exhibiting words, enabled him, to a great extent, to rely on usage to explain their meaning. He was, nevertheless, apprised of the advantage of a logical method, in the teaching of languages. Few, if any, have been more successful than Pereiré. Of his pupil Fontenay, De l'Epée records, that he translated foreign works, and himself composed a number of productions designed for the press.

Ernaud, as well as Pereiré, obtained the approbation of the Academy of Sciences. He employed himself very much in reviving the sense of hearing, where it was partially lost. He asserts, indeed, that he had met with no instance of entire deafness. Articulation was, of course, his principal instru

ment.

The Abbé Deschamps published, in 1779, a work on the instruction of the deaf and dumb. To this branch of education, he devoted, in practice, his fortune and his life. Acknowledging the practicability of instructing by means of signs, he still accorded the preference to articulation and the labial alphabet. He refused, therefore, though solicited, to unite himself with the Abbé de l'Epée. Shortly after the publication of his work, he was assailed by the deaf and dumb Desloges, who very earnestly vindicated the methods of De l'Epée, and spoke, in the most enthusiastic terms, of the language of action.

In glancing at the second period of this history, we have to regret that our notice of it must be but a glance. The Abbé de l'Epée commenced the labor, to which his entire life, and the whole of his pecuniary means were afterwards consecrated, with completing the education of two twin sisters, who had been pupils of Father Vanin. The grand feature of his system we have already noticed. It consisted in giving to the language of action the highest degree of expansion, and rendering it, by means of methodical signs, parallel to that of speech. He attempted also the task of teaching articulation; and, as we have seen, was the author of a treatise on this branch of the art. The actual success of the Abbé de l'Epée was far from being equal to that of his successors, or even his contemporaries. In a letter to Sicard, written in 1783, he says, 'Do not hope that your pupils can ever express their ideas by writing. Let it suffice that they translate our language into theirs, as we ourselves translate foreign languages, without being able to think or to express ourselves in those lan

guages.' He has more to the same purpose. With the evidence of Pereiré's success, in the case of Fontenay, under his eyes, these views are certainly remarkable. De l'Epée commenced the preparation of a dictionary of signs, which was never published. He felt himself, from time to time, called upon to defend his views. He seems, voluntarily, to have thrown down the gauntlet to Pereiré. With Heinicke he held a controversial correspondence of some length, in which that instructer seems to have exhibited very little courtesy. third time he came into collision with Nicolaï, an academician of Berlin. The Abbé Storck, a disciple of De l'Epée, had established a school in the latter city; and it was from the exercises of a public exhibition, held by the former, that Nicolaï took occasion to attack the system of instruction. The details of these controversies, though interesting, are too extensive to be exhibited here.

A

A few years after the death of De l'Epée, was established the Royal Institution of Paris, to the direction of which Sicard was summoned. It was the endeavor of this instructer, whose title to our veneration is beyond dispute, to perfect the views of his immediate predecessor and master; and to carry out fully in practice the theory, which makes the instruction of the deaf and dumb a process of translation. Of Sicard's success, we have living evidence in our own country, in the case of M. Clerc at Hartford; whose acquaintance at once with the French and the English languages leaves nothing to be desired. Massieu, also, whose education forms the subject of an entire work from the pen of his master, is an astonishing instance of the extent to which the intellectual faculties of deaf and dumb persons may be cultivated. We cannot refrain, in this place, from noticing a few of the answers of these pupils to questions, of the nature of which they could have had no previous intimation.

When Clerc was asked if he loved the Abbé Sicard, he replied in the following words. Deprived at birth of the sense of hearing, and, by a necessary consequence, of speech, the deaf and dumb were condemned to a most melancholy vegetation; the Abbé de l'Epée and the Abbé Sicard were born, and these unfortunate persons, confided to their regenerating care, passed from the class of brutes to that of men whence you may judge how much I must love the Abbé Sicard.' Massieu, being once asked the difference between God and

nature, replied, God is the first Framer, the Creator of all things. The first beings all sprang from his divine bosom. He said to the first, you shall produce the second;' his wishes are laws, these laws are nature.'

'Eternity,' he said, 'is a day without yesterday or tomorrow.'

Hope is the flower of happiness.'

'Gratitude is the memory of the heart.'

In this second period of the history, it is impossible that we should proceed further, with any thing like particularity. Germany affords us the names of Neumann, Eschke, Cæsar, Petschke, Venus, Wolke, Daniel, Stephani, Ernsdorffer, Scherr, Neumaier, Gæger, Siemon, Grasshoff, and a multitude of others; Switzerland those of Ulrich and Naëf; Holland of Peerlkamp and the Messrs. Guyot; England of Watson, Arrowsmith, and Roget; Scotland of Braidwood and Kinniburgh; Spain of D'Alea and Hernandez, and Italy of Scagliotti. France also presents us with many names, among which we notice those of Bébian, Piroux, Périer Jamet, Dudésert, Gondelin, Ordinaire, Valade, and Morel; to the last, we understand, was intrusted, at the Royal Institution, the preparation of the second and third circulars. It would afford us pleasure, here, to examine, specifically, such of the productions of these individuals as have reached us; but our own country exacts of us the space which yet remains.

