gift, by
which alone we are able to retain our intellectual acquisitions. Without
it, study is useless, and education simply an impossibility. Without it,
there could be no such thing as growth in knowledge. We could know no
more to-day than we knew yesterday, or last week, or last year. The man
would be no wiser than the boy. Without this faculty, the mind would be,
not as now like the prepared plate which the photographer puts in his
camera, and which retains indelibly on its surface the impressions of
whatever objects pass before it; but would rather be like the window
pane, before which passes from day to day the gorgeous panorama of
nature, transmitting with equal and crystalline clearness the golden
glory of the sun, the pale rays of the moon and stars, the soft green of
meadow and woodland, images of beauty and loveliness, of light and
shade, from every object on the earth and in the heavens; but retaining
on its own surface not a line or a tint of the millions of rays that
have passed through its substance, and remaining to the end the same bit
of transparent glass, unchanged, unprofited by the countless changes it
has received and transmitted.

Memory alone gives value to the products of every other faculty,
stamping them with the seal of possessorship, and making them truly
ours. In vain reason forges its bolts, in vain imagination paints its
scenes, in vain the senses give us a knowledge of the shapes and forms
of external nature, in vain ideas of any sort or from any source come
into our minds, unless we have the power to retain and fix them there,
and make them a part of our accumulated intellectual wealth. To do this
is the office of memory, and whatever increases the activity and power
of the memory, gives at once value and growth to every other power.

Memory has been well called the store-house of our ideas. The
illustration is true not only in its main feature, but in many of the
minor details. The value of what a man puts away in a store-house
depends much upon the order and system with which the objects are
stored. The wise and thrifty merchant has bins and boxes and
compartments and pigeon-holes, all arranged with due order and symmetry,
and every item of goods, as it is added to his stock, is put away at
once in its appropriate place, where he can lay his hands upon it
whenever it is wanted. There should be a like method and system in our
mental accumulations. The remembrance of facts and truths i