by which the idiot acquires most readily a knowledge of external objects, long before his eye is accustomed to fix their image, or his ear to listen to sounds.

"Smell and taste are next cultivated; the former by presenting to the pupil various odors, which, at first, make no impression whatever, rose and as safoetida being received with equal favor. By degrees, and as the harmony of the functions is restored and the intellectual activity developed, this sense is awakened and lends again its aid to awaken others. The sense of taste is roused in the same manner, by placing in the mouth various substances, alternately, sapid and acid, bitter and sweet.

"The power of speech, so imperfect in all, is the most difficult to develop, and the part of idiot education that proceeds the slowest, and which, more than any other, except, perhaps, the moral treatment, requires the greatest attention, patience, and intelligence on the part of the teacher.

"The sight is next cultivated, and here, as indeed in every part of this miracle of instruction, great difficulties were at first encountered. The eyes of the idiot are often perfectly formed, but he sees nothing-they fix on no object. The organ he possesses but it is passive and dormant. The senses of smell and taste have been developed by direct action upon them; that of touch, by putting the hand in contact with different bodies; the stagnant eye of the idiot, however, cannot be moved by the hand of another. The method employed is due to the ingenuity of Seguin. He placed the child in a chamber, which was suddenly darkened so as to excite his attention, after which, a small opening in a shutter let in a single ray of light, before which various objects, agreeable to the pupil, arranged upon slides like those of a magic lantern, were successively passed. The light and its direction having once attracted his attention, was then, by a change of the opening in the shutter, moved up and down, to the right and left, followed, in most cases, by his heretofore motionless eyeballs. This is succeeded by exercises of gymnastics, which require the attention of the eye to avoid, not a dangerous bruise, but a disagreeable thump; games of balls and battledores are also used to excite this sense. Another means employed is to place yourself before the idiot, fix his eye by a firm look, varying this look according to various sentiments; pursuing for hours even, his moving but unimpassioned orbit; chasing it constantly, until finally it stops, fixes itself, and begins to see. After efforts of this kind, which require a patience and superiority of will which few men possess, the first reward comes to the teacher himself, for his identity is recognized by other means than the touch, and he catches the first beam of intelligence that radiates from the heretofore benighted countenance."

We had marked several additional paragraphs in order to show the progress of the idiot from the development of sight to some of the simpler intellectual operations. But we have already exceeded the space which we had proposed to devote to this article. We can only say, therefore, that when the teacher has once gained the control of this sense, his next object is to give his pupil some notion of color, form, and size. This done, he advances gradually to that of number, and so on, to the more simple arithmetical computations upon the slate or blackboard, reading and writing. The following brief extract will serve to show how the moral sense is awakened and cultivated in these miserable beings. "Tickets of good conduct are given to those who are designated, by the pupils themselves, as having done some kind and generous action, -as having been seen to run to the aid of one who had stumbled at play, who had divided among his companions the bon-bons he may have received from a visitor, or who had helped, in any way, one weaker than himself. Thus they are constantly on the look-out for good actions in one another; but they are most positively forbidden to repeat the negligences or unkind conduct which they may observe. The surveillance of the monitors is sufficient to detect these; and even were it not, M. Vallée prefers that they should go unpunished, rather than that they should serve to cherish the grovelling sentiments of envy and malice, which lurk in the breast of the informer and the scandal-monger."

A single extract farther, touching the general results of this training, and we leave the subject; expressing a hope, however, that those who have not already read the reports heretofore alluded to, will avail themselves of the first opportunity to do so.

"During the past six months," says Mr. Sumner, "I have watched, with eager interest, the progress which many young idiots have made in Paris, under the direction of M. Seguin, and at Biçêtre, under that of Messrs. Vaison and Vallée, and have seen, with no less gratification than astonishment, nearly a hundred fellow beings, who, but a short time since, were shut out from all communion with mankind, who were objects of loathing and disgust, many of whom rejected every article of clothing, others of whom, unable to stand erect, crouched themselves in corners, and gave signs of life only by piteous howls,-others, in whom the faculty of speech had never been developed, and many whose voracious and indiscriminate gluttony satisfied itself with whatever they could lay hands upon, with the garbage thrown to swine, or with their own excrements; - these unfortunate beings, the rejected of humanity,—I have seen properly clad, standing erect, walking, speaking, eating in an orderly manner at a common table, working quietly as carpenters and farmers, gaining, by their own labor, the means of existence;

storing their awakened intelligence by reading one to another; exercising towards their teachers and among themselves the generous feelings of man's nature, and singing in unison songs of thanksgiving."

