mands, go through the first six books of Euclid's Geometry, by yourself, if possible; if not, with the aid of a friend or teacher. What you submit to at first as a task, may soon become a source of pleasure; whenever it does so, the point is gained; you have learned to fix the attention, and to reason with clearness and precision.

Mental philosophy. Doubtless this has proved an agreeable study; if only learned, however, from a meagre classbook, it is not sufficient. Read Stewart's Philosophy, and make a careful analysis of it. Let me recommend another very useful little work, now somewhat out of fashion-Watts on the Mind. This still retains its place in some seminaries, but in general has been supplanted by more recent publications. Your main object at this time must be, to acquire a knowledge of your own mind, its capabilities and wants. Make a thorough investigation, take its "gauge and dimensions."

Acuteness of sensation and quickness of perception depend originally to some extent upon organization; yet these may be greatly increased, and even their want supplied, as we see in the case of the blind, whose other senses become so vigilant and discriminating. Attention, close, habitual attention, stimulated by necessity, thus increases the blind man's sense of hearing, of touch, and even of smell and taste. Attention is a faculty much under the control of the will; upon its careful cultivation the conceptive faculty, the memory, and the judgment, all depend. To ascertain whether this faculty has been favourably developed, we must inquire what are our habits of reading, of study, and of thought.

The hasty, indiscriminating perusal of the host of annuals, scrap-books, and periodicals that crowd the centre-table of the modern drawing-room, not only vitiates taste, but is destructive to attention. A literary souvenir may be taken up during a morning call, if your friend keep you waiting half an hour or more, while she makes her elaborate toilet, and if your habits of attention are good, the time will not be entirely lost; an engraving, or a flower, may afford a

subject for attention and reflection, and even well-chosen furniture and its neat and tasteful arrangement may give you a lesson in housekeeping. To the well-regulated mind no time nor place can be destitute of suggestive objects for profitable thought. But to return to reading. Does your mind fix with a firm grasp upon every leading thought? Can you become so completely absorbed as to be unconscious, page after page, whether you are in the body or out of the body? And this, not in the entrancing pages of a novel alone, but in history or philosophy. Or do you revel in fairy-land, while your eyes glide over the pages without conveying a single idea to the mind? The story has often been told of the mischievous wag, who moved back from day to day his friend's mark in the book he was reading. The poor fellow, opening honestly at the mark each day, read over and over the same pages, till at length, a gleam of recollection coming over his mind, he exclaimed-" Well, it really seems to me, as if, somehow, I must have read this before."

In a moral point of view, attention to what is passing around us is a duty. How often may we deceive others in matters of consequence, if we walk blindfolded through the world! How complicated, how perplexed, is the narrative of a heedless person, even when he is describing an event of which he has been an eye-witness! It is next to impossible for such an one to carry on a clear, consecutive train of thought. Truth is often violated, or, at least, the veracity of conversation is doubtful, where this defect exists in a high degree. Like the dubious man described by Cowper

"His evidence, if he were called by law

To swear to some enormity he saw,

For want of prominence and just relief,

Would hang an honest man, and save the thiet

Useless in him alike both brain and speech,
Fate having placed all truth above his reach:

His ambiguities his total sum,

He might as well be blind, and deaf, and dumb.”

The faculty of attention is often impaired for life by

habitual reverie. When you are employed with your needle, fair reader, you are often building châteaux d'Espagne, and may think it hard to be denied the delicious enjoyment. The trifling mechanical employment of the fingers is a gentle promoter of thought, and many an hour may pass most profitably to mind in this manner, if your thoughts are rightly directed. Recall some book that you have studied; analyze it; compare it with whatever else you may have read on the same subject. Or take some subject of practical moment-contentment, for example; arrange in order all the reasons you have for it, count over the rich blessings that cluster around you, until your heart overflows with gratitude.

Attention, we know, must form the basis of memory; difference of taste and sentiment produces difference of association of ideas.

