very limited sphere, owing to the poverty of his knowledge, but still knowledge, deduced from observation, limited also by the want of a conventional mode of expressing it. The existence of the reasoning power being thus evident, the means to cultivate it would be the next object for philosophic investigation. That Aristotle had never made these observations and investigations is evident, or he would not have come to that absolute conclusion which excludes the deaf from all participation in knowledge. Among other people of ancient times these unfortunate beings were the objects of a species of proscription, being supposed to labour under the curse of heaven. Previous to the time of Justinian the Roman laws maintain an absolute silence upon the deaf and dumb. They speak frequently of deaf persons, not being dumb; and also of dumb persons not being deaf; but never of those labouring under both these deprivations. The Code (lib. vi. tit. xxii. 1. 10) mentions the deaf and dumb in a manner express and special. Five classes of persons labouring under one or both of these deprivations are established. Those who from their birth were deaf and dumb were legally incapable of making a will, or of manumitting a slave, and laboured under other civil disabilities.

The reader will find in the work of C. Guyot, of Groningen, which is a dissertation written in Latin on the legislation relative to the deaf and dumb down to 1824, all that relates to this part of the subject, with a list of authors. Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, declares that the deaf and dumb are shut out from obtaining religious knowledge, remarking "that deafness from birth makes faith impossible, since he who is born deaf can neither hear the word nor learn to read it;" and many respectable ecclesiastics in the time of the Abbé de l'Epée openly condemned his undertaking. The benevolent abbé also informs us that parents considered it a discredit to have deaf and dumb children, and they believed that they fulfilled every claim such offspring could have on them by merely supplying their animal wants, concealing them from the eyes of the world within the walls of a cloister, or in some other obscure abode. He also asserts that in some uncivilised countries the deaf and dumb were in his time regarded as monsters, and were put to death as soon as their calamity was ascertained. So that we find naturalists, legislators, divines, philosophers, and even parents, agreeing in the impracticability of conveying knowledge otherwise than by speech, and thereby excluding the deaf and dumb from all means of intellectual improvement.

From the advantages which instruction has afforded to a certain proportion of the deaf and dumb for more than half a century, a tolerably correct estimate may be formed of their capabilities for improvement. The deaf-mute living in society, but without instruction, must be regarded as one of the most solitary and melancholy of beings. He is shut out from all but the most imperfect intercourse with his species; and the very intellect by the possession of which he is raised above the lower creation serves only to heighten his calamity, and to render the sense of his deprivation more acute. His perceptions of external objects are indeed accurate but superficial, and confined to a very small sphere. Of the various arts by which the necessaries and conveniences of civilised life are produced, he can have no knowledge beyond that which is included in the range of his own vision. Animal desires he feels, and he is led by the conventional usages of society to the performance of moral duties and the avoidance of open and flagrant crime. Thus he becomes experienced, as other human beings are, in what is right or wrong. He sees that virtuous actions have a certain amount of reward, in the opinions of good men; for he learns to discriminate between those whose actions are proper and those who do wrong; and again, he sees that in many cases vice meets with disapprobation and punishment among mankind. How this kind of experience shall affect his own conduct must depend not only on the circumstances in which he is placed, as to example and the moral influence of those with whom he has to associate, but also on his own natural tendencies.

