CIIAPTER XVII. 121 they are to speak or learn, who never try to cast things into method, or to contract the survey of them, in order to commit them to their memory, had need have a double degree of that natural power of retaining and recollecting what they read or hear or intend to speak. Do not plunge .yourself into other businesses or studies, amusements or recreations, immediately after you have attended upon instruction, ifyou can well avoid it. Get time if possible to recollect the things you have heard, that they may not be washed all away from the mind by a, torrent of other occurrences or en- gagements nor lost in the croud or clamour of other loud and importunate affairs. Talking over the things which you have read with your companions on the first proper opportunity you have for it, is a most useful manner of review or repetition, in order to fix them upon the mind. Teach them your younger friends, in order to establish your own knowledge while you communicate it to them. The animal powers of your tongue and of your ear, as well as your intellectual faculties, will all' join together to help thememory. Hermetas studied hard in a remote corner of the land, and in solitude, yet he became a very learned men. He seldom was so happy as to enjoy suitable' society at home, and therefore he talked over to the fields and the woods in the evening what he had been reading in the day, and found so considerable advantage by this practice, that he recommended it to all his friends, since he could set his probatura to it for seven- teen -years. 5. Pleasure and delight in the things roe learn, gives great assistance towards the remembrance of there, Whatso- ever therefore we desire that a child should commit to his me- mory, make it as pleasant to him as possible ; endeavour to search his genius and his temper; and let him take in the in- structions you give him, or the lessons you appoint him, as far as may be, in a way suited to his natural inclination. Fabellus would never learn any moral lessons till they were moulded into the form of some fictionor fable like those of .z sop, or till they put on the appearance of a parable, like those wherein our blessed Saviour taught the ignorant world : then he remembered well the emblematical instructions that were given him, and learnt to practise the moral sense and meaning of them. Young Spectorius was taught virtue, by setting before him a variety of examples of the various good qualities in human life; and he was appointed daily to repeat some story of this kind out of Valerius Maximus. The same lad was early instructed to avoid the common vices and follies of youths in the same manner. This is a-kin to the method whereby the Lacedtemonians trained up their children to hate drunkenness and intemperance, viz.
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