Three young ladies may have studied the history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The manners, dress, and fashion of those days interested the first; the second dwelt with delight upon the character of the men of genius who immortalized that reign; while the third was most attracted by the character and conduct of Elizabeth herself. Some one asks in their presence, "Will the reign of Victoria rival that of Elizabeth?" The picture before the mind's eye of the first is the chivalric cavalier, with silken suit and embroidered cloak, bowing to his lady-love, who rejoiceth in broad ruff and stiff brocade, assaulting her heart with euphuistic compliment. The second asks, Where is the Burleigh to guide the counsels, or the Spenser and the Shakspeare to glorify this reign? The third immediately draws a parallel between the education and early character of the royal ladies. So far all is well; each follows her taste, but her attention has probably been too exclusively fixed upon her favourite subjects. The first, when asked about Sir Anthony Cooke and his daughters, does not remember that such persons existed. The second might laugh outright, if asked how Elizabeth was apparelled, and how many dresses she had in her wardrobe at the time of

her death. The third, if asked how the Spanish Armada was arranged for battle, remembers nothing in connection with it, excepting the royal heroine riding down the ranks at Tilbury Fort, and haranguing the soldiers. If your attention has been thus despotically ruled by your peculiar tastes and partialities, it is high time to correct the error. Read first the preface, and then glance over the index of a book, to know what are the topics of most practical value; what knowledge it contains of which you are ignorant; what information that you ought to be most anxious to fix in memory. Mark such subjects with your pencil, and in the course of reading rivet your attention upon them.

Absence of mind has been so long considered a mark of genius, that few take pains to avoid the pernicious habit. It is one of the infirmities of great minds, and is almost unpardonable, even when associated with the overpowering splendour of superior talents. It is no positive proof of genius; the weakest minds are prone to extreme absence. This is very different from the power of abstraction, which belongs, in a pre-eminent degree, only to minds of the highest order. It is peculiarly inconvenient for women to be absent-minded. The thousand and one daily cares and employments, which must each receive due attention in a well-ordered household, render it necessary for a woman to have her thoughts always about her. Suppose, at the head of her dinner-table, she falls into a fit of absence; her guests are neglected, the servants are at fault, and make dozens of blunders in consequence of hers, and when at last she comes back again, she resumes the conversation where it had been dropped, ten minutes before, much to the amusement or embarrassment of her guests, and her own and her husband's mortification. An absent-minded woman cannot be uniformly polite. She may be kindly disposed and perfectly well-bred, yet she will pass her most intimate friend in the street without speaking to her; take the most convenient and comfortable seat at a neighbour's fireside, appropriated to an aged and infirm member of the family, fix her eyes in church upon some one until the person is

annoyed and embarrassed; interrupt conversation by remarks entirely irrelevant, and commit many other blunders while under this temporary alienation of mind, which would shock her, at another time, as offending against the plainest rules of propriety.

CHAPTER III.

MEMORY.

"When I plant a choice flower in a fertile soil, I see nature presently thrust up with it the stinging nettle, the poisonous hemlock, the drowsy poppy, and many such noisome weeds, which will either choke my plant, by excluding the sun, or divert its nourishment to themselves; but if I weed these at first, my flower thrives to its goodness and glory."—WARWICK.

MEMORY, glorious treasure-house of mind! Earth, with all its pageantry, shall pass away, but memory shall survive, endless source of bliss or woe. We cannot realize the full import of this truth; if we could, very different would be our pursuits.

Locke says: "Memory is of so great moment, that where it is wanting all the rest of our faculties are in a great measure useless; and we, in our thoughts, reasonings, and knowledge, could not proceed beyond present objects, were it not for the assistance of memory, wherein there may be two defects. First, that it loses the idea quite, and so far it produces perfect ignorance. Secondly, that it moves slowly, and retrieves not the ideas that it has, and are laid up in store, quick enough to serve the mind upon occasions. This, if it be in a great degree, is stupidity; and he who, through this default in his memory, has not the ideas that are really preserved there, ready at hand when need and occasion call for them, were almost as well without them, since they serve him to very little purpose."

The vague ideas in a weak mind are at best "the baseless fabric of a vision," and time's effacing finger soon obliterates

B