really artistic qualities of mind are wanting
in them. Where the power to represent is
greatest, they still have nothing to represent
but what is lowest and most obvious. It is
like a blind poet attempting to describe a
sunrise, or the aspect of the sea, or the desert.
We know at once in his case, that there can
be nothing in his description at once original
and true. Deaf mutes can know no more of
the deepest things in the human mind and
life (as these deepest things are for social man,
and are   awakened only by human intercourse),
than the blind man knows of golden and
crimson clouds, and gleams upon the water,
and the blaze and blackness of the desert.

Though we are naturally apt to overrate
what education can do in the case of deaf
mutes, it is not the less true that what is
actually done for them in the best institutions
is marvellous. It is not only that they are
made happy,—that their habits are carefully
formed, their tempers controlled, and social
qualities largely developed—but so much
communication of minds with each other and with
the external world is established that those
who are aware of the difficulties of the case
know not how sufficiently to admire. The pupils
not only have a language of signs, but one of
words, as copious as ours, however defective
in the meanings conveyed; and the pupils now
not only write this letter language and speak
it with the fingers, but actually utter it with
the organs of speech—not, of course, because
they can hear themselves or anybody else
but that they may the better comprehend the
nature, and enjoy the uses of language. It is
no uncommon thing now for advanced pupils
to know what people say by the motion of
their mouths, and to converse by speech, more
or less odd and disagreeable, but intelligible.
From these institutions they go forth fitted
for various employments, and capable of
various pleasures which they could never have
become qualified for at home. As for their
occupations, they make good copying
clerks, accountants, wood-carvers, ordinary
engravers, and the like: and the girls are
admirable at dress-making and household
arts. Their grand difficulty in life is a moral
one. They have such a prodigious opinion of
themselves and their order. Most other
sufferers are depressed and humbled; but
these are mightily exalted. From their
asylum they look down on the outer world
with great compassion for those who can hear
and speak. It is rather difficult to make out
the grounds of this compassion, although it is
easy to see how the conceit must grow by the
absence of collision and comparison with
other minds. The parents of an existing
member of Parliament (a fair speaker),
were both deat and dumb; and they
made a great lamentation over each child
as it was found to be able to hear. They
were themselves so very happy, they said, and
their poor children would, after all, be only
like everybody else!

By this time the totally deaf child
ought to be trained in a special school.
If this is impossible, the parents and
family should learn his language of natural
gestures, and should teach him the finger
speech. They can at least form his habits
well, and, it is to be hoped, train him to
govern his temper and passions. They cannot
make him wise, intellectually or morally; but
they may make him harmless, and happy to
the extent of his small moral capability. It
will require incessant vigilance, good sense,
self-command, and self-sacrifice on the part
of his guardians: but this much may be
done.

For the same reason that the totally deaf
should go to school, the partially deaf should
remain at home; that is, should be least
exposed to isolation and forlornness. The
partially deaf have, it is true, no class to
belong to; for there are all possible gradations
of defective hearing, so that no special
method of education will suit any number.
The partially deaf child must stay at home
and be there enabled to make the best of a
very terrible misfortune and grief. The
misfortune is not for a moment to be compared
to that of the deaf mute; but the grief is
infinitely greater. The sufferer has no class
to belong to. He is expected to be, and to
learn, and to do like others without having the
means. He has the inestimable advantage of
the use of language, with all the mental,
moral, and social benefits it involves: but he
can learn by it only what is expressly
communicated to himself. For him there is no
public speaking or preaching—no learning in.
class, where minds stimulate each other—no
general conversation, with the vast amount of
knowledge and variety of ideas thence arising.
It is a serious thing to him, though less
important, that he loses a vast amount
of the most ordinary pleasures, from the
grandest music to the humblest and slightest
natural sounds which fall pleasantly upon the
sense.

But the mere privation is his smallest grievance.
His life is rendered laborious by so
chief a sense serving him so ill. He is apt to
brood over painful and unamiable thoughts,
so solitary and still as his life for the most
part is. From being driven in upon himself,
he is self-conscious, shy, and too generally
irritable and suspicious. While these
tendencies are universally recognised and pitied,
it seems strange that parents should do so
little as they do to save the infirm child from
the effects of his infirmity. They are
constantly surprised, when it is too late, at his
not knowing all manner of things that he has
never been told, and which everybody else
learned by general conversation. They are
amazed and pained at various faults and
deficiencies that early care might have obviated.
By care, we do not mean indulgence. No
creature has more need of the self-control
obtained from steady discipline at home,