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trivial questions too they could answer in writing, because the same questions had been repeatedly made; but they were far from being able to compose, or to express their ideas on the most common subjects: they were somewhat in the situation of a schoolboy, whose knowledge of Latin is confined to the Vocabulary, or of a Chinese youth, who may have consumed several years of his life in learning to write down a great variety of characters, which are the words of their language, for each of which he can give a name without being able to affix the most distant idea to any one of them. "Do not flatter yourself, my friend, says the Abbe de l'Epee in a letter to the Abbe Sicard, do not flatter yourself, that your scholars will ever be able to express themselves properly in writing: if they can learn to translate our written language into their language of signs, they will have attained what we do, with respect to foreign languages, when we learn to translate them into our own without being in any degree capable of expressing ourselves or composing in the original. It is enough if you can dictate a sentence to them by signs, and let them have signs, if you please, that may represent phrases, but nothing more will you ever attain to."-It would appear from this that the satisfaction of the numerous spectators, who at different times attended the Abbe de l'Epee's exhibitions, was in great measure founded upon delusion, the good man was himself deluded by his benevolent enthusiasm; he had done wonders in bringing up his、 scholars to all that he supposed possible, but they were as far from understanding what they wrote, as the automaton who plays at chess is from knowing the nature of the game. *The consequence of this delu

* There have been instances of persons who have been deaf from their birth and consequently dumb, and after they have arrived to adult or middle age, have been able to hear and speak: and though before this they attended public worship with others, and appeared very devout, and often made those signs which those, with whom they conversed in this way, thought were expressions of their belief of the being of God and of their piety, yet when they came to hear and speak, they declared, that they never had a thought that there was a God, until they could hear, and were by that means informed; and there never has been an instance known of any such person declaring, that he bad any belief or thought of the existence of a God, before he could hear and speak. Dr. Willot, in his sermon on the light of nature, relates a story of a man in France who was deaf and dumb, yet was very knowing, active and faithful in the common affairs of life: and, upon solemn trial before the Bishop, by the help of those who could converse with him, was judged to be a very knowing and devout Christian, and admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which he attended for many years with all the signs of high devotion, such as elevation of hands, eyes, &c. At length a chirurgical operation was performed upon his ears, on which he became capable of

sion was a severe disappointment to such parents as had sent their children to the Abbe de l'Epee and had learned wonders of the public exhibitions: a simple yes or no was all they could obtain on paper in answer to any question, and though the memory and handwriting had been formed and cultivated, it was found that their reasoning faculties were still extremely confined, and their powers of expression very limited: I, said the Abbe de l'Epee, have provided glass, addressing himself to the Abbe Sicard, and you may have the glory of converting it into spectacles and telescopes. This, if we may adopt the metaphor, is precisely what the Abbe Sicard has done; he has gone from the point at which his predecessor stopped, and has invented and explained a method of rendering the faculties of the sourd-muets, which had been awakened only, equal to the acquisition of every kind of knowledge. A more arduous, a more benevolent, a more successful attempt was never made for the good of an unfortunate portion of mankind, and in order that his method might become more generally useful, he has taken pains to explain it. Any person may become acquainted with it by looking over the Abbe's grammar, and he may convince himself of the success it has been attended with, by going to the house of the institution, either on public days or in private. A great variety of signs form the primitive medium of instruction, and when one considers, that being drawn from nature they would, with a little practice be equally intelligible to people of all nations; they might be made perhaps to realise the dream of a universal language, which has amused the imagination of some ingenious philosophers: nor would such a language want force, for in addition to what is called talking on the fingers, there is an infinite variety of gests, and there is the expression of the countenance. I am just as well satisfied, I confess, and it is right I should be, at my time of life, to continue the use of words in my intercourse with mankind, but I am convinced that there is an eloquence of looks, which is in many respects superior to every other: "Drink to me only with their eyes," is a very pretty expression of Ben. Jonson's, and Milton paints grace, innocence and love, not in the words, but in the steps and gestures of our first mother. Nothing which can be said of the Abbe Sicard's ingenuity and zeal will appear exaggerated to those who will for a moment consider the difficulties he had to encounter, the end he had in view, and the success which has crowned his efforts. It was singularly fortunate that so useful a life should have been preserved at a period which

hearing, and a little while after, could both speak and read. He then declared, that while he was deaf he had no idea of a God, or maker of the world, or of a future state, and that all he had then done, in matter of religion, was purely in imitation of others.

was so fatal to many pious and worthy individuals. He had been imprisoned with other priests in the year 1793; his pupils immediately applied to the humanity of the legislative assembly in favour of him to whom they owed their moral existence. A fruitless recommendation, however, to the executive council, was the only result of this affecting application, and the Abbe Sicard would have shared the fate of his brethren on the 2d of September, had it not been for the courage and sensibility of a man whose name deserves to be known in every part of the world: a watchmaker, of the mame of Monnot, forcing his way through the crowd of murderers, embraced the intended victim of their savage fury and implored the mercy of all present for the Abbe Sicard, for the father of the deaf and dumb, for the friend of those, whom Providence had deserted. There is an eloquence which has nothing to do with art, and which nothing can resist; the wretches who affected to officiate as judges upon this horrible occasion, seemed to relent, and the mob without, who were almost as ready to spare as to murder, expressed their approbation with loud applauses, and with every mark of respect, made room for the prisoner and his preserver. Those who would appreciate the Abbe's services, should consider how different the Sourd-muet is from other children. The cares and caresses of a mother are, in great measure, lost upon him, nor can he take any part in those early sports of childhood, which exercise the body and form the mind: with a degree of instinct inferior to that of many brutes, without the means of communication with his fellow creatures, without a form under which he can class his ideas, or signs of recollection by which he may recall them, the impressions made upon his mind must be fugitive and transitory: he is a single, a solitary being, who may be deterred from an improper act by violence and punishment, but who cannot possibly otherwise form the slightest conception of what is right: he beholds the objects which surround him, but without any comprehension of their nature and qualities, further than as they affect the sensations of the moment; he is selfish, impetuous, and greedy of enjoyment, and can be under no restraint from sentiments of morality, for to him morality exists not: such is the deplorable situation from which the human mind is to be liberated, before man can be taught to fill even the most inferior offices of society, and we may easily conceive how the difficulty increases, when he is to be made to understand the various connexions which unite men to one another, and the sacredness of property, and the rights which God and nature have given him, and the duties which he is called upon to fulfil: we have no idea perhaps from our having been always in the use of our eyes and ears, how much of our education is acquired without any particular tuition; how much our minds and manners are formed from our intercourse with the world by means of the involuntary use of these

