of poems; and this attracted to him the more general notice of the literary world. Among others whose attention was drawn to the productions of the blind poet was Mr. Spence, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, who published a critical review of them, accompanied by a sketch of their author's history, which had a great effect in making him more extensively known. In the meanwhile, Blacklock continued his studies at Edinburgh, until he had finished the usual course of education prescribed to candidates for the ministry in the Scotch Church, which occupied him ten years. In 1754 a second edition of his poems was published by subscription; and, having been a few years afterwards licensed by the Presbytery as a preacher, he was inducted to the church of Kirkcudbright, on the presentation of the Earl of Selkirk. So much opposition, however, was made by the inhabitants of the place to this arrangement for giving them a blind clergyman, that Blacklock was soon induced to resign his appointment for a small annuity. With this provision he returned to Edinburgh; and, being now married, opened an establishment for receiving boarders, whose studies he proposed to superintend. In this occupation, and in a variety of literary pursuits, he spent his remaining life, and died at Edinburgh in 1791. He had received the degree of Doctor of Divinity, in 1766, from one of the Universities of Aberdeen, and may be said to have eventually attained a highly respectable place among the literary characters of his time, although his poetry does not indicate a great deal of power. He possessed, however, we are told, wonderful facility in verse-making, and used sometimes to dictate thirty or forty verses to his friends almost as fast as they could be written down. His chief enjoyments were conversation and music; and, although not unvisited by occasional depression of spirits, he was generally cheerful, and seemed, indeed, to enjoy life as much upon the whole as any of his friends whom nature had more bountifully endowed. One of the most interesting of Dr. Blacklock's productions is his paper, to which we have already more than once referred, on the Blind, in the Encyclopædia Britannica." He produced, also, a few other performances in prose of greater extent.

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At this time, too, lived an English female poet, who was also blind, Miss ANNA WILLIAMS. This lady came to London in 1730, when only twenty-four years of age, with her father, a Welsh surgeon, who had given up his profession in consequence of imagining that he had discovered a method of finding the longitude at sea, which would make his fortune. After many efforts, however, to obtain the patronage of Government for his scheme, and having exhausted his resources, he was obliged to take refuge in the Charter-house. His daughter, who had been liberally educated, and had at first mixed in all the gaieties of the metropolis, was now obliged to support both him and herself by working at her needle. But, after struggling in this way for some years, she

lost her sight by a cataract. Her situation, it might be imagined, was now both helpless and hopeless in the extreme; but a strong mind enabled her to rise above her calamity. She not only continued the exercise of her needle, we are told, with as much activity and skill as ever, but, never suffering her spirits to droop, distinguished herself just as she had been used to do, by the neatness of her dress, and preserved all her old attachment to literature. In 1746, after she had been six years blind, she published a translation from the French of La Bleterie's "Life of the Emperor Julian." Her father having some time after this met with Dr. Johnson, told him his story, and, in mentioning his daughter, gave so interesting an account of her, that the Doctor expressed himself desirous of making her acquaintance, and eventually invited her to reside in his house as a companion to his wife. Mrs. Johnson died soon after; but Miss Williams continued to reside with the Doctor till her death, in 1783, at the age of 77. In 1752 an attempt was made to restore her sight by the operation of couching, but without success. We find her father publishing, three years later, an account of his method for discovering the longitude; and about the same time Garrick gave the daughter a benefit at Drury Lane, which produced her two hundred pounds. Miss Williams also appeared again as an authoress, in 1766, when she published a volume, entitled "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse," written partly by herself and partly by several of her friends.

One of the most ingenious and original works ever written upon the habits and natural history of insects is the "Recherches sur les Abeilles of M. HUBER, of Geneva, who had been reduced to a state of complete blindness by gutta serena at the age of seventeen. He was assisted in his observations by his wife, an admirable woman, who made it the business of her life to contrive the means of alleviating her husband's misfortune, and for whom, indeed, it has been said, he was indebted chiefly to his blindness; since, although an attachment had existed between them previously, the lady's friends were so much opposed to the match that she would probably have been induced to listen to the addresses of another suitor, had not Huber's helpless condition awakened a sympathy she could not resist, and determined her, at all hazards, to unite herself to him. Madame Ducrest, who, in her Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, relates this anecdote, knew M. Huber and his wife; and nothing, she assures us, could exceed either the unwearied attention of the latter to every wish and feeling of her husband, or the happiness which, notwithstanding his blindness, he seemed in consequence to enjoy. During the war, we are told, Madame Huber used to put her husband in possession of the movements of the armies by arranging squadrons of pins on a map, in such a manner as to represent the different bodies of troops. A method was also invented by which he was enabled to write; and his wife used to make plans of the towns they inhabited, in relief,

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for him to study by the touch. In short, so many ways did her affection find of gladdening his darkened existence, that he was wont to declare he should be miserable were he to cease to be blind. "I should not know," said he, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter."*

CHAPTER XVIII.

MR. PRESCOTT; M. AUGUSTIN THIERRY; M. MARY-LAFON.