are generally inferior in their moral and intellectual powers to those who do not labour under the same defect. But this inferiority is only one of degree, and may be satisfactorily accounted for, in accordance with the opinions above expressed. Andral has described the state of an uneducated deaf and dumb person, and to a certain extent we can adopt his sentiments. Experience and observation among this class of persons would have induced this accomplished pathologist to have bestowed on them even a more liberal endowment. "The deaf-mute exhibits in his intellect, in his character, and in the development of his passions, certain modifications which depend on his state of isolation in the midst of society. We find him remain habitually in a sort of half-childishness, and he has great credulity; to balance this he is like the savage, exempt from many of the prejudices which we owe to our social education. In him the tender sentiments are not very deep; he appears not to be susceptible either of lasting attachments or of lively gratitude; pity touches him but feebly; he is an entire stranger to emulation; he has few enjoyments and few desires; and the impressions of sadness but slightly affect him. This is what is most commonly observed in deaf mutes; but this picture is not universally applicable. Some, more happily endowed, are remarkable for the great development of their intellectual and moral nature; there are others, on the contrary, who continue in a state of complete idiocy." (Dictionnaire de Médecine,' article 'Surdi-Mutité.') This last remark of Andral's requires some qualification. Deaf and dumb persons who possess intellectual faculties are no more liable to become idiots than others whose organs perform their appointed functions. Their powers may remain undeveloped; they may be ignorant of everything which depends on intercourse with mankind; their reasoning may be inconclusive, and their inferences erroneous from their confined observations; but still their mental powers will be called into action, and they will be, to a great extent, under the control of their reasoning faculties. This is not the case with idiots: in them there is a deficiency, more or less, of self-government, and of intellectual control. There are, at the same time, numerous cases of idiots who are dumb; not, however, in consequence of deafness, but from their incapacity to understand the meaning of language, to imitate it, and to apply it. These persons cannot be classed with the deaf and dumb. It may be this class to which Andral particularly alludes in the latter part of our quotation; for he qualifies his remark in some measure by adding, " The difference in the intellectual and moral nature of man is often primitive, and independent of all external influences." Of the same opinion with ourselves we find Degérando, Bébian (the successor of Sicard), Piroux of Nancy, and all the more successful teachers of the deaf and dumb of the present day, in this country and throughout Europe and America. Passing over the miracles of our Saviour-when the deaf were made to hear and the dumb to speak, by immediate inspiration-we learn from the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History,' quoted by the Abbé Carton in his Annual of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind,' published at Bruges in 1840, that a deaf man was taught to pronounce words and sentences by John, Bishop of Hagulstad (Hexham), afterwards known as John of Beverley (BIOG. DIv.), in the year 685. This, and other works of healing, were attributed by the simple-minded Anglo-Saxons to some miraculous power conferred upon the good and sensible bishop for his holy life; but enough is recorded to show that the process was the gradual one afterwards pursued by most of the early professors of the art of teaching speech to the deaf and dumb, and even now followed in some of our institutions. The bishop made the sign of the cross on the mute's tongue, which ceremony is now dispensed with, and then pronounced the Anglo-Saxon word gea, yea, upon which his tongue was loosed, and he uttered the sound, or a sufficient approach to it to induce the clever bishop to pronounce letters, syllables, words, and afterwards sentences, which the deaf man imitated, a slow but certain process towards success.

The next mention we meet with of the capacity of those born deaf to receive instruction, is in the writings of Rodolphus Agricola (born in 1442) of Groningen. He does not inform us who was the parent of the art; but he mentions in his posthumous work, 'De Inventione Dialectica,' that he had himself witnessed a person deaf from infancy, and consequently dumb, who had learned to understand writing, and, as if possessed of speech, was able to note down his whole thoughts. The truth of this relation was doubted by Louis Vives, of Valentia, who wrote in the beginning of the 16th century; but there is as good reason to put trust in Agricola's account as to join in Vives's disbelief. (See the treatise, 'De Anima,' of Vives, L. ii. c. De Discendi Ratione.') Not long after the death of Agricola, and during the life of Vives, the theoretical principles on which the art rests were discovered and promulgated by the learned Jerome Cardan, of the University of Pavia, his native place. He was born in 1501, and died in 1576. Cardan thus expresses himself: "Writing is associated with speech, and speech with thought; but written characters and ideas may be connected together without the intervention of sounds, as in hieroglyphic characters." (See Journal of Education,' No. VI. p. 204.) The most noted early practitioner of the art of instructing the deaf was Pedro de Ponce; this fact is authenticated by two of his contemporaries, Franciscus Vallesius and Ambrosius Morales. Ponce was a monk of the order of St. Benedict, at Oña. Morales, in his Antiquities of Spain,' thus speaks of Ponce: "He has already instructed two brothers and a At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the deaf and dunb sister of the constable, and he is now occupied in instructing the son

The performance of moral duties implies the exercise of intellectual faculties; and from his birth the deaf-mute makes use of his reasoning powers. He is subject to changes of purpose, to changes of feeling, to the passions, the pleasures, and the infirmities common to his species; he is sensible of kindness, and he gives proofs of affection. That such is the state of the deaf and dumb when uneducated might be proved by the observations of their parents, friends, and instructors, in hundreds of instances. That such must necessarily be the case, supposing them not to be idiots, it would be easy to show. We affirm, in contradiction to those who contend that deaf-mutes are naturally more debased than other men in intellect and in morals, that there is not an individual deaf-mute now under instruction-improving, and thereby evincing rational faculties-who, previous to instruction, however disadvantageous the circumstances which attended his earlier years, did not evince moral sentiments and intellectual operations. We have traced the history of many of this class in different ranks of society, from the period when the deprivation under which they have laboured was first ascertained to the time when their direct education has commenced; and we have found invariably that mixture of good and evil in their actions and tendencies which is seen amongst other children. We have also had sufficient proofs of the exercise of intellect even while they were in a state of childhood.

were.

of the governor of Aragon, deaf and dumb from his birth, as the others What is most surprising in his art is, that his pupils speak, write, and reason very well. I have from one of them, Don Pedro de Velasco, brother of the constable, a written paper, in which he tells me that it is Father Ponce to whom he is indebted for his knowledge of speech."

