CHAP. XLVI.

THE CALENDAR.

See Chapter XXXVII.

FMAMIJASOND. This is a word I framed myself, when I was a child, by way of remembering the order and fucceffion of the months of the year, as it is framed from the initials of them, beginning, in the usual course, with January.

I contrived various devices of this fort, in my youth, for my own use, and would have brought the art of memory to great perfection, long before this, if I had not foon begun to confider that nothing was worth getting

by

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by heart, which did not make that heart the better, and that nothing was worth remembering, which was incapable of fupplying an idea, a moral, or a reflection. Dates and facts but incumber the mind, without improving it. 'Tis by exercife we obtain strength and maintain health, not by carrying of loads.

For which reafon I have struck chronology, circumftances, and incident quite out of my study of history; for though these things may serve to the conduct, illuftration, or entertainment of it, they are but little neceffary to the true purpose of fuch reading; which is the knowledge of man, not of men; in the abftrat, and not in VOL. II. H

the

the detail; of mankind in nature, and in polity, not in the diftinction of character, or private life; of the species, not. the individual; in what they agree, not wherein they differ.

all

Does not fomebody ftile history, morality teaching by examples? The idea had been better expreffed, if the more comprehensive term of philofophy had been used, instead of morality. The only way of studying history with advantage, is to attend to the principles and conftitution of government, and the moral, or political caufes of the declension of states, or revolutions of empires. To read it with any other view, is merely to amufe ourselves with a romance. And in that cafe,

Her

Hercules was a greater hero than Alex

ander, and Orondates than Cæfar.

There are some studies, indeed, which require, because they depend upon, memory. Languages, for inftance. This is an art, not a science; and the rules of grammar must be remembered; for many of them depend not upon reafon-Upon which account, I think that the man who turned the Latin fyntax into verfe, had more merit than all the poets of Greece, or Rome. Lilly is, therefore, preferable to Homer and Virgil. I love to fpeak extravagantly, or à la Rouffeau, fometimes.

But under this head of Calendar, give me leave to prefent you with a method H 3 I was

I was once taught by a friend, of dif tinguishing the thirty, and the thirtyone-day months, from each other, by the position of one hand, only.

THE RULE.

Thumb up, index down, middle finger up, fourth finger down, and little finger up. See the annexed figure.

EXPLANATION.

The erect digits ftand up for the thirty-one days, and the couchant lie down for the thirty; beginning with March, on the thumb, and repeating them all round, till you finish with January, on the thumb again.

The