the privation of the faculty of speech. The most general, or rather the sole cause of dumbness, is the want of the sense of hearing. The use of language is originally acquired by imitating articulate sounds. From this source of intelligence, deaf people are entirely excluded: they cannot acquire articulate sounds by the ear: unless, therefore, articulation be communicated to them by some other medium, these unhappy people must ever be deprived of the use of language; and as language is the principal source of knowledge, whoever has the misfortune to want the sense of hearing, must remain in a state little superior to that of the brute creation. Deafness has in all ages been considered as such a total obstruction to speech or written language, that an attempt to teach the deaf to speak or read has been uniformly regarded as impracticable, till Dr Wallis and some others have of late shown, that although deaf people cannot learn to speak or read by the direction of the ear, there are other sources of imitation, by which the same effect may be produced. The organs of hearing and of speech have little or no connection. Persons deprived of the former generally possess the latter in such perfection, that nothing further is necessary, in order to make them articulate, than to teach them how to use these organs. This indeed is no easy task; but experience shows that it is practicable. Mr Thomas Braidwood, late of Edinburgh, was perhaps the first who ever brought this surprising art to any degree of perfection. He began with a single pupil in 1764; and since that period has taught great numbers of people born deaf to speak distinctly; to read, to write, to understand figures, the principles of religion and morality, &c. At the time we first conversed with him, being a few years after the commencement of his practice, he had a considerable number of deaf pupils, some of them above 20 years of age, all making a rapid and amazing progress in those useful branches of education.

Mr Braidwood's principal difficulty, after he had discovered this art, was to make people believe in the practicability of it. He advertised in the public papers; he exhibited his pupils to many noblemen and gentlemen; till he found the generality of mankind unwilling to believe him. A remarkable instance of this incredulity occurred some years ago. A gentleman in England sent a deaf girl of his to Mr Braidwood's care. A year or two afterwards, Mr Braidwood wrote to the father, that his daughter could speak, read, and write distinctly. The father returned an answer, begging Mr Braidwood's excuse, as he could not believe it; however, he desired a friend of his, who was occasionally going to Edinburgh, to call at Mr Braidwood, and inquire into the truth of what he had written: he did so; conversed with Mr Braidwood, saw the young lady, heard her read, speak, and answer any questions he put to her. On his return, he told the father the surprising progress his child had made; but still the father thought the whole an imposition: the girl herself wrote to her father, but he looked upon the letter as a forgery. About this time the father died; and the mother sent an uncle and cousin of the deaf lady's from Shrewsbury, in order to be satisfied of the truth. When they arrived, Mr Braidwood told the girl her uncle and cousin were in the parlour; and desired her to go and ask them how they did, and how her mother and other friends did. The friends were astonished, and could hardly credit their own ears and eyes.

When we conversed with Mr Braidwood concerning the nature and method of teaching this wonderful art, he seemed to be very desirous of communicating and transmitting his discovery to posterity; but observed, from the nature of the thing we believe it to be true, that he could not communicate it so fully in writing as to enable any other person to teach it. The first thing in the method is, to teach the pupil to pronounce the simple sounds of the vowels and consonants. We have even seen him performing this operation; but are unable to give a clear idea of it. He pronounces the sound of a slowly, pointing out the figure of the letter at the same time; makes his pupil observe the motion of his mouth and throat; he then puts his finger into the pupil's mouth, depresses or elevates the tongue, and makes him keep the parts in that position; then he lays hold of the outside of the windpipe, and gives it some kind of squeeze, which it is impossible to describe: all the while he is pronouncing a, the pupil is anxiously imitating him, but at first seems not to understand what he would have him to do. In this manner he proceeds, till the pupil has learned to pronounce the sounds of the letters. He goes on in the same manner to join a vowel and a consonant, till at length the pupil is enabled both to speak and read.

That his pupils were taught not only the mere pronunciation, but also to understand the meaning of what they read, was easily ascertained by a conversation with any of them. Of this Mr Pennant gives a remarkable instance in a young lady of about 15 years of age, who had been some time under the care of Mr Braidwood. "She readily apprehended (says he) all I said, and returned me answers with the utmost facility. She read; she wrote well. Her reading was not by rote. She could clothe the same thoughts in a new set of words." Dumbness and never vary from the original sense. I have forgot the book she took up, or the sentences she made a new version of; but the effect was as follows:

"Original passage. Lord Bacon has divided the whole of human knowledge into history, poetry, and philosophy; which are referred to the three powers of the mind, memory, imagination, and reason.

"Version. A nobleman has parted the total or all of man's study or understanding into, An account of the life, manners, religion or customs of any people or country; verse or metre; moral or natural knowledge; which are pointed to the three faculties of the soul or spirit; the faculty of remembering what is past, thought or conception, and right judgment."