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senses, and from the earliest period of our lives; the progress is so gradual as to be insensible to ourselves, and if at the age of fourteen a young person in the full, though as yet unexercised, possession of his faculties, was to set about learning all which was necessary in order to place himself on a footing of equality with others of his age, the labour would seem immense. But how great must the labour be, and how are we to qualify those exertions, which can convert the deaf and dumb human animal of fourteen into an enlightened, well informed man, a man of letters perfectly well acquainted with his moral duties and filling a useful station in society! Surely if Elviou, drawing money from every passing Parisian by the charms of his voice, could be compared to Amphion, you will see no exaggeration in my likening the Abbe Sicard to Prometheus, who stole the sacred fire from heaven, and animated a statue. The book of the Abbe's which I have alluded to and from which I have been able to receive some knowledge of his system and mode of proceeding, would be useful in any plan of education whatsoever. To give you a correct idea of it would probably exceed my power of analysing, nor wouid the extract be much shorter than the book itself, but the outlines may be rapidly traced and easily comprehended: Several objects, which we are all accustomed to the use of, are placed upon a table, and these the Sourd-muct is made to compare to a drawing taken of each; he is soon able to point out the resemblance and learns either to fetch the object on seing the representation, or to attempt a resemblance of it in drawing on seeing the object: he also connects with each a certain sign or gest; these this teacher adopts, and as the number of objects is increased, his means of expression are also rapidly enlarged; he is now in possession of a sort of language, and he finds himself no longer a solitary being among men; the next step is to write the name over or along the representations of an object, and then, effacing this last, to leave only the name: he now discovers that this new mode of drawing, in which there is indeed no external resemblance, is yet invariably made use of to convey the idea of certain articles, that a passing stranger would give him the article on being shown the word (as he soon learns that this new mode of drawing is called) or write the word on being shown the article, and after some difficulty he adopts it as being more correct and expeditious, and more generally understood; care is taken to show him, that the constituent parts of every word, are from a collection of twenty-four forms called letters, which mean nothing separately, but which always express the same thing upon their being put together in a certain manner. Such is the commencement which the Abbe Sicard recommends, from having employed it with the utmost success in the case of Massieu, whom in a state of total deafness, he took from minding sheep, at the age of fourteen, and who now at the age of thirty-five is well acquainted with the

belles lettres of his own and of the English language, reads the Latin and Greek authors, and is, I am told a skillful mathematician. Having learned to read and write the names of a great variety of objects, Massieu easily learned to class them, and as he walked out a great deal into the fields, and was carried to various manufactories and workshops of different artists, his vocabulary was very rapidly increasing; he now knew a number not only of simple, but of compound appellations, and these he could write down if required; but he was soon more desirous of acquiring knowledge than of showing it, his mind already began to analyse, and his time was already become valuable: the elements of grammar kept pace with his other acquirements, and while he learned to distinguish that which merely is, from that which lives, and the quality from the substance, he also learned the value of the various parts of speech, and the government of verbs and the use of pronouns, by means of applications made to his sense of sight. He was next to take a most important step-he was to be made to comprehend that he had faculties which he had already exercised indeed, but without attending to their nature, and far superior to those of the body by which they are called into action; that upon discontinuing the use of his eyes for a moment, he could still see internally, that we could, in other words, consider; that an idea springing up in the mind at the sight of an object, leads to the memory of other objects not then visible, and to an internal action, which he learned to call reflection; and that a simple inclination becomes, by a mental operation, desire, and then passion he easily comprehended that the effect of light upon the visual nerves, as of bodies upon the touch, might have a mechanical operation upon the brain or seat of sensation, but the intellectual consequences that arise from this operation, the powers of calling these up at pleasure, and passing them in review, must, as he was made to understand, arise from some cause within us, which had, as he felt, no material existence. Causes and effects he had always seen connected; this great, this wonderful effect then, this immaterial power must spring from some great, some wonderful, some immaterial cause, and that could be no other than GOD. We may conceive the good man's delight at being able to convey such instructions to the minds of his pupils, to open to them this prospect of another state of existence, and to afford them another powerful incentive to the practice of virtue. The subsequent questions that naturally follow a belief in the existence of God are also treated of and explained; but for these I must refer you to the book itself. I am persuaded that the method pursued by the Abbe Sicard with the deaf and dumb, would be a good one to adopt towards children in the full enjoyment of their faculties, for they never learn any thing so well, as when they seem to find out and to invent that by themselves which we are desirous they should be made

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