second hieroglyphic, which picture may be said immediately to prompt the word associated with it. The operation of these hieroglyphics upon the mind may be compared to that of a prompter, with this advantage, that the associations of sight are in general more vivid than those of sound. Mr. Stewart, in his admirable work on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, has remarked of the topical memory of the ancients, that it might be applied to the prejudice of truth and justice. Certainly the absolute command of preconcerted arguments in prepared succession, in the flow of apparently extempore debate, might occasionally make the worse appear the better cause; but the abuse of an improvement can never be fairly urged against its utility, and granting the efficacy of the application, it may be made subservient to the best and holiest purposes. The next part of Mr. Feinaigle's system is the substitution of letters for figures, which was practised both in the ancient and middle ages. He employs consonants only, as representatives of figures; his alphabet is as follows: and the facility with which it may be committed to memory by certain familiar associations, is no bad test of their utility. 7 8 t, n, m, r, l, d, cgkq, bhvw, pf, sxz. 1 2 3 4 5 6 9 0 To fix this conventional alphabet in the memory, it might be said t is employed for the figure 1, because it has only one stroke; n, for 2, because it has two strokes; m, for 3, because it has three strokes; r, for four, from some supposed analogy in shape; or because r is the fourth letter of the word four, &c. &c. Associations like these might be readily multiplied, and however absurd they may appear, the point is, whether a person not disdaining to adopt them, would not be able to commit such an alphabet to memory in a shorter space of time, and with greater certainty of retention: in fact, as philosophical relations cannot exist between arbitrary signs, we have only to trust, in recollecting them, to fanciful associations, or to mere strength of memory. Perhaps the ingenious person who exclaimed, Well may this place be called Stoney Stratford, for I never was so bitten with fleas before,' had formed some arbitrary association in his mind abundantly competent to suggest the idea. It will be at once evident that the adoption of consonants for the expression of numbers, and the exclusion of vowels, gives a facility of employing any words, in any language, for the expression of a number, provided that the word contains exactly the consonants, which are the representatives of the figures to be denoted, unless the nature of the numbers to be expressed convinces us that they could not be extended beyond units of tens, as in the case of pence and shillings in an item of English expenditure; when the first and last may be understood to designate the number, if the word contains more than two. The application of this art to chronology is effected by quar It would be impossible to explain practically the ingenious application of this art to geography, without reference to diagrams; and even with their assistance, we doubt whether the account given in the volume before us, will appear intelligible. We shall only offer the most general outline of it. Two rooms are employed, one immediately over the other, the upper room is called the northern, the lower the southeru hemisphere; the floor in the upper room, the equator; and the centre of the cieling, the North Pole; the arrangement is reversed in the lower room, and the centre of the floor is called the South Pole. We must then conceive a map of the world on Mercator's projection, on the scale of ten degrees of both latitude and longitude, painted on the four walls of both rooms, the cieling of the upper, and the floor of the lower. The hieroglyphics are associated in a certain order with each square of ten degrees; and by an ingenious arrangement, the 12 number number of each hieroglyphic denotes the general latitude and longitude of that given portion of the world to which it is attached; and vice versa, any longitude or latitude being given, we are enabled, by a short arithmetical process, to recur to the hieroglyphic belonging to those parallels, which will suggest the locality. This system, which vividly affects and excites the imagination, is calculated to impress very correct ideas of the relative situation of countries, though we think it rather too refined and complicated for general adoption. This mode of associating visible objects with certain degrees of space is adopted in the celestial globe, and may have suggested the hint to Mr. Feinaigle. We must again protest against the miserable horde of puns employed to fix the names of the most familiar countries and places in the memory, which are equally superfluous and disgusting. Mr. Feinaigle's principles of arithmetic are omitted in this treatise: there is a long unsatisfactory chapter upon the analogy of languages, as presenting an additional facility in acquiring them. The mode of committing systematic tables to memory is literally borrowed from Quintilian it is to form a mental picture of some real or arbitrary type of the character or quality to be remembered, and to localize these pictures on the furniture of a room. We shall wave the mention of many minor details; it is the spirit of the system and not the discretionary variety of its application, which is really valuable. Nothing can be more opposite in principle, than the mnemonics and methodics' of Feinaigle, which, for the most part, depend upon associations of sight, and the 'Memoria Technica' of Dr. Grey, which depends entirely upon associations of sound, and is utterly distinct from a topical or artificial memory. His system may be defined to be a method of translating things difficult to be remembered, into an abbreviated, and conventional language, (aided by the associations of metrical cadence,) which operates upon the mind as short-hand upon the eye; and, but for the abuse of Greek etymologies in the present day, might be termed mental stenography'. It is