that, if the body, by its Creator, has been endowed with that marvellous power of abstracting from all the elements around it such particles as it can assimilate to itself, and incorporate with the different departments of its own organization, to its great enlargement and corroboration, why should not the soul have the same powers and capacities of assimilating to itself whatever is homogeneous in the mental and moral elements, in the midst of which it has its being, and of so incorporating them with itself as to promote its own growth and vigor? This is the first and main use of reason and recollection. By means of this species of rumination with which the mind is furnished, under the names of memory and reflection, the human soul secerns. and detaches from material nature all its earthly feculency and gross ingredients, and attaches to itself the reason, argument, and design with which the great unseen and eternal Spirit holds an unobtrusive and perpetual communion with its kindred offspring within us. Memory and reflection are measurably to the soul what the powers of digestion are to the body. The residuum of both the corporeal and mental repast, which does not amalgamate with the system, is, by a wise and benevolent provision of Nature, carried out of it. The analogy is more exact than at first thought could have been presumed. The fact is, the soul grows in stature and in vigor, by the provisions which perception, through sensation, acquires, and memory retains; and which reflection, aided by imagination, and those powers of abstracting and generalizing, converts into the very pabulum and stimulus of its healthful and vigorous advancement. By the harmonious and combined action of perception, memory, reason, and reflection, the mind acquires, treasures up, and separates to its own use so much of every kindred principle as is favorable to its growth and enlargement; and when disencumbered from the imperfect machinery of its terrestrial tenement, its growth will be eternally cumulative and progressive.

When we see the amateur touch with such exquisite sensibility, and almost instinctive sagacity, the strings of the harp, and "wake to ecstacy the living lyre," when we hear an accomplished reader perform fifteen hundred enunciations in a minute, without the consciousness of an effort, and when we enumerate the ten thousand acts that conspire in the movements of a single habit, what striking demonstrations have we of the avails of memory in the development and growth of the human soul!

These indications of the influence and power of memory on the acts and habits of the outward man, are but a mere exponent of its still more mysterious and wonderful power over the whole intellectual and moral man, in the development and perfection of all its powers. They

are all as dependent upon it for maturity and perfection, as are the members of the human body upon the organs of digestion and accretion.

But there is another and a still more important function which memory performs to the whole man, body, soul, and spirit. By it we not only commune with the present and the past, but by its instrumentality we acquire both impulse and motive for future action. It holds up to our feet the torches of past observation and experience, and throws upon our path the concentrated light of by-gone years; thereby furnishing us from its rich and varied treasures those arguments and motives which constitute the very elements of wisdom and prudence. Without the faculty of memory, how barren the incidents of the past to afford either counsel or comfort to man!! Without it the age of a Methuselah were lived in vain, so far as intellectual or moral improvement is concerned. It is a gift which rescues from oblivion the experience of the past, and which converts into the currency of every moment the wealth acquired through years of labor and sorrow.

It also furnishes us with the experience of others for our still further improvement. The illustrious dead, whose talents and whose virtues afford so much instruction and encouragement to the livingour beloved ancestors and relatives, that have left our world, are entombed in memory's sacred,urn, over which is inscribed all that endeared them to the living. Though dead, they yet live in our admiration and affection, and often exert a salutary influence upon our conduc'. They have, too, a sort of indefinite immortality in the esteem and affections of the living in virtue of that power which memory sways over the desolations of the grave. It is just at this point the philosophy of commemorative institutions rises above our horizon.

To aid memory in her pious and benevolent efforts to profit from the great and the good who have honored our nature and blessed our world, man has erected other monuments, and inscribed on other tables than those of the head or the heart, the names, the deeds, and the excellencies of those who deserve an immortality in the recollections of the living. No where heaves the grassy turf or rises the lettered stone, indicative of departed worth, that an appeal is not made to the passing stranger to pause, and inquire after the humble tenant that lies beneath. It is an appeal to the living to remember the dead. It is a device and effort to snatch from oblivion those whose names or whose deeds can contribute any thing to the happiness of the world.

The great and the noble have had recourse to monuments of costlier construction and of a more enduring architecture. From the family vault of sepulchred lords, up to the proud pyramids of Egyptian kings, through all the in'ermediate mausoleums of human pride and

human folly, we read the same lesson and learn the same moral. All wish to live in the affection and admiration of posterity. True, indeed, that often those magnificent tombs owe their origin and their melancholy splendors more to the pride and ambition of the living than to the virtues or the wishes of the dead. Still it is an humble petition on the part of the humble tenant within, or of the constructors of the monumental pile, for a place in Memory's faithful register—a desire to extort from every visitant a tribute of respect for something supposed to be worthy of the regard, if not of the admiration of mankind. Some, indeed, of these proud and stately cenotaphs either have inscribed upon them, or associate in our recollections, the memory of deeds of tyranny, misrule, and cruelty, that awaken in our souls a just contempt for those whose ashes are enshrined within. These, indeed, are not without an advantage to the living. As beacons over the rocks which mariners are taught to shun, these marble biographies in epitome indicate to the living the rocks and shoals on which the lofty sons of earth have shipwrecked their fortunes and engulphed themselves in

ruin.

