tained by Locke. He says, "there is nothing more evident than that the ideas of the persons children converse with (to instance them alone), are like the persons themselves, only particular. The ideas of the nurse and the mother are well framed in their minds, and, like pictures of them, represent only those individuals. The names they first gave to them are confined to those individuals, and the names of nurse and mamma the child uses, determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards, when time and a larger acquaintance have made them observe that there are a great many other things in the world that in some common agreement or shape, and several other qualities, resemble their father and mother, and those persons they have been used to, they frame an idea which they find those many particulars do partake in, and to that they give with others, for example, the name man. Thus they come to have a general name and a general idea."*

* Locke, on the "Human Understanding."

CHAPTER XIV.

Acute Disorders of the Memory.

In estimating the condition of the memory in relation to
a suspected state of cerebral or mental disease, it is im-
portant to remember, that, as age advances, the power of
recalling to the mind, by an effort of the will, recent
events, becomes much impaired, and is sometimes alto-
gether destroyed. Horace says, when alluding to the
sad infirmities that sometimes accompany old

age,-
"Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod
Quærit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;
Vel quod res omnes timidè gelidèque ministrat,
Dilator, spe longus, iners, avidusque futuri,
Difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti."

In a few instances, however, in very advanced life, the faculty of memory exhibits an extraordinary degree of elasticity, and a surprising amount of vigour.* There

* A charming illustration of the tenacity with which the mind retains early impressions occurs in the life of Niebuhr, the celebrated Danish traveller. When old, blind, and so infirm that he was able only to be carried from his bed to his chair, he used to describe to his friends the scenes which he had visited in his early days with wonderful minuteness and vivacity. When they expressed their astonishment at the vividness of his memory, he explained, "that as he lay in bed, all visible objects shut out, the pictures of what he had seen in the East continually floated before his mind's eye, so that it was no wonder he could speak of them as if he had seen them yesterday. With like vividness, the deep intense sky of Asia, with its brilliant and twinkling host of stars, which he had so often gazed at by night, or its lofty vault of blue by day, was reflected, in the hours of stillness and darkness, on his inmost soul."

"The angels of youth leave the deepest footmarks on the rocks of Memory, and the long ago and distant past is more often and more deeply imprinted on the soul than the distant future. In the same manner the first orna

is undoubtedly much difference among the aged as to their ability to revivify recent mental impressions. We sometimes, however, witness in old persons, great power of reproducing these as well as former and long antecedent ideas. This state of healthy psychical activity depends partly upon natural strength of the faculty or original vigour of mind, early educational discipline, freedom from a great strain upon the functions of the brain, and absence of any lengthened worry and mental anxiety. Temperate habits, an immunity from those youthful excesses which so frequently sap and undermine the physical and mental constitution, and sow the seeds of premature psychical impairment and bodily decrepitude, are essential to the preservation of the memory.

Strange infirmities of the memory there are associated with cerebral disease, and justly to be regarded among its symptoms: large blanks in the backward gaze, fitful suspensions of the remembering power; partial glimpses of the past; resurrections of thoughts long buried in oblivion! I speak not of that natural decay of the memory which is noticeable in most persons as age creeps on, and which is one of the most affecting of the many warnings then vouchsafed to us that the bodily frame is suffering dilapidation.* Even of this natural decay there are some curious things to be noted. Recent

mental letters of our existence, like those in illuminated writings, carry on their beautiful emblazonments all round the four sides of the manuscripts." -Jean Paul F. Richter.

"The young," says Aristotle, wards, in memory."

66

live forward, in hope, the old live back

66 Hoc est

Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."-Martial.

