152 THE SMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND. the inmost soul : or do they imagine that youth can penetrate into all these beauties and artifices of nature without these helps, which persons of maturer age find necessary for that purpose? I would not willingly name the books, because some ofthe writers are said to be gentlemen of excellent acquirements. VII. After we have first learnt and gone through any of those arts or sciences which are to be explained by diagrams, figures and schemes, such as geometry, geography, astronomy, optics, mechanics, 85-c. we may best preserve them in memory by having those schemes and figures in large sheets of paper hang- ing always before the eye in closets, parlours, halls, chambers, entries, stair-cases, &c. Thus the learned images will be per- petually imprest on the brain, and will keep the learning that depends upon them alive and fresh in themind, through the grow- ingyears of life : the mere diagrams and figures will ever recai to our thoughts those theorems, problems, and corollaries, which have been demonstrated by them. It is incredible how much geography may be learnt this way by the two terrestrial hemispheres, and by particular maps and charts of thecoasts and countries of the earth happily disposed round about us. Thus we may learn also theconstellations by just projections of the celestial sphere, hung up in the same man- ner. And I must confess, for the bulk of learners of astronomy, I like that projection of the stars best, which includes in it all the stars inour horizon, and therefore it reaches to the 38t!í degree of 'southern latitude, though its centre is the north -pole. This gives us a better view of the heavenly bodies as they appear every night to us, and it may be made use of with a little instruction, and with ease, to serve for a noctural, and shew the true hour of the night. But remember, that if there be any colouring upon these maps or projections, it should be laid on so thin, as not to obscure or conceal any part of the lines, figures, or letters : whereas most times they are daubed so thick with gay and glaring colours, and hung up so high above the reach of the eye-that should survey and read them, as though their only design were to make a guady show upon the wall, and they hung there merely to cover the naked plaister or wainscot. Those sciences which may be drawn out into tables may also be thus hung up and disposed in proper places, such as brief abstracts of history, chronology, &c. and indeed, the schemes of any of the arts or sciences may be analysed in a sort of ske- leton, and represented upon tables, with the various dependen- cies and connections of their several parts and subjects that belong to them. Mr. Solomon Lowe has happily thrown the grammar of several languages into such tables; and a frequent review of those abstracts and epitomes would tend much to im
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