long before he shows any sign of being affected by impressions from without. These movements are attended with certain feelings peculiar to them, often of a very pleasurable kind, as is shown by the delight taken by children in active games, by the young of animals in their gambols, and by men of vigorous health, "muscular Christians and others, in athletic exercises. To be incapable of this pleasure, to have a distaste for the exertions which procure it, is justly deemed a proof of a disordered or languid organisation. We have seen that this is, as a rule, the case with the blind. The chief physical enjoyments connected with the muscular system are, for them, those of conscious repose, resembling probably the agreeable sensations of rest after moderate fatigue. A slight feeling of fatigue may be considered as their ordinary condition, in regard at least to this part of their nature. Their delight in bodily inaction, or in slow and measured movements, is like that of the weak eye in a shaded light, or its preference of the milder green rays to the "common light of day." It is easy to see how this state of feeling reacts upon the intellectual character. Rapidity of mere physical motion produces a certain rapidity and intensity of mental action. Many instances of this might be adduced. The student is often compelled to stimulate the sluggish flow of thought by a rapid walk up and down his chamber. Douglas Jerrold is said to have composed in this way. The violent gestures of the popular orator are often quite evidently assumed, in the first instance, to rouse in him the vehemence which they seem to express, and of which they may afterwards become the unconscious expression. Slow movements, on the other hand, have a contrary effect; they calm and soothe rather than stimulate. What is true of them in their action on special occasions, is of course equally true of them as a life-long influence. It is in harmony with these observations that the blind, as a class, are seldom characterised by that rapidity and intensity of mental action, that keenness of penetration, which pierces at once to the very heart of a matter, that vivida vis animi which is the characteristic of the highest genius. Their intellects are in general cautious, calm, deliberative, slow, distinguished rather by soundness than by brilliancy. The force which they apply is accumulative rather than instantaneous. We do not mean that all these qualities are to be attributed exclusively to the single source which we have indicated, or even that all the said qualities are to be found in all blind people. What is asserted is, that the tendency of the condition of the muscular sensibility in the blind is to produce the characteristics acledged, though with many exceptions and in various degrees, to belong to them as an order. The fact that their attachments are generally of a calm and equable kind, formed on judgment and right reason," rather than upon those inexplicable attractions

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which so often bind others together; the infrequency with which they seem to give way to strong impulses of affection, and a certain want of geniality and expansiveness which has often been noted in them, may also, no doubt, in part be attributed to the same cause. Vividness of sensation, and clearness of perception, exist always in an inverse ratio; or, as Sir William Hamilton, to whom we believe the first statement of this law of mind is due, expresses it: "Above a certain point, the stronger the sensation, the weaker the perception; and the distincter the perception, the less obtrusive the sensation." Vision, which is the clearest of our modes of objective perception, is ordinarily attended with scarcely any subjective feeling; taste and smell, which give us hardly any knowledge of objects, appeal forcibly to the passive sensibility. Intense light dazzles the eye, excessive sound deafens the ear; and both prevent clear perception. The feebleness of the muscular sensations in the blind does not therefore by any means imply indistinctness in the corresponding perceptions. These are, among others, the discrimination of degrees in the weight, in the hardness and softness, the elasticity and inelasticity, of objects, as estimated by the resistance they offer to pressure, and the consequent muscular tension needed to withstand or overcome this resistance. Without, perhaps, being peculiar to this sense, the cognition of space, and its several modes and diversities-that is to say, the magnitude, the distance and direction (which, taken together, gives the position) of objects, their form, &c.-may no doubt be gained by consciousness of differences in the sweep and contraction of the muscular movements. The nicety of discrimination acquired by the blind in regard to these qualities has received many illustrations. Diderot says of the celebrated blind man of Puesseaux, a visit to whom occasioned his Lettre sur les Aveugles: "He appreciates with wonderful accuracy the weights of bodies and the capacities of vessels; and he has made of his arms balances so exact, and of his fingers compasses so well tested, that on occasions on which this sort of static is called into play, I would always back our blind man against twenty who see." The lady patient of Sir Hans Sloane, who became blind, deaf, and dumb, through confluent small-pox, manifested the same fineness of muscular sensibility. "To amuse herself in the mournful and perpetual solitude and darkness to which her disorder had reduced her, she used to work much at her needle; and it is remarkable that her needlework was uncommonly neat and exact. . . . . She used also sometimes to write; and her writing was yet more extraordinary than her needlework; it was executed with the same regularity and exactness; the character was very pretty, the lines were all even, and the letters placed at equal distances from each other: but the most astonishing particular of all, with respect to her writing is, that

she could by some means discover when a letter had by some mistake been omitted, and would place it over that part of the word where it should have been inserted, with a caret under it.”*

This last-mentioned circumstance requires stronger faith or stronger testimony than we possess to convince us of the fact. There is nothing improbable in the other assertions. The blind in general, indeed, are obliged to have recourse to a special apparatus in writing, to prevent the pen from wandering over the paper. But the case of the American girl, Laura Bridgman (blind, deaf, and dumb), as well as that of Sir Hans Sloane's patient, proves that the muscular sense may be brought to a degree of perfection which enables it to dispense with artificial aid. Mr. Dickens, in his American Notes, says of Laura Bridgman, who wrote in his presence: "No line was indicated by any contrivance; but she wrote straight and freely." Laura Bridgman appears to have used one set of muscular movements to watch over, and correct if needful, the set in action. "I observed," says Mr. Dickens, "that she kept her left hand always touching and following up her right, in which of course she held the pen." The left hand in this way discharged for her the functions of superintendence and control, which with the seeing are rendered by the eye. John Metcalf (of whom an account has already been given) must in his surveying expeditions have relied principally upon the same sense. From the direction and degree of inclination of his staff, and the various amounts of resistance it encountered, he drew his inferences as to the physical features and soil of the districts he examined; and he could only know the position of the staff by the experience of the muscular tension and contraction consequent upon its changes as he shifted it about. The great number of blind persons who have been able to practise with success various manual trades and mechanical arts, from shoemaking and plain carpentry up to the making of watches and the manufacture of organs and pianos, and the pupils in almost every blind-school in which useful handicrafts are taught, are all dependent on the same faculty. Only from it can they learn the right mode of handling their tools, and the proper range, direction, and force to be given to their movements.

