tablet away, soft as wax to receive
impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a
bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.

The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never,
properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in
the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of
its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in
the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from
understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of
which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and
the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees,
hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge,
either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in
their very being spontaneous and free--the mind being even unconscious
of them as they are going on--while the edifice has all the time been
silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent
workers--Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind
or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and
Foreman--had not only originally planned, but had even daily
superintended the building of the Temple.

Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple
question--Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most
various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney,
without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could.
Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth,
what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad--a moon to a mutton chop--a
comet to a curry--a planet to a pate! What gross ingratitude to the
Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to
remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made
with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but
then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature
gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the
slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the
tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but
which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their
miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever--yea, even to the great Day
of Judgment.

If men will but