To this I have added a succinct account of what is, I believe, the easiest and most comprehensive Art of Memory ever conceived.  There are on this subject more than five hundred works, all based, without exception, on the Associative system, which may be described as a stream which runs with great rapidity for a very short time but is soon choked up.  This, I believe, as a means applied to learning, was first published in my work, entitled Practical Education.  In it the pupil is taught the direct method; that is, instead of remembering one thing by means of another, to impress the image itself on the memory, and frequently revive it.  This process soon becomes habitual and very easy.  In from one year to eighteen months a pupil can by means of it accurately recall a lecture or sermon.  It has the immediate advantage, over all the associate systems, of increasing and enlarging the scope and vigour of the memory, or indeed of the mind, so that it may truly bear as a motto, Vires acquirit eundo—­“it gains in power as it runs long.”

Finally, I set forth a system of developing the Constructive Faculty—­ that which involves Ingenuity, Art, or manual making—­as based on the teaching of the so-called Minor Arts to the young.  The principle from which I proceed is that as the fruit is developed from the flower, all Technical Education should be anticipated.  Or begun in children by practicing easy and congenial arts, such as light embroidery, wood-carving or repousse, by means of which they become familiar with the elements of more serious and substantial work.  Having found out by practical experience, in teaching upwards of two thousand children for several years, that the practice of such easy work, or the development of the constructive faculty, invariably awakened the intellectual power or intelligence, I began to study the subject of the development of the mind in general.  My first discovery after this was that Memory, whether mental, visual, or of any other kind, could, in connection with Art, be wonderfully improved, and to this in time came the consideration that the human Will, with all its mighty power and deep secrets, could be disciplined and directed, or controlled with as great care as the memory or the mechanical faculty.  In a certain sense the three are one, and the reader who will take the pains, which are, I trust, not very great, to master the details of this book, will readily grasp it as a whole, and understand that its contents form a system of education, yet one from which the old as well as young may profit.

It is worth noting that, were it for nervous invalids alone, or those who from various causes find it difficult to sleep, or apply the mind to work, this book would be of unquestionable value.  In fact, even while writing this chapter, a lady has called to thank me for the substantial benefit which she derived from my advice in this respect.  And, mindful of the fact that Attention and Unwearied Perseverance are most necessary to succeed in such processes as are here described, I have taken pains to show or explain how they may be rendered more attractive, tolerable, and habitual to the fickle or light-minded; this, too, being a subject which has been very little considered from a practical point of view.