From the muscular feelings we proceed to the Sense of Touch. We assign it the second place among the modes of external perception, not only on account of its close connection with the muscular sensations (which until recently were confounded with it, and are so still by "popular" writers), but because, while any or all of the remaining senses may be lost, we cannot conceive touch absent from a sentient organism. Beings who possess only this sense and the muscular feelings have existed, and

* " Encyclopædia Britannica," original edition, art. "Blind.”

do exist; but the entire paralysis of the nervous system which would be necessary to destroy tactile feeling could scarcely be distinguished from death. According to Cabanis, whose doctrine on this point is adopted by Sir William Hamilton, and his able disciple and expositor Mr. Mansel, all the commonly-admitted five senses may be resolved into modifications of touch. This sense is diffused over the entire surface of the body, and has its seat in the podilla of the skin. The exquisite sensibility which it habitually attains in the blind, is perhaps the best-known feature of their condition. Many, however, of the phenomena commonly attributed to it really belong to the muscular sense. That the two orders of feeling are distinct, is shown by the fact, that the susceptibility of the former is often very faint, when that of the latter is most keen and discriminating. This is the case with most handicraft labourers, the skin of whose hands is generally hard and callous, while their perceptions of weight, distance, figure, &c., are wonderfully delicate and exact. An example, if one is needed, is presented by the blind deaf-mute Edward Meyster. Before entering the Blind Asylum at Lausanne, he had been employed in cutting wood, in consequence of which "his fingers never acquired the delicacy of touch of the other pupils." Nevertheless he excelled all his companions in mechanical skill, and was unusually dextrous in the use of the turning-lathe.

One of the most remarkable instances of the power which this sense may acquire is presented in the history of John Gough, who lost his sight through small-pox when in his third year. He devoted himself with great ardour to the study of natural history, and made considerable progress both in zoology and botany, especially in the latter science. The sensibility of touch in his fingers was sufficient to enable him to recognise, classify, and arrange ordinary plants. "It is mentioned, that towards the end of his life a rare plant was put into his hands, which he very soon called by its name, observing that he had never met with more than one specimen of it, and that was fifty years ago." When he failed to recognise a plant by his fingers, he used to apply it to his lips and tongue; and was generally able in this way to identify it, or refer it to its botanical order. The explanation of this expedient is as follows. The experiments of Webber have shown that the tactile sensibility of the skin varies in different parts. Placing the points of a pair of compasses, blunted with sealingwax, on the tip of the tongue, he found that the points could be recognised as different at the distance of the twentieth part of an English inch; on the lower surface of the finger, they required to be widened to the tenth part of an inch in order to be distin

* Bull, p. 182.

guished. The tactile discrimination of the tongue is therefore twice as great as that of the finger ends; an object placed on the former appears twice as great as it does when examined by the fingers. Gough's use of his tongue corresponded strictly to the use of a glass of double magnifying power by the seeing.

"The lips," says Dr. Bull, "are almost as liberally supplied with the nerves of touch as the tips of the fingers [Weber's experiments show that they have greater tactile discrimination than the fingers, and very nearly as great as that of the tongue], and in one instance have done good service to a fellow-sufferer. A poor blind girl, residing in one of the provinces of France, had for many years, as her greatest comfort, perused her embossed Bible with her finger; getting out of health, and becoming partially paralysed, the hand also was affected, and gradually all power of touch was lost. Her agony of mind at her deprivation was great, and in a moment of despair she took up her Bible, bent down her head, and kissed the open leaf, by way, as she supposed, of a last farewell. In the act of doing so, to her great surprise and sudden joy, she felt the letters distinctly with her lips; and from that day this poor child has thus been reading in the Word of God, 'words more precious to her than silver or gold,-even fine gold.""

The discriminating sensibility of the fingers may, however, be indefinitely improved by practice. It varies very much in individuals. In the interesting account of Mdle. de Salignac, which forms the postscript of Diderot's Lettre sur les Aveugles (and was, indeed, written more than thirty years after), several illustrations of this are given. She could read books in the ordinary type (embossed printing had not then been invented) which were printed on only one side of the page. We have also heard of a blind German who was able to read books printed on a coarse rough paper used in that country. Mdlle. de Salignac's nicety of touch enabled her to play at cards with perfect accuracy. Marks were made on each card, which she was able to distinguish, though they escaped both the eye and touch of those who saw. Dr. Guillié gives an account of a blind Dutchman who could recognise the differences of the figures on cards without this aid; the different textures of the colours, black and red, and the different forms of club and spade, heart and diamond, were palpable to his feeling. In consequence, whenever he dealt he always won. Touching all the cards of the pack as he gave them out, he had virtually seen his opponent's hands. The evidence of this power possessed by some of the blind to discern differences of colours is indeed irresistible: Sir Hans Sloane's patient,* the blind Highland tailor

"She could distinguish the different colours of silk and flowers. A lady who was nearly related to her having an apron on that was embroidered with silk of different colours, asked her, in the manner which has been described, if she could tell