The register of deaths of the monastery of the Benedictines of San Salvador de Oña, informs us of the death of Pedro de Ponce, in August, 1584; it records of him that he "was distinguished by his eminent virtues, and that he obtained a just celebrity throughout the world in instructing deaf-mutes to speak." John Paul Bonet, also a Spaniard, published a work on this subject nearly forty years after the death of Ponce. He had probably heard of the success which had been attained in this infant art; and from tradition he might have gained some glimpses into the methods Ponce had pursued; but it appears that he was unacquainted with those methods in any serviceable form, as he represents himself as the inventor of the modes which he pursued, including mimic signs, writing, dactylology, and the oral alphabet. His work, which was in after-years useful to De l'Epée, is entitled 'Reduccion de las Lettras, y Arte para enseñar á hablar los Mudos.' [BONET, BIOG. Div.] During the time of Bonet, the art was also making some progress in Italy. Several individuals are mentioned in Degérando's work who were more or less engaged upon the subject. Aflinate wrote at the commencement of the 17th century on a manner of teaching the deaf to speak; and Fabricius of Acquapendente wrote upon the phenomena of vision, voice, and hearing; and on speech and its instruments. In 1616, Jean Bonifacio published a treatise on the language of action. Pierre de Castro, who was chief physician to the duke of Mantua, instructed the son of Prince Thomas of Savoy, but it is not known on what principles. Pierre de Castro died in 1663. About 1670, Father Lana-Terzi, a Jesuit of Brescia, who is described as "an ardent investigator of nature," employed himself on the subject of giving language to the deaf, and teaching the blind to read and write; his work on natural history, published in 1670, contains some philosophical remarks on the mechanism of speech, so it is concluded he taught on the articulation system.

We will now trace the earlier progress of the art in Holland. Peter Montans offered some remarks on the instruction of the deaf so early as 1635. F. M. Van Helmont published in 1667 a small tract entitled Alphabetum Naturæ,' in which he shows how the deaf may be made to understand the motions of the organs of speech, much after the manner of others who are taught to read. His book is remarkable for some whimsical opinions on the nature and origin of language; and he mentions instances of the result of his system, too improbable to be received even by the most credulous. In 1690, John Conrad Amman, a Swiss physician, residing at Haarlem, undertook the instruction of a girl, deaf and dumb from birth. He seems not to have been aware how much had been accomplished in this art; his own success was decisive; and while his work was in the press, he became acquainted with the writings of Wallis, and entered into correspondence with him. His essay, entitled 'Surdus Loquens,' the speaking deaf man, was published in Latin. His methods were founded on articulation. Amman requires that his pupil's organs of speech shall be rightly formed; then, he says, "my first care is to make him to sound forth a voice, without which almost all labour is lost; but that one point, whereby deaf persons do discern a voice from a mute breath, is a great mystery of art, and, if I may have leave to say so, it is the hearing of deaf persons, or at least equivalent thereto; viz., that trembling motion and titillation which they perceive in their own throat whilst they, of their own accord, do give forth a voice. That the deaf may know that I open my mouth to emit a voice, not simply to yawn, or to draw forth a mute breath, I put their hand to my throat, that they may be made sensible of that tremulous motion when I utter my voice; then I put the same hand of theirs to their own throat, and command them to imitate me; nor am I discouraged if, at the beginning, their voice is hard and difficult, for in time it becomes more and more polite."

Amman goes on to explain how he communicates the pronunciation of letters singly and combined, in a way sufficiently plain for any intelligent person to follow his plan. He concludes by saying, "If there occurs to anybody anything either too hard or not sufficiently explained, he may expect a more full edition; or else let him repair to the author, who, according to the lights granted to him, will refuse nothing to any man."

At the commencement of the 18th century the art began to attract the notice of the learned of Germany. Very early in the 18th century Kerger commenced the work of instruction at Liegnitz, in Silesia. His sister was associated with him in his labour. He used drawing, pantomime, articulation, and writing; it is uncertain whether he employed dactylology, but he speaks highly of mimic language. Contemporary with Kerger was George Raphel, pastor and superintendent of the church of St. Nicholas at Lüneburg, who had six children, and among them three daughters who were deaf and dumb. Paternal affection made him an instructor of the deaf; he succeeded beyond his hopes, and wrote an account of his proceedings for the benefit of others. His work was published at Lüneburg in 1718. Other teachers in Germany were Otho Benjamin Lasius, the Pastor Arnoldi, and Samuel Heinicke. Lasius confined himself almost solely to the teaching of visible language, as reading and writing, associating the forms of the words with the ideas they were intended to convey. It is said that his pupil made a satisfactory progress, and that at the end of two years she could answer important questions on religious subjects. Arnoldi used the means more commonly employed,-articulation, drawing, dactylology, writing, and natural signs. Heinicke was the instructor at Leipzig of an institution founded by the elector of Saxony in 1772; it was the first established by any civil government. He had announced previously to this time that in the course of six weeks he had taught a deaf and dumb person to answer whatever questions were proposed to him. He used those means which had been employed by previous instructors, and he also placed instruments in the mouths of his pupils to regulate the positions of the vocal organs in emitting sounds. He claimed the honour of invention on many

