THE Poem begins with the description of an obscure village, and of
the pleasing melancholy which it excites on being revisited after a
long absence. This mixed sensation is an effect of the Memory. From
an effect we naturally ascend to the cause; and the subject proposed
is then unfolded with an investigation of the nature and leading
principles of this faculty.

It is evident that our ideas flow in continual succession, and
introduce each other with a certain degree of regularity.

They are sometimes excited by sensible objects, and sometimes by an
internal operation of the mind. Of the former species is most
probably the memory of brutes; and its many sources of pleasure to
them, as well as to us, are considered in the first part. The latter
is the most perfect degree of memory, and forms the subject of the
second.

When ideas have any relation whatever, they are attractive of each
other in the mind; and the perception of any object naturally leads
to the idea of another, which was connected with it either in time
or place, or which can be compared or contrasted with it. Hence
arises our attachment to inanimate objects; hence also, in some
degree, the love of our country, and the emotion with which we
contemplate the celebrated scenes of antiquity. Hence a picture
directs our thoughts to the original: and, as cold and darkness
suggest forcibly the ideas of heat and light, he, who feels the
infirmities of age, dwells most on whatever reminds him of the vigour
and vivacity of his youth.

The associating principle, as here employed, is no less conducive to