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England and Wales (as shown in table C) to have been one deaf person in 1972, we find the average was considerably exceeded in the counties of Worcester, Cornwall, Derby, Sussex, Hereford, Devon-then, in a somewhat less degree in Bucks, Westmoreland, Northumberland, Somerset, Gloucester; with a still further reduction in Salop, Suffolk, South Wales, Norfolk, Hertford, Dorset, west riding of York, Lincoln, Rutland, and Oxford. After this, the proportions are considerably below the average in Huntingdon, Leicester, Durham, Surrey (extra-metropolitan), Hants, Middlesex (extra-metropolitan), north riding of York, Berks, and Notts. How are these differences to be explained? Is this affliction inevitable? Or is it in any degree preventable? The fact that in 1871 there were fewer deaf-mutes in the united kingdom by more than a thousand (1074, actually) than there were ten years before, though the general population had increased more than two millions and a half in the same time, is very significant. If we may regard it as the consequence of direct sanitary improvements, general attention to the laws of health, a more skillful treatment of the diseases which result in deafness, and the avoidance of consanguineous and other undesirable marriages, we have certainly gained a great blessing, and made a grand discovery for posterity to profit by. Guided by the light thus given, we may hope to see the number of this afflicted class brought down to the point at which it may be considered due to causes which are beyond man's control, subject alone to the will of the All-wise, who revealed himself in the earliest ages of the world as the maker of man's mouth, of the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind (Exod. iv. 11). But while social science is prosecuting this important inquiry, philanthropy has before her the work of educating these "children of silence," to whom the ordinary means of instruction are obviously inapplicable, and for whom, until a century ago, there existed no available means of education at all. Mentioned, as we have just seen, at the outset of man's history, by Moses; spoken of frequently in the writings both of the Old and New Testaments; alluded to by the poets, philosophers, and lawgivers of antiquity-we have no account of any attempt at educating the deaf until the 15th c.; no school existed for them until the middle of the 18th; nor could it be said that education was freely offered, and readily accessible, until within the last fifty years. There are now in Europe and America more than 200 schools for the deaf and dumb. In the same countries where this provision is made, there cannot be fewer than 100,000 deaf-mutes. Of these about 16 per cent are children of the proper age to be at school. Nowhere is this proportion fully reached, nor can it fairly be expected, but there has been a great improvement within the twenty years from 1851-71. The chil dren at the schools of the united kingdom rose from 1300 in 1851 to 1640 in 1861; and had almost reached a total of 2000 in 1871. In Scotland, the proportion rose from 11 per cent in 1851 to 14 per cent in 1871. England, which stood at 8 per cent, and Ireland, as low as 5 per cent, at the earlier date, had both reached 10 per cent and upwards, in 1871. The actual number at school at the three dates was as follows, as nearly as can be ascertained:

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In the United States, within the same period, the number of persons under instruction increased from 1162 to 3,836, and altogether the work of education is advancing with very rapid strides. In Gt. Britain, 12,000 or 13,000 pupils have been educated since 1792-when the first public institution was opened—and at least an equal number in the United States since 1817. Add to these the pupils of the various continental institutions since 1760, when De l'Epée collected his little group of children in the environs of Paris. and Thomas Braidwood opened his school in Edinburgh, and we shall then see that the fruits of these men's labors have not been meager, but great and marvelous. Some isolated attempts had previously been made, by different men, in different countries, and at long intervals, to give instruction to one or two deaf and dumb persons, and their endeavors had been attended with various degrees of success. These several cases excited some attention at the time; but after the wonder at their novelty had subsided, they seem to have been almost forgotten, even in the countries where the experiments were made. Bede speaks of a dumb youth being taught by one of the early English bishops, known in history as St. John of Beverley, to repeat after him letters and sylla bles, and then some words and sentences. The fact was regarded as a miracle, and was classed with others alleged to have been wrought by the same hand. From this time, eight centuries elapsed before any record of an instructed deaf-mute occurs. Rodolphus Agricola, a native of Gröningen, born in 1442, mentions as within his knowledge the fact that a deaf-mute had been taught to write, and to note down his thoughts. Fifty years afterwards this statement was controverted, and the alleged fact pronounced to be impossible, on the ground that no instruction could be conveyed to the mind of any one who could not hear words addressed to the ear. But the discovery which was to give the key to this long-concealed mystery was now at hand. In 1501, was born, at Pavia, Jerome Cardan (q. v.), a man of great but ill-regulated talents, who, among the

