" To instruct the deaf no art could ever reach, No care improve them, and uo wisdom teach. " Parents, influenced by this belief, allowed their children to grow up without culture. They were abandoned to them selves, and exiled from the community of rational beings. To such a culpable extent was this prejudice carried, that it has been the practice in some countries to destroy children who remained at three years of age incapable of either hearing or speaking, and by the code of Justinian deaf mutes are declared to be incapable of civil acts. In France, the very birth of such children was accounted a sort of disgrace to the family from which they sprang, and the duties of humanity were deemed to extend no further in their behalf than to the maintenance of their animal existence, while they were carefully secluded from the eyes of the world either within the walls of the cloister or in souie hidden asylum in the country. Abandoned thus early to their fate, and regarded as little better than idiots, it is not surprising that their future behaviour should have been such as might seem to justify the erroneous views which had prompted this un generous treatment. The progress in the art of instructing the deaf and dumb was in consequence greatly retarded ; attempts to instruct them were scarcely known, and no school was established till the middle of the 18th cen tury. In the 4th century, St Augustine, influenced by the dictum of Aristotle, expresses his unfavourable opinion respecting their ability to obtain any religious knowledge, remarking, " that deafness from birth makes faith impos sible, since he who is born deaf can neither hear the word nor learn to read it." But in this enlightened age it has been fully proved that the neglect and forgetfulness to which these outcasts were formerly consigned were founded on very mistaken notions of their mental capacities. The first instance of a deaf mute being instructed is mentioned by Bede in 685. No other case is met with till some centuries afterwards. Hodolphus Agricola, of Heidelberg, who was born in 1442, and died in 1485, makes mention in his De Inventione Dialectica, of an educated deaf mute ; but this instance, and probably others, were discredited on the ground of their impossibility. Jerome Cardau, a native of Pavia, born in 1501, took a more philosophical view of the subject, and says, " Writ ing is associated with speech, and speech with thought, but written characters and ideas may be connected without the intervention of sounds ;" from which he further argues that " the instruction of the deaf is difficult, but it is possible." It was no doubt this enlightened view that gave to the education of the deaf and dumb its first and greatest impulse. A Spanish Benedictine monk of the convent of Sabagun in Spain, named Pedro de Ponce, who was born in Valladolid in 1520 and died in 1584, is the first person who is recorded to have instructed the deaf and dumb and taught them to speak. He was fifty-six years old when Jerome Cardan died, and he had no doubt, from his association with Cardan, imbibed his principles. He has, however, left no work upon the subject, though it is probable that the substance of his method is contained in a book of Bonet, secretary to the constable of Castile, printed at Madrid in 1620 under the title of Heduccion de las letras y artes para ensenar a hollar d los mudos. In the time of Bonet the teaching of the deaf and dumb was becoming more general and was entered upon by several persons, both in Italy and in England. Dr John Bulwer, an English physician, and Dr Wallis, professor of mathematics in the university of Oxford, were both engaged in the work in England about the same time, though it is not accurately known to whom the honour of being its prime mover is due. The former published a treatise on the education of the deaf and dumb in 1648, several years before Dr Wallis s valuable and able work had appeared. In the year 1669, some years after Dr Wallis a writings and practice of instructing the deaf and dumb had been known, Dr W. Holder, rector of Bletchington, published a work entitled Elements of Speech, ivith an Appendix concerning Persons Deaf and Dumb ; in 1670 George Sibscote issued a Treatise concerning those who are Born Deaf and Dumb; and in the year 1680 George Dalgarno, a native of Aberdeen, published an able and philosophical work, under the title of Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man s Tutor, which was reprinted some years ago by the Maitland Club. This last-named work is considered by Professor Porter as " one of the most remarkable and important productions in the whole history of the art." To an early work of his, entitled Ars Signorum, both Bishop Wilkius and Dr Wallis were indebted, but they never mention his name. This un generous silence unfavourably contrasts with Leibnitz s frequent commendation of the work. Above all others, John Conrad Amman, a Swiss physician living at Amster dam, distinguished himself by his ingenious and successful method of teaching the deaf and dumb to speak. He reduced the work to a fixed art or method, which he published in his Surdus Loquens, 1692, whereof an English translation was afterwards published by Daniel Foot. In France the work of teaching the deaf and dumb was late in receiving the attention it deserved, in consequence of the still prevalent doubt as to its practicability, although many instances of success in other countries were generally known. It was not till about the middle of the 17th century that the subject was taken up with any interest. Vaniu, a Father of the Christian Doctrine, made some attempts to alleviate the condition of the deaf and dumb, but his work was cut short by death. After him.camo Ernaud, "Rodriguez Pereira, the Abbe Deschamps, and tho Abbe de 1 Epce. In Silesia, at the beginning of the 18th century, W. Kerger established his method on the principles of John C. Amman; and in 1718 George Raphel, a German, and contemporary with Kerger, published tho system he had carried out in the education of three deaf mutes in his own family. All this interesting work had been accomplished before any public school for the deaf and dumb had beeai established ; and it was not till 1760 that Abb6 de I Ep^e started the first school in Paris. About the same time Thomas Braidwood opened a school in Edinburgh; and in 1778 Heiuicke in Germany founded another at Leipsic under the patronage of the Govern ment, where he pursued the system of articulation and lip reading which forms the basis of instruction in the German schools of the present day. Thomas Braidwood made himself famous by his remarkable success. He was visited by Dr Johnson when on his tour to the Hebrides, who expressed himself highly gratified with the success in what he considered a great philosophical curiosity. In 1783 Braidwood left Edinburgh and opened a schoul at Hackney, near London, where he continued his arduous duties till 1806, when he died. Two of his sons became instructors of the deaf and dumb. A school was opened in Edinburgh by one of them in 1810, and the other started a school at Birmingham in 1825. In the year 1792 the first public school in Great Britain for the gra tuitous education of the deaf and dumb was opened in Bermondsey, London, of which Dr Watson, the nephew of Thomas Braidwood, was for thirty-seven years the head instructor. Since the above date (1792) schools have been established in many of the principal towns of Europe and America.
Methods of Instruction."—All the institutions and schools
for the education of the deaf and dumb employ one or other
