and neither in that way nor any other way will
his mind expressly meet that of anybody else.
When he  does at length look at anything, it
is at his own hand. He spreads the finders,
and holds up the hand close before his face,
and moves his head from side to side. At first,
the mother and the rest laugh, and call it a
baby trick; but after a time the laughter is
rather forced, and they begin to wish he
would not do so. We once saw a child on
her mother's lap laughing at the spinning of
a half-crown on the table, when, in an
instant, the mother put the little creature
down almost threw her down—on the carpet,
with an expression of anguish in her face
perfectly astonishing. The child had chanced
to hold up her open hand before her face in
her merry fidget; and the mother, who had
watched over an idiot brother from her youth
up, could not bear that terrible token, although
in this case it was a mere accident.

The wearing uncertainty of many years
succeeds the infancy. The ignorant notions
of idiotcy that prevailed before we knew even
the little that we yet know of the brain,
prevent the parents recognising the real state of
the case. The old legal accounts of idiotcy,
and the old suppositions of what it is, are
very unlike what they see. The child ought
not, according to legal definition, to know his
own name, but he certainly does; for when
his own plate or cup is declared to be ready,
he rushes to it. He ought not to be able, by
law, " to know letters;" yet he can read, and
even write, perhaps, although nobody can tell
how he learned, for he never seemed to attend
when taught. It was just as if his fingers
and tongue went of themselves, while his
mind was in the moon. Again, the law
declared anybody an idiot "who could not count
twenty pence; " whereas, this boy seems, in
some unaccountable way, to know more about
sums (of money and of everything else) than
anybody in the family. He does not want to
learn figures, his arithmetic is strong without
them, and always instantaneously ready.
Of course we do not mean that every idiot has
these particular powers. Many cannot speak;
more cannot read. But almost every one of
the thousands of idiots in England has some
power that the legal definition declares him
not to have, and that popular prejudice will
not believe. Thus does the mother go on
from year to year, hardly admitting that her
boy is " deficient," and quite sure that he is
not an idiot—there being some things in
which he is so very clever!

The great improvement in the treatment
of idiots and lunatics since science began to
throw light on the separate organisation of the
human faculties, is one of the most striking
instances in all human experience of the
practical blessedness induced by knowledge. In a
former paper of this journal an account was
given* of the way in which, by beneficent
training; the apparent faculties of idiots are
made to bring out the latent ones, and the
strong powers to exercise the weaker, until the
whole class are found to be capable of a
cultivation never dreamed of in the old days
when the name IDIOT swallowed up all the
rights and all the chances of the unfortunate
creature who was so described. In those
days the mother might well deny the
description, and refuse the term. She would
point to the wonderful faculty her child had
in some one direction, and admit no more
than that he was " not like other children."
Well, this is enough. She need not be
driven further. If her Harry is "not like
other children," that is enough for his own
training, and that of the rest of the household.

*Vol. VI. pp.313 317.

A training it may be truly called for them
all, from the father to the kitchen-maid. The
house that has an idiot in it can never be like
any other. The discipline is very painful,
but, when well conducted and borne, it is
wonderfully beautiful. Harry spoils things,
probably: cuts with scissors whatever can be
cut—the leaves of books, the daily
newspaper, the new shirt his mother is making,
the doll's arm, the rigging of the boat his
brother has been fitting up for a week, the
maid's cap ribbon, his father's silk purse. It
would be barbarous to take scissors from him,
and inconvenient too; for he spends hours in
cutting out the oddest and prettiest things!—
symmetrical figures, in paper; figures that
seem to be fetched out of the kaleidoscope.
Lapfuls of such shapes does he cut out
in a week, wagging his head, and seeming
not to look at the scissors; but never
making a wrong snip. The same
orderliness of faculty seems to prevail throughout
his life. He must do precisely the same thing
at precisely the same moment every day:
must have always the same chair, wailing or
pushing in great distress if anybody else is
using it: and must wear the same clothes, so
that it is a serious trouble to get any new
clothes put on. However carefully they may
be changed while he is asleep, there is no
getting him dressed in the morning without
sad distress. One such Harry, whom we
knew very well, had a present one day of a
plaything most happily chosen;—a pack of
cards. There was symmetry in plenty! When
he first took them into his hands; they
happened to be all properly sorted, except that
the court-cards were all in a batch at the top,
and one other—the ten of spades—which had
slipped out, and was put at the top of all.
For all the rest of his life (he died at nineteen)
the cards must be in that order and no
other; and his fingers quivered nervously
with haste to put them in that order if they
were disarranged. One day while he was out
walking, we took that top card away and
shuffled the rest. On his return, he went to
work as usual. When he could not find the
ten of spades, he turned his head about in