Many first discoveries were probably made of this art several of them originated with, or were carried forwards by, philologists, and particularly among the schemers for a universal language. In England, John Bulwer's name must stand prior to that of any other individual as an author on the subject, and his views, as given in Philocophus,' are sound and practical. It has often been attempted to place Dr. Wallis at the head of this list of discoverers in England; but Bulwer's Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man's Friend,' was published in 1648,-several years before Wallis commenced even his treatise on speech, and he did not publish his claims as an instructor of the deaf till 1670. We find on consulting the above-named work of Bulwer's, that chap. xv. contains the relation of Sir Kenelm Digby as to what Bonet had accomplished in Spain; and there is no doubt but Wallis obtained information from the same source, as he was in constant correspondence with Sir K. Digby. [Bulwer, Biog. Div.] A degree of credit is certainly due to Dr. Wallis for the pains he took to systematise what had been done up to this period, and to bring the philosophy of language to bear upon the art. His two great objects, as stated in a letter to Mr. Boyle, were "to teach a person, who cannot hear, to pronounce the sound of words," and to teach him "to understand a language, and know the signification of those words, whether spoken | or written, whereby he may both express his own sense and understand the thoughts of others." Writing, reading on the lips, and speech, the manual alphabet, logical induction, the natural signs-acquired from the deaf-were the means he made use of. From the accounts which have come to us, he succeeded in his purpose. His pupil, Daniel Whalley, was exhibited before the Royal Society in the year 1662. The priority of his invention was disputed by Dr. William Holder, rector of Bletchington, who asserted that he had, in the first instance, taught Popham, one of Dr. Wallis's pupils, to speak. Holder pub-points, and guarded with strict secresy some of his proceedings. He lished his Elements of Speech, with an Appendix, concerning Persons Deaf and Dumb,' in 1669, which was some years after Wallis's first writings and practice had been made known.

In the same year in which Wallis published his inventions for the deaf, 1670, George Sibscota issued a little work on the subject, entitled the Deaf and Dumb Man's Discourse.' He had learned from the writings of Franciscus Vallesius to what extent Ponce had succeeded. Very little can be gleaned from this work, which consists chiefly of reasoning and theory.

The next author on the subject whose work we shall notice is George Dalgarno. His treatise, though full of the conceits of learning, is essentially practical, and even at the present day it might serve as a guide to an intelligent person who desired to become an instructor of the deaf. The date of this little work is 1680. [DALGARNO, BIOG. DIV.] Dalgarno announces on the title-page of Didascalocophus,' that his treatise is the first (for aught he knows) that has been written on the subject. He commences by showing that a deaf man is as capable of understanding and expressing a language as a blind man, inasmuch as that all information is conveyed to the mind through the bodily organs. He goes too far, however, in attempting to show that the deaf man has even superior advantages in acquiring languages to those of the blind. Dalgarno's alphabet is exhibited in the article DACTYLOLOGY.

ARTS. AND SCI. DIV. VOL. IIL

had adopted the philosophic system of Kant, and published some writings relating to it. He is said to have been a man of considerable talent in the instruction of the deaf and dumb, and of an active and indefatigable spirit. In his controversy with the Abbé de l'Epée he certainly gained little credit, either as a teacher of the deaf or as a philosopher. He was the great promoter of the vocal system of teaching the deaf and dumb which is still retained in most of the German schools. Heinicke's grave mistake was, that articulate words were the only medium by which thought could manifest itself; that the written word is only the representative of articulate sound; that a deaf mute can never become anything more than a writing machine without an acquaintance with spoken language.

