Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/198

 that the things seen so long ago exist still, by their perfect images, in his mind.

Now in this case, and facts of the same sort meet us in a hundred different forms, we have not only, as in those just before noted, the recognition of an object, as one that has been seen before, when again it presents itself to the eye; nor the recognition of it as rudely pictured, nor the spontaneous recurrence of the image to the fancy; but there is the recovery of the image, in all its variety of adjuncts, as connected with WORDS. Moreover, this connexion, so early established between images stored by the conceptive faculty, and certain words or sentences, is not of so confined a sort as that it is only a particular series of sounds that has become associated with the train of images; but it is language abstractedly that has so linked itself with images, and with the separate qualities and incidental aspects of objects. That this is the fact is easily proved, either by our describing recollected objects in a variety of phrases, and which will be severally recognized; or, in a still more striking manner, by our employing known epithets to describe objects that have never been actually seen. And yet in this latter case we may easily convince ourselves, that a real and vivid idea has been called up in the child's mind, as thusDid you ever see a crocodile? No. But you have seen a print of one:well; what sort of animal is it? It is so and so... That will do: now I will describe to you another sort of animal: think then of a creature somewhat like a crocodile, yet so large that, if it were on the lawn, it would reach from one of the gates to the other: and think of it covered with scales, yellow, green, and crimson, sparkling in the sun; and having broad wings, so that it could flutter about like a bat; and with a long tail, crackling and rattling, as it flies, like the post-boy's whip: and think of its eyes glaring in the twilight, like the lamps of the coach which you saw coming along the road last