numerous speculations to which his restless mind prompted him, certainly discovered the theoretical principle upon which the instruction of the deaf and dumb is founded. He says: "Writing is associated with speech, and speech with thought; but written characters and ideas may be connected together without the intervention of sounds," and he argues that, on this principle, "the instruction of the deaf and dumb is difficult, but it is possible." All this, which to us is obvious and familiar, was a novel speculation in the 16th century. With us it is a common thing for a man to teach himself to read a language though he cannot pronounce it. There are, for instance, hundreds of persons who can read French who do not and cannot speak it. Now, it is evident in this case that written or printed words do impart ideas independently of sounds, yet this was a discovery which the world owes to Jerome Cardan; and it was for want of seeing this truth, which to us is so familiar, that the education of the deaf and dumb was never attempted, but was considered for so many centuries to be a thing impossible. It was in Spain that these principles were first put into practice by Pedro Ponce, a Benedictine monk, born at Valladolid in 1520, and again a century afterwards by another monk of the same order, Juan Paulo Bonet, who also published a work upon the subject, which was the first step towards making the education of the deaf and dumb permanent, by recording the experience of one teacher for the instruction of others. This book, published in 1620, was of service to De l'Epée 150 years later; and it contains, besides much valuable information, a manual alphabet identical in the main with that one-handed alphabet which is now in common use in the schools on the continent and in America. From this time there was a general awakening of the attention of intellectual men, not only to the importance of the subject, but to the practicability of instructing the deafmute. One of Bonet's pupils was seen by Charles I., when prince of Wales; and the case is described by sir Kenelm Digby, who was in attendance upon the prince, on his memorable matrimonial journey into Spain. When the art died away in that country, it was taken up by Englishmen, and began forthwith to assume an entirely new aspect. Dr. John_Bulwer published, in 1648, his Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man's Friend; Dr. William Holder published his Elements of Speech, with an Appendix concerning Persons Deaf and Dumb, in 1669; and Dr. John Wallis, Savilian professor of mathematics in the university of Oxford, both taught the deaf and dumb with great success, and wrote copiously upon the subject. In 1662, one of the most proficient of his pupils was exhibited before the royal society, and in the presence of the king. The Philosophical Transactions of 1670 contain a description of his mode of instruction, which was destined to bear ample fruits long after his death.

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Before the close of the 17th c., many works of considerable merit appeared, the chief of which are the Surdus Loquens (the Speaking Deaf Man) of John Conrad Amman, a physician of Haarlem; and the Didascolocophus, or Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor, of George Dalgarno. This treatise, published in 1680, and reprinted some years ago by the Maitland Club, is eminently sound and practical, which is the more remarkable, as the author speaks of it as being, for aught he knows, the first that had been written on the subject. He is the first English writer who gives a manual alphabet. The one described by him, and of which he was the inventor, is, most probably, the one from which our present two-handed alphabet is derived. Dalgarno was by birth a Scotchman, but was long resident at Oxford. He died in 1687, and Dr. Wallis in 1703. From that time until 1760, nothing more was done in this country-though the subject was beginning to excite some attention in France-to resume the work which had been thus far prosecuted and helped on by the writings and labors of these eminent men. 1760, when the abbé De l'Epée was opening his little school in Paris, the first school in the British dominions was also established in Edinburgh, by Thomas Braidwood. He commenced with one pupil, the son of a merchant in Leith, who had strongly urged him to carry into effect the plan of instruction followed by Dr. Wallis, and described in the Philosophical Transactions 90 years before. This school, the parent and model of the earlier British institutions, was visited and spoken of by many of the influential men of that day, and its history and associations are imperishable. Its local name of Dumbiedikes suggested to sir Walter Scott a designation for one of his most popular characters in the Heart of Midlothian. A visit paid to it in 1773, by Dr. Johnson and his biographer Boswell, supplies one of the most suggestive and characteristic passages in the Journey to the Western Islands. In the year 1783, Mr. Braidwood removed to Hackney, near London, and the presence of his establishment so near to the metropolis undoubtedly led to the foundation of the London Asylum in 1792. Dr. Watson, its first principal, was a nephew, and had been an assistant, of Mr. Braidwood; and he states that, some 10 or 15 years previously, the necessity for the establishment of a public institution had been plainly seen, and some few but insufficient steps taken towards the accomplishment of such a design. From its foundation in 1792 until 1829, it was directed with great ability by Dr. Joseph Watson, in whose work on the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb this statement is given. On his decease, he was suceeeded by his son, Mr. Thomas James Watson, of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and he again was followed in 1857 by his eldest son, the Rev. James H. Watson, of Pembroke college, Cambridge.

The following table shows, in the most concise manner, the position and date of the various institutions in Great Britain and Ireland, and the number of inmates in 1871.

