kind. These at first served only to convey
fears and apprehensions, especially in the
night-time. Of perfect idiocy produced in
the same manner by a moral cause, an
affecting example is given by Pinel. Two
young men, brothers, were carried off by the
conscription, and, in the first action in which
they were engaged, one of them was shot
dead by the side of the other. The survivor
was instantly struck with perfect idiocy. He
was taken home to his father's house, where
another brother was so affected by the sight
of him, that he was seized in the same
manner; and, in this state of perfect idiocy,
they were both received into the Bicêtre.
For the production of such an extraordinary
result, it is not necessary that the mental
impression should be of a painful description.
Pinel mentions an engineer, who, on
receiving a flattering letter from Robespierre
respecting an improvement he had proposed
in the construction of cannon, was struck
motionless on the spot, and soon after
conveyed to the Bicêtre in a state of complete
idiocy." It may be questioned, we think,
whether in all these cases there was not a
strong predisposition to the melancholy state
thus superinduced by circumstances, and it is
to be observed that the general question of
idiocy has received some light since Dr.
Abercrombie's time.

It was not supposed until recently that a
child who wanted the sense to feed itself,
could ever be taught to write; or that one
incapable of dressing or undressing, could
ever learn arithmetic; yet, the faculties
required for each of these two sets of operations
are distinct, and this is known to be a mistake.
Patients with natural instincts too weak to
eat with decency, or to perform other daily
functions properly, have been found to possess
intellectual perceptions sufficiently strong to
enable them to acquire one or more of the
imitative and mechanical branches of art or
science, with perfect success; and the cultivation
of the best faculty has in nearly all cases
improved the other faculties. Dr. Fodére
(Traité du goîture et du crétinisme) had met,
he says, with idiots gifted with especial talents
for copying designs, for finding rhymes and
for performing music. " I have known others,"
he adds, " put watches together and other
pieces of mechanism; yet these individuals
not only were unable to read books which
treated of their arts, but were utterly
incoherent when spoken to about them." At the
Essex Hall Asylum for Idiots, near Colchester,
there is a youth whose case, when first
admitted, was looked upon as quite hopeless.
He was deaf, incapable of articulating
although not dumb, and appeared to have no
sense of change of place or change of the
circumstances surrounding him. Yet his tutors
gradually found out that, like Dr. Fodére's
mechanists, he had a latent power of construction.
This being assiduously encouraged, he
presently made a neat model of a ship, with
nothing to copy it from, but the figure of a
vessel printed on a cotton pocket-handkerchief.
He is now the glazier and carpenter
of the establishment, and does his work
admirably. It is predicted of this once deaf
and speechless creature, who now speaks and
hears perfectly, that if he be placed under the
roof of some carpenter and his wife, or on an
estate, he will make a valuable journeyman,
and be an amiable, gentle, and attached
dependent. Another boy in the same asylum
could do nothing at first but tailor's work.
He has now acquired a passion for sewing on
buttons. He always carries a bag, containing
needles and thread, a thimble, and a large
supply of buttons. Whenever a male visitor
appears, this boy scrutinises the state of his
buttons with the deepest interest. If he can
only find a visitor with a loose button or with
a button wanting, he is happy, and instantly
sets to work to sew it on again with the
greatest dexterity. The Reverend Mr. Sidney
reports of this lad: "he was so anxious to
exhibit his skill to me, that he wanted to cut
off one of my buttons to show how well he
could restore it; but, luckily, I happened to
observe one nearly off a boy's jacket, and he
sewed it on as neatly and firmly as you could
conceive."

The devoted and distinguished founder of
the asylum on the Abendberg, in Switzerland,
Dr. Guggenbühl—whose name has a
peculiar attraction for us as being what an
uneducated idiot might hit upon, in trying to
say Jones—is inclined to think that no
special aptitude is so frequently developed
among idiots as one for mental arithmetic.
It is remarkable that among these disordered
intellects, order and numbers should often be,
of all other accomplishments, the most readily
acquired. A patient admitted into the Park
House Asylum for idiots, at Highgate—at
first useless and generally incapable—was
gradually trained to set out all the Sunday
clothes for the rest of the inmates; and this
duty (in which he is assisted by one or two
of his school-fellows) he directs and performs
with curious exactness. There is a boy at
Essex Hall who cleans and takes care of all
the knives and forks; he counts them carefully
at stated times, and, if he misses one,
never rests until he finds it. Several calculating
boys are mentioned in the reports of
the various asylums. They work out in their
minds arithmetical problems of a by no
means easy nature, that are put to them; but
they are wholly unable to calculate on paper
or slate, or to describe how they get at their
results. Distinctive specialities belong to
some idiots, so fine and curious as to be
scarcely credible. A youth at the Highgate
Asylum has the extraordinary gift of invariably
knowing the time, within a minute or
two, at any period of the day. On our asking
him what o'clock it was, he instantly informed
us; and he "went" better than our watch,
though it is a watch of reputation. At Dr.