In April 1815, were taken the first steps toward the erection of an institution for the deaf and dumb in America. A feeble beginning, in the establishment of a small private school, had been previously made in Virginia. But of this nothing was known, at least no account was taken in Hartford. An interesting girl, the daughter of a highly-respected physician in that city, had lost her hearing at the age of two years. The Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, having become interested in her case, visited Paris, for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the system, employed in the Royal Institution. Returning, he brought with him M. Laurent Clerc, whose name has been already mentioned, and with whose assistance he laid the foundation of the Connecticut Asylum. This institution, which, having since experienced the fostering care of the Federal Government, has assumed the more exclusive epithet American, has always maintained a very high reputation. It has produced, at least while under the direction of Mr. Gal

laudet, pupils remarkably distinguished for their attainments. Of these, George H. Loring of Boston, who was retained for some years as an assistant instructer, after the completion of his education, acquired so great a facility in the use of the French language, as to astonish native Frenchmen with whom he conversed. Articulation never formed a part of Mr. Gallaudet's system. He employed methodical signs, to a great extent, in his practice, but not without a careful previous determination of their corresponding ideas. He made it an important part of his plan, to lead his pupils to the formation of habits of reflection upon the operations of their own minds; believing, very justly, that intellectual expansion will be more rapid, as the power of discrimination, between ideas having no palpable representatives, is increased. Mr. W. C. Woodbridge, editor of the American Annals of Education, was an early associate of Mr. Gallaudet. From this school, also, proceeded Mr. Peet, principal of the institution in the city of New York.

The American Asylum likewise lent its aid to the establishment of the Pennsylvania Institution upon a secure basis. This school, first a private seminary commenced by David G. Seixas, was erected into a public institution, by an act of the State Legislature, passed in February, 1821. Soon after, Mr. Seixas having been removed, Mr. Clerc spent some time at Philadelphia, and was succeeded, on his return to Hartford, by Mr. Lewis Weld, an instructer of the same school. Mr. Weld was, in 1830, recalled to Hartford, to supply the place of Mr. Gallaudet; who, to the deep regret of every friend to the deaf and dumb, ceased, in the autumn of that year, to direct the American Asylum, and retired from the employment. The Pennsylvania Institution, under the direction of Mr. Abraham B. Hutton, has from that time continued to proceed with distinguished success.

The first movements made toward the establishment of an institution in the city of New York, originated in 1816, in consequence,' as we are informed by Dr. Akerly, its first director, of a letter written by a dumb person in Bordeaux, offering to come to this country to establish a school.' In the beginning of 1817, a public meeting was held on the subject, at which many gentlemen, believing that two institutions were unnecessary, and could not be sustained, opposed the project. A better acquaintance with the statistics of our population soon

rendered the necessity of another establishment self-evident. More than sixty deaf and dumb persons were ascertained to exist in the city of New York alone, and the returns were still incomplete. An act of incorporation was obtained in April 1817. Under this act, a school was opened in the spring of 1818, which, struggling against many difficulties, principally self-created, it is true, continued for years to languish on, but seemed to hold its existence by a very uncertain tenure. It was the early error of this institution, to employ men entirely inadequate to the task they had undertaken. Its results were consequently so unsatisfactory as to shake the confidence of its friends, and ultimately even of the Legislature, on which it was dependent, in the capacity of its conductors. They afforded also ample ground for the strictures which occasionally appeared, aimed directly or indirectly at the institution, and which were believed at New York to originate in a spirit of hostility to its interests. It was further believed, upon no reasonable ground whatever, that this spirit was cherished in the American Asylum and industriously propagated by its friends. The utmost forbearance was certainly exhibited by that institution, under imputations the most uncharitable, and most directly suited to excite indignant feeling; and any one who knows Mr. Gallaudet, knows also that he is incapable of being influenced, even for a moment, by any unworthy motive. Something like a controversy seemed, notwithstanding, to spring up between the schools of New York and Hartford. We remark with some surprise, that this controversy embraces very little that is essential, in the art of instruction. It seems to relate entirely to the language of action; and not even here to involve the question commonly agitated on this topic, viz. how far this language should be employed in practice; but only to concern the visible form of the signs used in the two institutions.

It is asserted in the Encyclopædia Americana, that the New York Institution originated its own system of instruction. This statement, here first made in a standard work, is not indeed novel, neither is it true. The teachers at New York endeavored, to the best of their ability, to walk in the footsteps of Sicard. If, in the mere form of their signs of reduction, they differed from the school of Paris, nothing more was true of them, than is true of half the European institutions at the present day. Uniformity among many institutions, however desirable, is not essential within the walls of one.