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These details are based upon the census returns of 1871, to which, however, many additions are here made, from personal inquiry and knowledge. There were, and are, several educational establishments in active and successful working; as, for instance, the Jews' school in London, the Roman Catholic school near Sheffield, the Llandaff institution named above, some private seminaries, and one or two day-schools, which are not included in the census returns at all. On the other hand, the Strabane institution is now united to the one at Claremont, near Dublin.

If we add the numbers thus omitted, we shall raise the English total to more than 1200, and as the numbers in Scotland and Ireland were 301 and 478 respectively, it is evident that at least 2,000 deaf-mute children must have been under instruction in the United Kingdom in 1871. That number is certainly exceeded now. And, let it be remembered that it is to the present century that the honorable distinction belongs of having done so much for the deaf and dumb. This has not been by inventing the art of teaching, or by raising up the earliest laborers in this field of usefulness, but by founding and supporting public institutions for this purpose. De l'Epée, when he opened his school in 1760, had no foreknowledge of the work he was commencing. As his labors increased, he invited others to his assistance, and they were thus enabled to carry the light of instruction elsewhere, and to keep it alive when he was no more. His death took place in 1789, and his assistant, Sicard, succeeded him. Four years afterwards, this school was adopted by the French government, and now exists as the Institution Nationale of Paris. A pupil of this institution, M. Laurent Clerc, on being applied to in 1816, consented to go the United States with the founder and first principal of the American asylum, and he became, like De l'Epée, le père des sourds-muets (the father of the deaf and dumb) in the new world. From these small beginnings of Braidwood and De l'Epée, of Heinicke in Germany, and Gallaudet in America, have arisen, within about a century, more than 200 schools for the deaf and dumb. In Great Britain and Ireland there are 25 institutions, 39 in the United States, 4 in British America, and 2 in our Australian colonies. Among the English-speaking races, the increase of energy in this direction is very striking. The figures for foreign countries are not of so recent date, but it is believed that there are about 60 institutions in Austria, Prussia, and the smaller kingdoms and states of Germany, 50 in France, 20 in Italy and in Switzerland, 10 in Holland and Belgium, 2 in Russia, with one or two others in the less populous and enterprising of the European nations.

The mental condition of the deaf and dumb is so peculiar-so entirely unlike that of any other branch of the human family-that it is extremely difficult, without very close thought, to obtain an accurate conception of it. While almost every one will readily admit that there is a wide difference between a deaf and a hearing child, very few, who have not had their attention painfully drawn to the subject, possess any ade quate notion of the difference, or could tell wherein it consists. Sometimes the deaf

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are compared with the blind, though there exists no proper ground of comparison between them. Except that the blind are more dependent than the deaf and dumb, the relative disadvantages of the two classes do not admit of a moment's comparison. The blind man can be talked with and read to, and is thus placed in direct intercourse with the world around him: domestic converse, literary pleasures, political excitement, intellectual research, are all within his reach. The person born deaf is utterly excluded from every one of them. The two afflictions are so essentially dissimilar, that they can only be considered and spoken of together by way of contrast. Each of them affects both the physical and the mental constitution; but blindness, which is a grievous bodily affliction, falls but lightly on the mind; while the effect of deafness is the extreme reverse of this-it touches only one bodily organ, and that not visibly, but the calamity which befalls the mind is one of the most desperate in "the catalogue of human woes." The deprivation under which the born-deaf labor is not merely, or so much, the exclusion of sound, as it is the complete exclusion of all that information and instruction which are conveyed to our minds, and all the ideas which are suggested to them, by means of sound. The deaf know almost nothing, because they hear nothing. We, who do hear, acquire knowledge through the medium of language-through the sounds we hear, and the words we read-ever hour. But as regards the deaf and dumb, speech tells them nothing, because they cannot hear; and books teach them nothing, because they cannot read; so that their original condition is far worse than that of persons who 'can neither read nor write" (one of our most common expressions for extreme ignorance); it is that of persons who can neither read, nor write, nor hear, nor speak; who cannot ask you for information when they want it, and could not understand you, if you wished to give it to them. Your difficulty is to understand their difficulty; and the difficulty which first meets the teacher is, how to simplify and dilute his instructions down to their capacity for receiving them.

