case, we might refer to that of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short warning, to 'rhapsodize,' night after night, parts which when laid together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first, alternately the odd and even lines--in short, whatever the passage required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any part of the Bible--even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of multifarious reading, and of countless distracti