France commenced this art later than the other enlightened nations of Europe. Indeed she opposed its progress by those philosophic prejudices which in other countries had been refuted by actual experience. A deaf-mute from birth, named Guibal, had made his will in writing so early as 1679, and proofs of his knowledge and intelligence were produced in court, so that it was confirmed. It is unknown who had been his instructor. About the middle of the 17th century several individuals in different parts of France turned their attention to the subject. Those of whom we know most are Father Vanin, a priest of the Christian doctrine; Rodrigue Péreire, a Portuguese; Ernaud, the

EL

In the early part of De l'Epée's career he met with the work of Bonet before mentioned, and the enlarged treatise by Amman, 'Dissertatio de Loquela.' With these guides, aided by the enthusiasm which formed a part of his character, he pursued his task vigorously and with a certain amount of success; not with the success of some of his forerunners in the art, who had devoted themselves entirely and for years to individual pupils. The abbé had a large number of pupils to whom he devoted his life and patrimony. Every one who has been a teacher knows well the degree of success which he may expect if his whole mind is concentrated upon the improvement of a few individuals, and the difficulties he may anticipate if his attention is divided among a great number of pupils. The abbé appears to have made use of articulation in one part of his career, for he wrote a treatise on the mode of teaching by this auxiliary; this treatise was chiefly derived from the writings of Bonet and Amman. He employed dactylology also in a subordinate degree. Pictures he found an uncertain resource, and writing, and natural signs, were the means on which he chiefly depended for the conveyance of intellectual knowledge.

Abbé Deschamps, and the Abbé de l'Epée. Father Vanin employed design both for giving information on sensible objects, and also in an allegorical way to illustrate abstract and intellectual ideas. Very crude and erroneous notions must have resulted from a system so imperfect, and so little capable of extensive application. The first person who excited general attention in Paris was Péreire; he obtained the approbation of the Academy of Sciences, to the members of which learned body he exhibited the progress of his pupils. His processes were made a secret even to the members of his family; he however offered to disclose them for a suitable consideration, which was withheld, and the nature of his system is only imperfectly known at the present day. His pupils were highly instructed, more highly perhaps than any of an earlier or a subsequent period. A judgment may be formed of the efficacy of his methods from the report of a committee of the Academy of Sciences, where it is stated that his pupils were able to understand what was said to them, whether by signs or by writing, and that they replied viva voce, or by writing; they could read and pronounce dis-only useful in the earlier stages of instruction. Methodical signs, tinctly all sorts of French expressions; they gave very sensible replies to all questions proposed to them; they understood grammar and its applications; they knew the rules of arithmetic, and performed exercises in geography; and it appeared that M. Péreire had given them, with speech, the faculty of acquiring abstract ideas. The two best known of Pereire's numerous pupils were Saboreux de Fontenai and D'Azy d'Etavigny. The former of these two has written an account of the means pursued by his teacher, for which we must refer to the work of the Baron Degérando before mentioned. It appears that Péreire employed articulation, reading from the lips, the manual alphabet, and a method of syllabic dactylology. By this latter instrument of instruction he was enabled to communicate very rapidly with his | pupils, and by the frequent use of words in different combinations a knowledge of their value was imparted to them. Thus the frequent recurrence of words through so rapid a mode of intercourse assimilated the acquisition of language to the ordinary process with hearing and speaking persons. The channel of communication being established, and a copious knowledge of words acquired, the art of the instructor would be little more difficult than that of ordinary education. A few years after Péreire's methods had received the approbation of the Academy of Sciences, Ernaud presented to them a memoir on what he had attempted for the deaf and dumb. The society gave him encouragement, but it appears that the pupil brought under their notice was not far advanced in instruction. Ernaud's attempts were more par- I ticularly directed to measures of physical relief; he revived the sense of hearing in some cases where it had been partially lost, and he asserts that he had never met with an instance of total deafness. Articulation was the principal means he employed. In 1779 the Abbé Deschamps published his Cours Elémentaire d'Education des Sourds-Muets.' To the education of this class of persons he devoted his life and his fortune. He followed in the track of Amman, giving the preference to articulation and the alphabet upon the lips, over the methodical signs of the Abbé de l'Epée. His establishment was at Orleans, where he received paying pupils, and instructed the indigent gratuitously.

In tracing these early steps in the instruction of the deaf and dumb, we have attended more particularly to the working parts of the different methods by which such instruction was intended to be conveyed. We have passed over the various philosophic theories with which some of these methods are incumbered, because they are either forgotten, or rendered obsolete by recent discovery. Much learning was anciently wasted on subjects in themselves trivial, mysterious, or incomprehensible, yet to such researches we owe much valuable knowledge. It seems that no investigation into the laws of nature, however absurd or unattainable the immediate object of such investigation, is utterly without reward. The alchemists of olden times, though failing to discover the wonderful stone for which they sought, found out new properties, new substances, and new combinations, which cheered their labours and conferred direct benefits on society. So, with many of the writers we have noticed, their speculations, though wild, have not been in vain; the useful parts of their systems have been retained, and are now diffusing good among the class for whom they laboured.