remarkable that this work should have gone through nine editions, without the least attempt at improvement. The present edition inherits all the failings of its predecessors; it is evidently edited by a person utterly ignorant of the spirit of the system, and even unacquainted with the rhythm of hexameter verse. Nothing can be more unconnected and unphilosophical than the form in which the greater part of these memorial lines are arranged: they were probably composed at successive periods, and with no view to publication; the key to their connection was in the Dr. Richard Grey was born in the year 1693, he was a divine of the Church of England, a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford, and the author of several able treatises on ecclesiastical law, divinity, and the Hebrew language. doctor's doctor's head, he had abundantly fulfilled his task; but it was for the editors of subsequent editions to have modernized, improved, extended and arranged his system on principles of philosophical and casual association, which find no place in the method of Dr. Grey, who thus states the object of his invention. Introduction, p 2. 'The design is not to make the memory better, but things more easy to be remembered, so that by the help of it an ordinary or even a weak memory, shall be able to retain what the strongest, and most extraordimary memory could not retain without it; the whole art being in effect nothing more than this, to make such a change in the ending of a name, place, person, planet, coin, &c. without altering the beginning of it, as shall readily suggest the thing sought, at the same time the beginning of the word being preserved, shall be a leading, or prompting syllable to the end of it, so changed. Thus in history the deluge happened in the year B. C. 2348, this is expressed by the word Del-etok, Del gading for deluge, and etok for 2348.' The following is the alphabet of letters to be substituted for figures. a ė i 0 u au oi ei ou y 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 b dt fl S Р k n Z Here a and b both siguify the figure 1, e and d the figure 2, &c. Dr. Grey appears to have appreciated the value of casual assocations, in imprinting arbitrary relations upon the memory, by his directions for learning this alphabet, p. 2; but we would suggest what appears to us an easier method, viz. to select ten words, of which the initial letters should be the vowels and diphthongs representing the figures in the upper line; these ten words should have sufficient Connection to carry on a degree of signification, no matter how ingruous; the same plan might be pursued with the consonants. When this alphabet is perfectly impressed on the memory, the next step will be the practice of forming figures into words, and of resolving words into figures. It is obvious that the same date, or number, may be expressed by different words, according as vowels or Consonants are employed in the composition; thus the date of the deluge instead of being written Del-etok, might be written Deldifk, or Del-difei, or Del-etfei or Del-diok, all of which, by a reference to the key, will be found to signify the number 2348. In pronouncing any words that may be thus formed, it will be necessary to pronounce the letter y as a w, thus, James I. came to the throne in 1603, and the date might be written Jam-syt, (one thousand being understood,) which must be pronounced Jam-swit to distinguish it from sit, which would represent 633. Dr. Grey has omitted to observe that a=1 should be pronounced broad to distinguish it from ei=8, or perhaps the word abei=118 might be 13 mistaken mistaken for eiba=811; z signifying the cypher O should also be pronounced very broad whenever it is met with in a technical line, to distinguish it from s=6. As a specimen, we subjoin the English dynasty from William the Conqueror to George III; the change of termination in the name of each sovereign denotes the year of his accession, but we have altered many chronological inaccuracies in it, which are less pardonable, as the figures expressing the date are correct, but the letters remain unaltered. Steph-bilet Hen-sec-buf, Ric-bein, J-ann, He-th-das et Ed-doid 272 Ed-se-typ, Ed-ter-tep, Ri-se-toip, He-fo-toun, He-fi-fat-que 66 135 154 422 461 649 685 189 199 377 216 399 485 663 413 Hen-si-fed, Ed-quar-faub, E-fi-R-okt, Hen-sep-feil, Hen-oc-lyn 509 625 Ed-sex-lop, Mary-lut, Els-luk, Jam-syt, Caro-prim-sel 483 558 689 Car-sec-son, Jam-seil, Wil-sein, Anne-pyd, Geo-bo-doi-pauz 702 14 27 760 It will be observed that as Edward V, and Richard III, ascended the throne in the same year, 1483, the technical word is E-fi-R-okt, and as the three Georges succeeded each other, their names are not repeated, but each syllable expresses the date; after 1700, it is not necessary to express the 7 by a letter. We shall offer a few hints to those who are desirous of composing verses for themselves, and of becoming accurate chronologists by this system. Chronology has only a relative object: it has been named, and justly, one of the eyes of history; as a moral lesson, the observation of a few years presents all the intricate variety of human passions; as a political lesson, the whole chain of history is fraught with valuable instruction, but its value is in precise proportion to the degree of chronological accuracy with which the events are recorded. It is of the utmost moment to ascertain the precise time when the operation of certain causes conspired to produce certain effects; and it is the induction of these effects, which constitutes the essence of the philosophy of history. Hence that analogical prescience, which should be the first aim of the practical politician. A constant reference to chronological tables is frequently inconvenient, and sometimes impossible; it always consumes much time, and yet to omit it is to forego the prin cipal advantage resulting from historical study. It is perfectly easy by the system above described, to commit to memory the regular gradation, and exact date, of all the principal events from the cre |