aste, and smell can scarce be said to leave
ideas, unless indistinct and obscure ones....

'Show a Londoner correct models of twenty London churches, and, at
the same time, a model of each, which differs, in several considerable
features, from the truth, and I venture to say he shall not tell you, in
any instance, which is the correct one, except by mere chance.

'If he is an architect he may be much more correct than any ordinary
person: and this obviously is because he has felt an interest in viewing
these structures, which an ordinary person does not feel: and here
interest is the sole reason of his remembering more correctly than his
neighbour.

'I once heard a person quaintly ask another, How many trees there are
in St. Paul's churchyard? The question itself indicates that many cannot
answer it; and this is found to be the case with those who have passed
the church a hundred times: whilst the cause is, that every individual
in the busy stream which glides past St. Paul's is engrossed in various
other interests.

'How often does it happen that we enter a well-known apartment, or meet
a well-known friend, and receive some vague idea of visible difference,
but cannot possibly find out _what_ it is; until at length we come to
perceive (or perhaps must be told) that some ornament or furniture is
removed, altered, or added in the apartment; or that our friend has
cut his hair, taken a wig, or has made any of twenty considerable
alterations in his appearance. At other times we have no perception of
alteration whatever, though the like has taken place.

'It is, however, certain that sight, apposited with interest, can retain
tolerably exact copies of sensations, especially if not too complex,
such as of the human countenance and figure: yet the voice will convince
us when the countenance will not; and he is reckoned an excellent
painter, and no ordinary genius, who can make a tolerable likeness from
memory. Nay, more, it is a conspicuous proof of the inaccuracy of visual
ideas, that it is an effort of consummate art, attained by many years'
practice, to take a strict likeness of the human countenance, even when
the object is present; and among those cases where the wilful cheat of
flattery has been avoided, we still find in how very few instances the
best painters produce a likeness up to the life, though practice and
interest join in the attempt.

'I imagine an ordinary person would find it very difficult, supposing