The Abbé de l'Epée was one of the most active and benevolent labourers in this task of humanity. He brought into systematic operation the notions which had previously prevailed on the possibility of conveying intellectual knowledge to deaf-mutes, and added to these stores of experience from the resources of his own highly-gifted and well-disciplined mind. He certainly succeeded to a greater extent than any of his predecessors in enlisting the public feeling in his favour, and in drawing the attention of sovereigns to one of the most unquestionable works of charity and of mercy; yet his name has not been suffered to descend to posterity unstained by obloquy, nor undimmed by malignant censure. It appears that accident first made him acquainted with the deaf and dumb; benevolence led him to the consideration how their wants might be supplied. He remembered that his tutor had once proved to him that there is no more natural connection between metaphysical ideas and the articulated sounds that strike the ear, than between the same ideas and the written characters that strike the eye, and that his tutor drew this conclusion:--that it was as possible to instruct the deaf and dumb by writing, always accompanied by visible signs, as to teach other men by words delivered orally, along with gestures indicative of their signification.

In acquiring a second language, those who already possess one have at command a comparative grammar which informs them to a certain extent of the value of words in certain connection with others; but the deaf have no such advantage; their natural and uncultivated language-gesture-is powerless for everything but the expression of their most ordinary wants; they have no separation of their ideas into classes, such as produce the parts of speech in more perfectly formed languages. Adelung mentions the inhabitants of the countries on the Asiatic continent as having "but one sound to signify joyful, joy, to rejoice; and that through all persons, moods, and tenses. The mere radical ideas are set down together, the connecting links must be guessed at. They form plurals as children do, either by repetition, as tree, tree, or by adding the words much or other, as tree much, tree other." Mithridates, v. i. p. 18. Thus it is with the naturally deaf, the radical idea is all that their gestural language is capable of expressing until modified by those arbitrary forms of speech which are the accessories of every polished language.

In order to represent the good abbé fairly, we will take two examples of his process of teaching, from the translation of his own work, published in England in 1801. He is about to teach the present tense of the verb to carry. "Several deaf and dumb pupils being round a table, place my new scholar on my right hand. I put the forefinger of my left hand on the word I, and explain it by signs in this manner: showing myself with the forefinger of my right, I give two or three gentle taps on my breast. I then lay my left forefinger on the word carry, and taking up a large quarto volume, I carry it under my arm, on my shoulder, on my head, and on my back, walking all the while with the mien of a person bearing a load. None of these motions escape observation. I return to the table, and in order to explain the second person," &c. All this is as good as any process employed in the present day, and illustrates the application of natural signs. The next example is one in which signs of reduction are employed. M. Linguet had observed that the deaf and dumb were demi-automatons. The abbé addressed him, and a short time after Linguet visited the abbé and his pupils. "I requested him," says the Abbé de l'Epée, "to propose at his fancy, some abstract ideas to be delivered by methodical signs to the deaf and dumb. As, out of compliment, he referred the choice to me, I addressed him to this effect: Intellect, intellectual, intelligent, intelligence, intelligibility, intelligible, unintelligible, intelligibly, unintelligibly, unintelligibility: here are nine words all generated from "intellect," to be expressed by distinct methodical signs. Comprehensible, incomprehensible, comprehensibly, incomprehensibly; Conceivable, inconceivable, inconceivably; Idea, imagination, imaginable, unimaginable; Faith, credence, credible, credibly, incredible, incredulous, incredulity: here, learned sir, is a cluster of abstract ideas, which shall be left to your option. After some further little contest of politeness, he selected the word unintelligibility, doubtless conceiving it of greater difficulty than the rest. It was instantly rendered to the pupil and written down. While he was viewing it with eyes of amazement, I thus resumed, Barely to produce the word you specified, learned sir, is a mere nothing. I will now unfold to you the means taken to prompt it by methodical signs; the exposition will not detain you long. Five of these signs were fully sufficient to designate the word; and you saw with what celerity they were given. The first signifies "not an external but an internal action;" the second," of reading the mind, that is, exhibiting the disposition of apprehending the things proposed to it;" the third announces "the possibility of this disposition," whence arises the appropriate noun-adjective, intelligible; which, being a concrete quality, is converted into the abstract by a fourth sign, forming intelligibility; and a fifth sign being added for negation, unintelligibility is produced."" By this and other examples M. Linguet was convinced that his expression was inaccurate and inconsiderate; but we need not follow out the examination which the pupils underwent in his presence. We have quoted this example in order to show the mechanical nature of the signs employed. That these were well qualified for dictation of words was sufficiently proved in the abbe's experience, but the words might be produced by the pupil from the signs of the teacher, without their being understood, just as an ordinary schoolboy, unused to Latin exercises, might, from the dictation of

his teacher, produce examples without understanding a single idea which they contained.

