pear to be the same in man
and animals; and there are many facts which would induce us to suppose,
if these faculties be identical in their nature, that the endowment of
the latter is more excellent. This conjecture is hazarded from the
greater susceptibility of the organs of some animals, and from their
wonderful recollection of tracks which they have traversed. Among the
phenomena of memory there are two very curious occurrences, and for
which no adequate explanation has been hitherto afforded. Many of the
transactions of our early years appear to be wholly obliterated from our
recollection; they have never been presented as the subject of our
thoughts, but after the lapse of many years, have been accidentally
revived, by our being placed in the situation which originally gave them
birth. Although there are numerous instances on record, and some perhaps
familiar to every reader, I shall prefer the relation of one which came
under my immediate observation. About sixteen years ago, I attended a
lady at some distance from town, who was in the last stage of an
incurable disorder. A short time before her death, she requested that
her youngest child, a girl about four years of age, might be brought to
visit her, and which was accordingly complied with. The child remained
with her about three days. During the last summer some circumstances
led me to accompany this young lady to the same house. Of her visit when
a child she retained no trace of recollection, nor was the name of the
village even known to her. When arrived at the house, she had no memory
of its exterior; but on entering the room where her mother had been
confined, her eye anxiously traversed the apartment, and she said, "I
have been here before, the prospect from the window is quite familiar to
me, and I remember that in this part of the room there was a bed and a
sick lady, who kissed me and wept." On minute inquiry none of these
circumstances had ever occurred to her recollection during this long
interval, and in all probability they would never have recurred but for
the locality which revived them. In a work professedly the fabric of
fancy, but which is evidently a portrait from nature, and most highly
finished,--in the third volume of Guy Mannering, the reader may peruse a
similar but more interesting relation, where the return of Bertram to
the scenes of his childhood, awakens a train of reminiscences which
conduce to the developement of his history and legi