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.