2. _The Book of Memory shall be opened_.--An awful volume! It seems almost certain that anything once known to us must for ever abide in memory, and can never be absolutely and for ever lost. Out of sight it may be, but never really out of mind. It may appear to be dead, though it only sleeps, ready to start into vigorous life when touched by some hand which can reach it in the dim mysterious recess where it lies concealed. It is thus, before returning, after a long absence, to the home of our early life, we are unable to discover any page in the volume of our memory inscribed with more than a few incidents which filled up those early years of gladness. Every page seems a blank, or its records, if not obliterated, can hardly be traced. But when we _do_ return, what a magic influence is exercised by every tree, rock, and stream, and by the old home itself with which these were once inseparably associated! The history of days and years now glow with the vividness of first impressions, where, until now, all was so indistinct and illegible. Old familiar voices ring in our ears, beloved faces of the old dead gaze upon us as of yore, and their forms flit before our moist eyes. But were not these things all the while in our memory, although unnoticed by us until called forth by fitting circumstances? And have we not seen evidence of the same mysterious life of the past within us, when in extreme old age a second childhood awakens all the incidents of the first; when memory, like a flash of lightning, irradiates the sky, otherwise dark and wintry, revealing the scenes of early days, which were before quite forgotten? More wonderful still--it is certain that things once known, which in health were as lost to memory as if they had never been, are suddenly recalled, and appear in all their former life and freshness, when fever touches the brain with her delirious hand. The sick man, in his ravings, speaks perhaps a language known only in his infancy, and recalls incidents belonging to a period which was a total blank in his recollections during days of robust health. And what does all this prove but the momentous truth, that anything which once was done,--anything which we have ever thought, uttered, or known, or was ever inscribed in the book of memory,--remains there engraven in characters more permanent than those which, cut deep in the hoary monuments of Egypt, have outlived teeming centuries of human history? Darkness may cover the page, but by a vivid and mysterious flash every letter is illuminated. That flash may be only some trifle, such as a note of music--the tone of some voice-- "The subtle smell which spring unbends, Dread pause abrupt of midnight winds,-- An echo or a dream!"