e, for instance,
are well-known as being capable of noticing a road taken and of
returning by it, of recognising readily a place once seen, and of
showing a tendency to stop of their own accord at places where they have
been arrested or kept. This local memory, useful as it is to every one,
is necessary to the painter who draws upon it for the elements of his
artistic creations.

The faculty of recollecting faces is a peculiar one, and possessed by
different persons in vastly different degrees. There are those who
recognise invariably every face they have once seen, and who by a simple
effort can at any time recall with the utmost distinctness the features
of the absent. On the other hand, there are those so wanting in this
special form of memory that they are constantly exposed to serious
social inconveniences, and, for fear of failing in politeness, often
salute perfect strangers. The ancient Greeks possessed to an
extraordinary degree the power of seizing and retaining types of face
and form; it is to this, doubtless, that they owe, to a great extent,
their unapproached excellence in sculpture and painting.

_Graphic_ or _descriptive_ memory is that which photographs, as it were,
upon the brain the visual impressions that objects have made upon the
retina, in such a manner that the thought can reconstruct them ideally.
This, in particular, is the form of memory required by designers of all
kinds, and, like the other forms of visual memory, is susceptible of
education. The child is first taught to copy with his pencil and produce
exact _imitations_ of the objects about him. Then, little by little, he
is to be taught in closing his eyes to reconstruct mentally the contours
of objects, at first simple, then more complicated, and finally to
penetrate into their details and give to the fictitious mental image all
the relief of reality. This exercise not merely trains the child in
correct observation, but quickly leads to the conquest of descriptive
memory.

_Chromatic_ memory, or the memory of colors, is a form of visual memory
different from those we have enumerated. It is more difficult, perhaps,
and technical than the others. The attention of the child should early
be directed to the colors of natural and artificial objects, and he
should be encouraged to imitate them.

But it is not our intention to go further into this important subject,
the education of the sense of sight. Our space will not permit it. By
these