In distinguishing gender, the abbé says, "The gender is explained by putting our hand to our hat for the masculine, and to the ear, to which a female's head-dress extends, for the feminine." In the the part English institutions the hand is placed to the beard to denote the masculine, and drawn along the forehead, in allusion to the parting of the hair, for the feminine. The following is the generally received sign for singular and plural: "The elevation of the right thumb designates the singular, the motion of several fingers the plural." The following is also good: "To express doubt, we turn our head to the right, a yes, and to the left, a no; which of the two will take place we cannot tell; we shall know only by the event." Many similar examples might be adduced: how superior are these to "twirling two fingers round each other while declining, that is, while descending from the first to the sixth," to signify the term case; or "the left hand under the right for the noun-substantive," and "the right under the left for the adjective," will be readily perceived.

DEAF AND DUMB, EDUCATION OF THE.

422

4. Of man-ages of man, relationships, school, institution, college,
merchants; the liberal arts; titles, dignities in towns, cities, and
officers, domestics and servants of a house, tradespeople, mechanics,
functionaries.
states, and their functions; terms of war; ecclesiastics, and monastic
5. Of God, angels, saints.

mament, earth, cardinal points, signs of the zodiac.
6. Of the elements; of fiery, luminous, and watery meteors; the fir-
lics, capitals, principal islands, &c.
7. Parts of the world; names of nations, empires, kingdoms, repub-

8. Numbers, measures, weights, time, money, exchanges, commerce.
maladies of the body.
9. Organic qualities of man; abstract organic qualities of man;

shapes, surfaces, extent, quantity, lines, angles.
10. Qualities of matter; such as strike the senses of man, dimensions,

11. Physical actions of man, such as are expressed by verbs.
12. Intellectual and moral actions of man, expressed by verbs, nouns,
adjectives, and adverbs.

occupies nearly the whole of the two volumes comprising the work, the These are the divisions Sicard adopted for his nomenclature, which latter portion of which is purely grammatical; in it the different parts of speech are considered, not only under a general view, but under certain divisions which indicate their value, and assimilate those which bear a relationship to each other; thus adverbs of manner, of number, of place, of quantity, of quality, of interrogation, of affirmation and negation, of time, of doubt and inquiry, and of comparison, are distinctly and separately treated of. Without questioning whether the classifi cation adopted in the twelve divisions of the Theory of Signs' be the best, we may see in such a classification the kind of gradations needful for supplying the deaf with an extensive nomenclature; and though few instructors would make the work a practical one, so far as to adopt the system of methodical signs there developed, yet, as a text-book, it unfolds a plan which any teacher may modify according to his own views. We think the work is less valued than it deserves to be, for as signs will to a certain extent be always in use among the deaf and dumb, especially in those institutions where they are educated, the theory of signs would be found of great use as a work of reference to all teachers. We need not panegyrise the Abbé Sicard; his exertions for the deaf and dumb are well known in this country, which he visited during the political troubles of France in 1815; his merits are acknowledged wherever the education of the deaf is pursued. We have sometimes been surprised that the Cours d'Instruction d'un Sourd-Muet' has not been translated into our language. Independent of its novelty and interest as connected with its more immediate design, its gradual unfolding of a great mind involved in moral and intellectual darkness, by a metaphysician of high endowments, presents some interesting psychological facts which would make it serviceable in general educajust such as an accomplished and lively teacher would desire to place mation of the value of words, and the knowledge which they serve to before his pupils, to assist in conveying to their minds a just estiimpart.