But when we stand before the monumental pillar which a nation's gratitude or a people's admiration has erected in commemoration of departed philanthropy and great public worth, and when the mind reverts to those generous and noble deeds which embalm in kindred hearts the memory of the illustrious dead, what deep emotions and melancholy pleasures arise within us and struggle for utterance.Could the sons of science, of poetry, and philosophy, find the grave of Homer, of Socrates, of Plato, or Archimedes, or stand at the tomb of Bacon, of Locke, of Newton, of Shakspeare, or of Milton, those "plenipotentiaries of intellect and giants of the soul," what awe and reverence for intellectual greatness would possess their minds in the remembrance of the mighty triumphs and splendid trophies of their illustrious and wonderful genius!

Or could the saint who spends his years in Bible studies find the cave of Mackpelah where repose the ashes of the more illustrious Abraham Isaac, and Jacob; or, in traversing the plains of Moab, discover the tomb of Moses; or find along the banks of the Tiber, where rests the head of Paul; or, in visiting Jerusalem, ascertain with certainty the sepulchre of David, the tombs of departed prophets, saints, and martyrs, what unspeakably solemn and sublime pleasures would spring up within him, and bewail the impotence and imperfection of human language!

It is when we stand within the precincts of those sacred spots of earth where repose within her fond embrace the mortal remains of

those we dearly love or greatly admire, that the philosophy of commemorative institutions arises full-orbed to our view, and opens its sacred treasures to our consideration.

But as the sons of the Inductive Philosophy always begin with history, advance to classification, and end with deduction, we are obliged to glance for a moment at the history of commemorative institutions in order to a mere glimpse of their true philosophy.

Suffice it, then, to say that nature, religion, and society have each their commemorative rites-in the form of eras, anniversaries, or symbolic institutions. To say nothing of the developments of astronomy in the kindred worlds and systems around us, the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms of our own terraqueous globe present an irrefragable host of witnesses in attestation of the fact that Nature herself leads the way in originating both the fact and the meaning of commemorative institutions. Not to appeal to the eras or the facts of the first and second dentition in the infancy and childhood of man, the distinct and well marked periods of infancy, puberty, and old age, with all their peculiar phenomena; not to appeal to the teeth of the horse or the horns of the ox, those intelligible witnesses of the number of their years; not to enumerate the growths of the trees marked in the circles of their wood-we may at once appeal to mother Earth herself, and her ten thousand hills and mountains, diluvial and volcanic; her deep alluvial valleys; her mineral and fossil proofs, stereotyped in her innumerable petrefactions, by means of which she teaches us of former generations, and registers the genera and species of animal and vegetable creations, with the various epocha of their past existence. Thus Nature perpetuates the memory of her wonderful achievements, and erects the monuments of the great eras, incidents, and cycles of her wonderful history. On the tops of her loftiest mountains she records the fact of at least one universal deluge; and in her volcanic excavations developes not only the wondrous power of those hidden and mysterious fires that are continually excavating channels for receding oceans, and thus still more enlarging and enriching the earth for the increasing wants of man; but also affords us specimens of the untold treasures which God has concealed in the bowels of the earth for the future comforts and conveniences of generations yet unborn.

But from the monumental and commemorative rites of dame Nature, we turn to those of religion. These naturally classify themselves under three heads-the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian. As persons and events multiplied in the world, commemorative institutions

kept pace with them. But we can only select one or two of these as a fair specimen of this class of monumental records.

And to begin with the first:-The oldest commemorative institution in the world is that which records the voluminous fact that Naturethat familiar, indefinable, and inappreciable something, admired by all and worshipped by a few, is herself an effect, and not a primary cause. It is in this sublime and philosophic contemplation that the man of true science views that primeval solemnization of time called "the Sabbath," the first and one of the most significant and important of all patriarchal institutions Most modern philosophers, though Baconians in every thing else, are Platonists and Aristotelians here. They assume, because heir philosophic wand is too short to reach up to the first Sabbath—they assume, I say, that Nature is an effect; and then gravely ask in their a posteriori arguments, "Can there be an effect without a cause?" Prior to the era of facts and deductions, in the age of hypotheses and speculation before men had learned the true art of reasoning, this was an astounding question, which brought every Deist and Theist to his knees.

That Nature is an effect, is not to be gathered from analogy, from abstract reasonings, or from any data fairly and logically in all the premises over which philosophy has legitimate sway. The transcenddent fact that Nature has a Creator-that matter is the offspring of a Spiri', a fact which is yet doubted by multitudes, and denied by many called philosophers-(rather ought they to be called philosophists)—a fact, however, which is the corner stone of the very temple of reason, of piety and morality—a fact which, to be clearly perceived and realized, seizes the soul with the grasp of Omnipotence, inspires it with the sentiment of the sublime, and causes it to thrill with the elementary emotions of every principle of piety and humanity that elevates, adorns, and glorifies man.

Heaven left not this fact, the basis of a thousand volumes, to be gathered from abstract reasonings, vitiated traditions, ingenious analogies, nor plausible conjectures; but from a monumental institution, which was as universal as the annals of time, as the birth of nations, and as the languages spoken by mortals. An institution, too, notwithstanding its demand not only of the seventh part of all time, but of the seventh day in uninterrupted succession, was celebrated from the creation to the deluge, during the deluge, and after the deluge till the giving of the law; and which when transcribed by the finger of God from the tablets of memory to the tables of marble, begins with the very word "remember," the only word which is legitimately inscribed in every land and language upon every sort of monumental record, natural, religious, moral, or political. The humblest pillar that rises in honor of the dead, has either "in memory of" inscribed in fact or by