use to society that there should
be polyglot waiters who can tell us when the train starts in four or
five languages; but the polyglot waiters themselves are not
intellectually advanced by their accomplishment; for, after all, the
facts of the railway time-table are always the same small facts, in
however many languages they may be announced. True culture ought to
strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to provide the material upon
which that noble faculty may operate. An accomplishment which does
neither of these two things for us is useless for our culture, though it
may be of considerable practical convenience in the affairs of ordinary
life. It is right to add, however, that there is sometimes an _indirect_
intellectual benefit from such accomplishments. To be able to order
dinner in Spanish is not in itself an intellectual advantage; but if the
dinner, when you have eaten it, enables you to visit a cathedral whose
architecture you are qualified to appreciate, there is a clear
intellectual gain, though an indirect one.

LETTER X.

TO A STUDENT WHO LAMENTED HIS DEFECTIVE MEMORY.

The author rather inclined to congratulation than to condolence--Value
of a selecting memory--Studies of the young Goethe--His great faculty
of assimilation--A good literary memory like a well-edited
periodical--The selecting memory in art--Treacherous memories--Cures
suggested for them--The mnemotechnic art contrary to the true
discipline of the mind--Two instances--The memory safely aided only by
right association.

So far from writing, as you seem to expect me to do, a letter of
condolence on the subject of what you are pleased to call your
"miserable memory," I feel disposed rather to indite a letter of
congratulation. It is possible that you may be blessed with a selecting
memory, which is not only useful for what it retains but for what it
rejects. In the immense mass of facts which come before you in
literature and in life, it is well that you should suffer from as little
bewilderment as possible. The nature of your memory saves you from this
by unconsciously selecting what has interested you, and letting the rest
go by. What interests you is what concerns you.

In saying this I speak simply from the intellectual point of view, and
suppose you to be an intellectual man by the natural organization of
your