We do not regard the success of the Abbé de l'Epée as complete, but we are satisfied that he pursued his methods with openness and candour, and with the single desire of promoting the moral and intellectual advancement of the deaf and dumb. Heinicke of Leipzig, and Pére ire of Paris, must be regarded as his rivals, but he invited them to a discussion of the merits of the various systems, which they declined. While the good abbé, with that frankness which formed a beautiful feature in his character, solicited the examination and the judgment of the learned upon his methods, his rivals shrouded their proceedings under a veil of mystery. The abbé devoted his life and whole fortune, excepting a bare supply for his own wants, to the service of the class whom he had taken under his protection. Péreire refused to disclose his methods, except for a large recompense; and Heinicke, in addition to receiving payment from the rich, had four hundred crowns annually allowed him by the grand duke of Saxony. Both these persons made the art they professed an interested speculation; the Abbé de l'Epée only tolerated the rich-he was proud of being the instructor of the indigent. His successor, the Abbé Sicard, carried forward the principles of De l'Epée; he instructed his pupils in the elements of composition, a branch of their education comparatively new, and in which Sicard most completely evinced his superiority over his master. Sicard at first conducted a school at Bordeaux; on the death of the Abbé de , l'Epée, Sicard was called to fill his place at Paris. The philosophical opinions and penetrating views which Sicard maintained and practised are well developed in his Cours d'Instruction d'un Sourd-Muet,' in which is developed the plan on which he conducted the education of his celebrated pupil Massieu. He followed the leading principles of De l'Epée, particularly in employing methodical signs as one of the chief instruments of instruction; he considered well the nature of language, and by his clear and analytical methods of sensible illustration; the illustrations of language and the development of ideas are tion, he contrived to make the leading principles of grammar familiar to his pupils. In the latter years of Sicard's practice he thought more favourably of articulation, as a means of rapid communication between master and pupil, than he had done at the commencement of his career. The Baron Degérando says of his most popular work, "When we read the Cours d'Instruction d'un Sourd-Muet,' we almost fancy that we are reading a kind of philosophical romance. forms, and creates a similar interest; we find in it something of the It borrows its romance of the Arabian Theophail (Le Philosophe Autodidactique'); something which appears borrowed from the pictures of Buffon, the statue of Condillac, and the Emilius of Rousseau; it is a soul which has hitherto slumbered, which awakes; an intelligent life, which begins to develop itself, amid a variety of scenes, to the voice of the instructor; it is a kind of savage, strange to our customs, who is initiated into our ideas, our knowledge, and at the same time into our language. The Abbé Sicard enlarges upon each of these progressive stages, and spreads over them the charm of a drama; he paints with warmth the uncertainties and the joys of the master and the pupil; and he succeeds in thus showing, in an animated picture, definitions and processes which appear the most barren in their nature; he gives a shape to the most abstract notions; it might be said that the Abbé Sicard is the painter of syntax and the poet of grammar. through several editions, and we need not be surprised at it, for it is This work went not to the deaf and dumb alone that it may be profitable." Of the Theorie des Signes,' a work founded on the principles of the Abbé de l'Epée, we can only give a faint sketch. dictionary, in which the expressions of the face, and the attitudes of It is a kind of the body, for the communication of certain ideas, are described. The arrangement is not the ordinary alphabetical form of a dictionary, but a kind of logical order "more conformable to the nature of things, and the growth and expansion of ideas." The work is divided into twelve classes of things, adopting in cach class an alphabetical order corresponding to the French language. These classes are arranged as follows:

1. Signs of names of the most common objects, and such as come under observation during infantile years; these are the parts of the body, clothing, food, beverages, a town and its parts.

2. Vegetables, comprising forest-trees, shrubs, fruit-trees, culinary vegetables, medicinal herbs, wild plants, &c.

3. Minerals-gold, silver, copper, brass, lead, tin, iron, &c.

garno, the art slumbered for many years. It was revived by Henry In England, after the time of Bulwer, Wallis, Sibscota, and Dalpersons to speak, and of whom it is recorded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, Baker, the naturalist and microscopical observer, who taught dumb that he once however kept the plan he followed secret. gave him hopes of seeing his method published;" he families in the land are among those of his scholars. [BAKER, HENRY, we know nothing, but it is said that the names of some of the first Of the extent of his success BIOG. DIV.] academy at Edinburgh, where he taught the dumb to speak, and cured impediments in the speech. He professedly pursued the plan of About the year 1760, Thomas Braidwood had an Dr. Wallis, as developed in the Philosophical Transactions.' Articulation was therefore the chief instrument of instruction, and the principal medium of communication between the pupil and teacher. In 1783 Braidwood removed his school to Hackney, where he enjoyed for many years a deserved reputation for his successful application of the discoveries of his predecessors. [BRAIDWOOD, BIOG. DIV.] ciples which he brought to much greater perfection than his prede Under him the late Dr. Watson became acquainted with those prinDumb,' and which he practised during his long superintendence of the cessor, and developed in his work on the Instruction of the Deaf and Braidwood what Sicard was to De l'Epée; the disciples in each instance Asylum in Kent Road, London. Indeed Dr. Watson was to Mr. gave solidity and permanence to the systems of their respective masters.

The teachers of the deaf and dumb of the present day are divided, reading on the lips, their main auxiliaries of instruction, but who geneas formerly, into two classes, namely, those who make articulation, and rally use dactylology and pictures also; and those who depend more pictures, and dactylology. In only one school in England, that of upon natural or imitative signs, and who also employ writing, London, is articulation systematically followed; in all the provincial few it occupies a very subordinate place. In teaching the deaf and schools it is discarded as a main instrument of instruction, though in a dumb, the first object in view is to impart to him the language of his country; the second is grounded on this-to fill his mind with