IT might be thought that, of all literary performances, those of the historian, with his labours of research and continual reference to and comparison of documents, would be the most impracticable for one not having the free use of his eyes. There is no kind of writing which it is so impossible to spin merely out of the brain as history. Even the exactest and best stored memory will often find itself at fault in the minute knowledge required for the full exposition of the transactions of a distant age, or indeed of any considerable series of past events. Yet, formidable as the difficulty is, it has been in several instances both coped with and overcome. We have a History of Britain, coming down to the Norman Conquest, and extending to six books, by Milton, which seems to have been, at least in part, written after he became blind, though probably it was the loss of his sight that prevented him from going on with it. But perhaps the most remarkable instances of the ardent and successful prosecution of historic studies in the most untoward and difficult circumstances of this nature are two that belong to our own day. One is that of the distinguished American writer, Mr. William Hickling Prescott. His own account of his case is in the highest degree interesting. He is stated to have been born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1796, and to have been a student at Harvard College,

* If it were our object to illustrate merely how wonderfully large an amount of acquaintance and communication with surrounding objects may be attained even under the all but complete deprivation of the ordinary inlets for knowledge, we might refer to several, other remarkable examples, such as those of David Gilbert Tait, related by Dr. Hibbert in his "Description of the Shetland Islands," of James Mitchell, first brought forward by Professor Dugald Stewart (and of which probably the fullest and latest account is to be found in Sir William Hamilton's edition of Mr. Stewart's "Collected Works," vol. iv. pp. 300-370; Edin. 1854), and of

Laura Bridgman, the most interesting of all, which has been made familiar to us by Mr. Dickens, the late Mr. Buckingham, and other travellers in the United States of America. We might refer also to the many curious details given in the little volume, entitled "The Lost Senses," by the late Dr. Kitto, himself a remarkable instance of eminent attainments in literature and skill in writing, acquired and exercised under disadvantages of which the complete extinction of the sense of hearing might almost be said to have been the least. See, in addition to his own account in "The Lost Senses," his "Life," by Dr. Ryland.

where he graduated in 1814, when he met with the great misfortune of his life, an accidental blow, that at once deprived him of the sight of one eye, and was soon followed by disease in the other. He had been intended for the bar; but that was now no more to be thought of. Instead of entering a profession, he repaired to Europe, and spent two years in travelling in England, France, and Italy; but, although his general health was improved, the most eminent oculists in London and Paris had been able to do nothing for his eyesight. We may gather, however, from some of his own expressions, that another sense had, as usually happens, already begun to some extent to supply the place of the lost one. It would seem, too, that the power of vision had been partially restored to him when he originally planned his first literary work, his "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella," which he gave to the world in 1837. In the Preface to the first edition of that work he says:-"I hope I shall be acquitted of egotism, although I add a few words respecting the peculiar embarrassments I have encountered in compiling this History. Soon after my arrangements were made, early in 1826, for obtaining the necessary materials from Madrid, I was deprived of the use of my eyes for all purposes of reading and writing, and had no prospect of again recovering it. This was was a serious obstacle to the prosecution of a work requiring the perusal of a large mass of authorities, in various languages, the contents of which were to be carefully collated, and transferred to my own pages, verified by minute reference. Thus shut out from one sense, I was driven to rely exclusively on another, and to make the ear do the work of the eye. With the assistance of a reader-uninitiated, it may be added, in any modern language but his own-I worked my way through several venerable Castilian quartos, until I was satisfied of the practicability of the undertaking. I next procured the services of one more competent to aid me in pursuing my historical inquiries. The process was slow and irksome enough, doubtless, to both parties, at least till my ear was accommodated to foreign sounds, and an antiquated, oftentimes barbarous, phraseology, when my progress became more sensible, and I was cheered with the prospect of success. It certainly would have been a far more serious misfortune to be led thus blindfold through the pleasant paths of literature; but my track stretched, for the most part, across dreary wastes, where no beauty lurked to arrest the traveller's eye and charm his senses. After persevering in this course for some years, my eyes, by the blessing of Providence, recovered sufficient strength to allow me to use them, with tolerable freedom, in the prosecution of my labours, and in the revision of all previously written. I hope I shall not be misunderstood, as stating these circumstances to deprecate the severity of criticism, since I am inclined to think the greater circumspection I have been compelled to use has left

me, on the whole, less exposed to inaccuracies than I should have been in the ordinary mode of composition. But, as I reflect on the many sober hours I have passed in wading through black-letter tomes, and through manuscripts whose doubtful orthography and defiance of all punctuation were so many stumbling-blocks to my amanuensis, it calls up a scene of whimsical distresses, not usually encountered, on which the good-natured reader may, perhaps, allow I have some right, now that I have got the better of them, to dwell with satisfaction." In a note he quotes what Johnson says of Milton's work on English History attempted in similar circumstances:-"To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible but with more skilful and attentive help than can be commonly obtained;" and adds, "This remark of the great critic, which first engaged my attention in the midst of my embarrassments, although discouraging at first, in the end stimulated the desire to overcome them."

In the Preface to the first edition of "The Conquest of Mexico," which he produced in 1843, or six years later, Mr. Prescott informs us, that, owing to the state of his eyes, he had in the composition of that work been obliged to use a writing-case made for the blind, which does not permit the writer to see his own manuscript; nor had he ever corrected, or even read, his own original draught. But it is in the original Preface to his third work, "The Conquest of Peru," dated four years later, or in 1847, that he enters into the fullest details. "While at the University," he there says, "I received an injury in one of my eyes, which deprived me of the sight of it. The other soon after was attacked by inflammation so severely that for some time I lost the sight of that also; and, though it was subsequently restored, the organ was so much disordered as to remain permanently debilitated; while, twice in my life, I have been deprived of the use of it for all purposes of reading and writing for several years together. It was during one of these periods that I received from Madrid the materials for the 'History of Ferdinand and Isabella;' and, in my disabled condition, with my transatlantic treasures lying around me, I was like one pining from hunger in the midst of abundance. In this state, I resolved to make the ear, if possible, do the work of the eye. I procured the services of a secretary, who read to me the various authorities; and in time I became so far familiar with the sounds of the different foreign languages (to some of which, indeed, I had been previously accustomed by a residence abroad), that I could comprehend his reading without much difficulty. As the reading proceeded, I dictated copious notes; and, when these had swelled to a considerable amount, they were read to me repeatedly, till I had mastered their contents sufficiently for the purposes of composition. The same notes furnished an easy means of