"The imbecility of age is not so painful to the old as it is to those who stand by and observe its condition. With the return of our second childhood, we lose the consciousness of our prime. The loss of any of our senses is accompanied with the oblivion of its enjoyment. Thus, the blind are cheerful, the deaf happy, and the old content. So that we are tempted to conclude,

events are retained with difficulty and soon forgotten; while those of older date are easily and accurately recalled. This has been referred, and rightly, I believe, to the differing degree of interest, and therefore of attention, which the same objects excite in the young and in the old. It would seem as if the effort of attention stamped characters upon the material fabric which are deep and lasting in the youthful brain, faint and soon effaced in the aged. But disease may revive things long forgotten; a language long unspoken and unthought in; or blot out entirely all traces of definite portions of time gone by."

An accomplished writer, when discussing the subject of "Human Longevity," makes the subjoined remarks respecting the impairment of memory consequent upon that gradual physical decadence so often witnessed in advanced life. He says:-"The memory is undoubtedly the mental faculty which is first and most obviously that those exquisite lines of Goethe, so ably rendered into English by their noble translator, express a poetic fiction rather than a reality :

Give me the active spring of gladness,

Of pleasure stretched almost to pain;
My hate, my love, in all their madness,—
Give me my youth again!'

Although the sight of the angelic Margaret, as

'She sat by the casement's chequer'd glass,

The clouds fly by, and she watches them pass

Over the city wall, ——'

meditating on her love, were sufficient to enkindle a spark of passion even in the icy veins of an old dotard. But no: in the really old, the flame is extinct, the ashes have been burnt out, and no spark can ever fire them again. An aged gentleman, during the stunning and damaging effect of an apoplectic seizure, lost all his money by the failure of a bank. On recovering his senses, he could never, fortunately, be awakened to the feeling of poverty, nor the embarrassing consciousness of being a poor dependent on the bounty of his friends. Another gentleman, during a fit of apoplexy and its tedious conse quences, lost two of his dearest relatives by death, and came into possession of some considerable property besides. On his recovery, he neither regretted the loss he had sustained, nor rejoiced at his own good fortune."--Psychological Journal.

"Practice of Physic," by Thos. Watson, M.D.

affected by old age. This wonderful intermedium between body and mind, varying so greatly in different individuals, and so strangely capricious in the same individual, from the accidents of the day or hour, would seem to partake more of mere mechanism than any other of the intellectual powers. It undergoes changes more explicitly from physical causes, and both its excellences and defects are marked by peculiarities which appear to belong to conditions of an organic kind. The anomalies of memory in advanced life are familiar to every one, especially so, the facts of the early forgetfulness of names, and the frequent retention of things long past, while recent events flit away like shadows, leaving scarcely any trace behind.* Or, more strangely still (though never,

* How sad is the picture which Lord John Russell has drawn of his friend Rogers' state of memory in advanced life! When speaking of this illustrious poet's decay of intellect, he says:—

"In his ninetieth year his memory began to fail him in a manner that was painful to his friends. He was no longer able to relate his shortest stories, or welcome his constant companions with his usual complimentary expressions. He began to forget familiar faces, and at last forgot that he had ever been a poet. It was impossible, however, even when memory had at length deserted the poet who had sung her charms, to look upon him without a feeling of veneration. Faces of other times seemed to crowd over him as he sat, and what that now vacant mind had once known, what those now lifeless eyes had once seen, and what that now faltering tongue could once relate so well, were the thoughts uppermost in the minds of all who saw and knew him." Another authority (Edinburgh Review, 1856,) observes :

"Til near ninety, Rogers was a striking exception to the rule of the decay of the mind before that of the body.' He then gradually dropped into that state, mental and bodily, which raises a reasonable doubt whether prolonged life be a blessing or a curse

'Omni

Membrorum damno major dementia, quæ nec
Nomina servorum, nec vultum agnoscit amici,
Cum quo præteritâ cœnavit nocte, nec illos,
Quos genuit, quos eduxit.'-Juven. Sat. x.

"Although his impressions of long past events were as fresh as ever, he forgot the names of his relations and oldest friends, whilst they were sitting with him, and told the same stories to the same people, two or three times over in the same interview. But there were frequent glimpses of intellect in all its original brightness, of tenderness, of refinement, and of grace. driving out with him,' says a female correspondent, I asked him after a lady

'Once