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A class thus cut off from all communication through the ear, can only be addressed through the eye; and the means employed in the instruction of the deaf and dumb are -1. The visible language of pictures, and of signs and gestures; 2. The finger-alphabet (or dactylology), and writing, which make them acquainted with our own written language; and in some cases, 3. Articulation, and reading on the lips, which introduce them to the use of spoken language. The education of the deaf and dumb must be twofold—you must awaken and inform their minds by giving them ideas and knowledge, and you must cultivate them by means of language. The use of signs will give them a knowledge of things; but to this must be added a knowledge of words. They are therefore taught, from the first, that words convey the same ideas to our minds which pictures and signs do to theirs; they are therefore required to change signs for words until the written or printed character is as readily understood as the picture or the sign. This, of course, is a long process, as it has to be repeated with every word. Names of visible objects (nouns), of visible qualities (adjectives), and of visible actions (verbs), are gradually taught, and are readily acquired; but the syntax of language, abstract and metaphorical terms, a copious diction, idiomatic phraseology, the nice distinctions between words called synonymous, and those which are identical in form, but of different signification-these are far more difficult of attainment; they can only be mastered through indomitable perseverance and application on the part of the pupil, in addition to the utmost skill and ingenuity of the teacher. The wonder, therefore, surely is, seeing the point of starting, that this degree of advancement is ever reached at all."

Yet it has been set forth by otherwise respectable authority, that the deaf and dumb are a “gifted race;" that they are remarkable for “their promptitude in defining abstract terms;" and those who ought to have known better, have strengthened this delusion, by putting forth, as the bond-fide answers of deaf-mutes, those brilliant aphorisms and definitions of Massieu and Clerc, which are so often quoted at public meetings, by eloquent speakers who know nothing of the subject. It is very well known to those who are acquainted with the subject, that the so-called definitions of Hope, Gratitude, Time, Eternity, etc., were not Massieu's at all, but those of his master, the abbé Sicard. The influence of these fallacies has been most mischievous; they raise expectation to an unreasonable height, for it is thought that what was done by the celebrated pupil of the abbé Sicard," may be done every day: and disappointment is the inevitable consequence. The honest, laborious teacher who cannot produce these marvelous results, and will not stoop to deception, has often to labor on without that appreciation and encouragement which are so eminently his due; the cause of deaf-mute instruction suffers, and a young institution is sometimes crippled by the failure of support, which was first given from one impulse, and is now withdrawn from another-not a whit more unreasonable than the first, but very unfortunate in its consequences.

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The course of instruction is very much the same in all the public schools of Gt. Britain, but a vigorous effort is now being made, by the advocates of what is called the "German system," to teach by oral instruction only. If they can produce, on an extensive scale, the results which have been obtained in some special and exceptional cases, they will assuredly deserve all the success they hope for, and merit the highest commendation. But it will not be sufficient merely to show that their system is superior to the one in present use, unless they can also show that it can be as extensively applied. The dispensers of the funds of our institutions are bound to uphold that

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system which will confer the largest practicable amount of benefit upon the largest possible number of persons. To make a few brilliant scholars, and to produce a number of ready and intelligible speakers, will certainly be a very creditable achievement; but that will not justify any claim to supersede the humbler but more useful system under which so many thousands of our deaf-mute fellow-citizens have been rendered competent for the duties of life, in the workshop, in their families, and in society, and to "walk in the house of God as friends."

The manual alphabet in common use in the schools of Gt. Britain is the two-handed one, though the other is used in some of the Irish institutions, and is regarded with favor by a few of the English teachers. The arguments in its favor, like those for the decimal currency, may probably be admitted; it would be better if we had it. But the rival system has got possession, and is in familiar use, and persons are apt to think that the inconveniences of making the change would outweigh the advantages to be expected from it. The institutions in Great Britain are supported by annual subscriptions, donations, and legacies, and by the payments of pupils for their board. The larger benefactions are invested, where the anInual income from ordinary sources will admit of it. Committees, chosen from the body of subscribers, direct the affairs of these institutions, the executive officers being the headmaster and the secretary; but in some cases the sole charge is intrusted to the principal. The gentlemen who fill this office have devoted their whole lives to the work; some of them have also done good service by their writings upon the subject. The census report, 1871, specially mentions the works of Messrs. Baker of Doncaster, Scott of Exeter, and Buxton of Liverpool, each of whom has helped to make it better known and better understood than it could possibly be when it was treated by men with no practical knowledge, as a merely literary topic, or a subject of philosophical curiosity. Justice also requires the mention here of the valuable writings of the late Dr. H. P. Peet, of New York, and other American instructors of the deaf and dumb. The institutions in the western world are munificently supported by grants from the states, and appear to be admirably managed. The staff of teachers is numerous, able, and efficient, and a high degree of success may fairly be expected where the work is carried on under advantages which are unknown in the schools of Great Britain. At Washington, a college has

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