Mr Braidwood's success since he went to settle in London is universally known. Several other persons have since attempted the same art with various degrees of ability. But a new and different method, equally laborious and successful, we understand, is practised by the Abbé de l'Epée of Berlin. We are informed that he begins his instructions not by endeavouring to form the organs of speech to articulate sounds, but by communicating ideas to the mind by means of signs and characters: to effect this, he writes the names of things; and, by a regular system of signs, establishes a connection between these words and the ideas to be excited by them. After he has thus furnished his pupils with ideas, and a medium of communication, he teaches them to articulate and pronounce, and renders them not only grammarians but logicians. In this manner he has enabled one of his pupils to deliver a Latin oration in public, and another to defend a thesis against the objections of one of his fellow-pupils in a scholastic disputation; in which the arguments of each were communicated to the other, but whether by signs or in writing is not said; for it does not appear that the Abbé teaches his pupils to discern what is spoken, by observing the motion of the organs of speech, which those instructed by Messrs Braidwoods are able to do with astonishing readiness.

There is perhaps no word, says the Abbé, more difficult to explain by signs than the verb croire, "to believe." To do this, he writes the verb with its significations in the following manner:

\[ \begin{align*} \text{Je dis oui par l'esprit, Je pense que oui.} \\ \text{Je dis oui par le cœur, J'aime à penser que oui.} \\ \text{Je dis oui par la bouche.} \\ \text{Je ne vois pas des yeux.} \end{align*} \]

After teaching these four significations, which he does by as many signs, he connects them with the verb, and adds other signs to express the number, person, tense, and mood, in which it is used. If to the four signs, corresponding with the lines above mentioned, be added that of a substantive, the pupil will write the word foi, "faith;" but, if a sign, indicating a participle used substantively, be adjoined, he will express la croyance, "belief;" to make him write croyable, "credible;" the four signs of the verb must be accompanied with one that indicates an adjective terminating in able; all these signs are rapidly made, and immediately comprehended.

M. Linguet, a member of the Royal Academy, having asserted that persons thus instructed could be considered as little more than automata, the Abbé invited him to be present at his lessons, and expressed his astonishment that M. Linguet should be so prejudiced in favour of the medium by which he had received the first rudiments of knowledge, as to conclude that they could not be imparted by any other; defining him, at the same time, to reflect, that the connection between ideas and the articulate sounds, by which they are excited in the mind, is not less arbitrary than that between these ideas and the written characters which are made to represent them to the eye. M. Linguet complied with the invitation; and the Abbé having desired him to fix on some abstract term which he would by signs communicate to his pupils, he chose the word unintelligibility; which, to his astonishment, was almost instantly written by one of them. The Abbé informed him, that to communicate this word he had used five signs, which, though scarcely perceivable to him, were immediately and distinctly apprehended by his scholars: the first of these signs indicated an internal action; the second represented the act of a mind that reads internally, or, in other words, comprehends what is proposed to it; a third signified that such a disposition is possible; these, taken together, form the word intelligible; a fourth sign transforms the adjective into the substantive; and a fifth, expressing negation, completes the word required. M. Linguet afterwards proposed this question, What do you understand by metaphysical ideas? which being committed to writing, a young lady immediately answered on paper in the following terms: "I understand the ideas of things which are independent of our senses, which are beyond the reach of our senses, which make no impression on our senses, which cannot be perceived by our senses." On reading this, we cannot help exclaiming with the poet, Labor omnia vincit improbus! a maxim by none more forcibly illustrated than by the Abbé de l'Epée.

Periodical Dumbness. In the Ephemerides of the Curious, we have an account of a periodical dumbness, which had continued for more than 15 years, and had not gone off at the time the account was wrote. The person was son to an inn-keeper at Jefing in the duchy of Wurtemberg in Germany. He was one night taken so ill after supper, that he could neither stand nor sit. He continued, for about an hour, oppressed with sickness to such a degree as to be in danger of suffocation. At the expiration of this time he grew better; but, during three months, he was much dejected, melancholy, and, at times, fearful. He was then suddenly struck dumb, and became unable to pronounce the least word, or form the least sound, though he could speak very articulately before. The loss of speech was at first instantaneous, and continued only a few minutes; but the duration of it began to lengthen every day; so that it soon amounted to half an hour, two hours, three hours, and at last to 23 hours, yet without any order. At half the return, of speech kept so constant and regular an order, that, for 14 years together, he could not speak except from noon, during the space of one entire hour, to the precise moment of one o'clock. Every time he lost his speech, he felt something rise from his stomach to his throat. Excepting this loss of speech, he was afflicted with no other disorder of any animal function. Both his internal and external senses continued sound: he heard always perfectly well, and answered the questions proposed to him by gestures or writing.