REMARKS OF REV. J. D. BUTLER,

AT THE DINNER OF THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL

CELEBRATION OF

MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE.

"The Scholar-As Civilization advances, the Pupil of Learning is the Master of Art."

MR. PRESIDENT :-This toast embodies one of the convictions nearest my heart. During the few minutes I speak, I will confine my remarks to one of the modes through which the consummation prophesied in the sentiment just uttered must be attained, namely, through scholars delighting to honor whatsoever things are excellent. Opposed to such a generous appreciation stand various prejudices, which the man bent on the highest culture will withstand, even unto the uttermost. Most of these prejudices have their origin in a narrowness of mind, that seeks truth in its own little homestead, and nowhere else. Thus we are prone to view our country as the celestial empire, and all foreigners as outer barbarians, though the ocean of knowledge has received tributaries from every land. Accordingly it is in vain for most Englishmen to travel, since, like a snail, they are always at home in a shell of insular prejudices, or in a coach-load of luggage. Walking to and fro in Canada, they see England in the New World, and in this Union behold nothing but the turbulent spirit of democracy. The present age, when the ends of the earth see eye to eye, should it not laugh to scorn such arrogance? Yet how many among us cannot rise to the dignity of a national predilection, but are exclusive admirers of one section-North, South, East, or West,-of city or country, of one sect, party, calling, hobby, or college,-veritable brethren of that Dutch cooper, who swore that no man but a cooper should marry his daughter! A true scholar may ally himself to any party, but will never sink to a partisan, blind to see wise and good men among his antagonists, forgetful that all administrations-and all oppositions-are but a choice of evils, and that as the country suffers under the best, so it can survive, or shake off, the worst.

A man's own calling is prone to be a den, where he worships idols. Engrossing most of his attention, it is in his view the land

of light, as a mole's hole is to a mole; while other walks of life, as to which he is in the dark, pass with him for lands of darkness. Were there more ministers, who, like Payson, read through Rees' Encyclopedia more than once, there would be fewer of the sacred order stigmatized as a clan or caste, touching society at only one point, or technical characters, the whole human being shaped into an official thing, and nature's own man, with free faculties and warm sentiments, extinct. Not only do the three professions fail to strengthen each other, as they would do did they join hand in hand, but few scholars have any professional brethren. Spite of legal, medical, and ministerial associations, scholars are almost as isolated as medieval barons, each on his own hill-top tower,-pelicans of the wilderness, owls of the desert, sparrows alone on the house-tops.

Nor are sectarian trammels less hampering than those of country, party, or profession. Every sectarian professes to have a monopoly of truth. For two centuries Protestant England refused to learn from Papal Italy the true reckoning of time, preferring to fight with the stars in their courses, rather than agree with Rome. Instead of co-operating as to weightier matters, where they coincide, evangelical denominations are still beginning battles as to matters concerning which Scripture speaks nothing expressly, while temperament, taste and education will make men differ. Nay, in the same denomination many are intolerant of an extemporary, and as many of a written sermon; many excommunicate a man for a shibboleth, though he have in him the root of the matter;—and no wonder, for they sometimes smell a heresy in the Lord's prayer, since it says nothing of a Mediator.

But to nothing are scholars so prone to narrow their minds, as to their favorite study or darling idea. Here is a man of facts, who can do nothing but accumulate facts, counting systemmakers as dreamers. Would that he could feel his collections to be a rope of sand, till like be joined to like; a mob, till individuals are marshalled under species, and species under genera, like soldiers in an army. Over against this practical man stands a theorist, who in a steeple-chase of speculation ranges beyond the flaming bounds of space and time, counting facts and factmongers as the small dust of the balance. He knows as if he knew it not, that all philosophers before Bacon failed through building their reasonings on reasonings, not on observations; that Newton's greatest discovery was delayed, for years, by a mistake he had fallen into concerning a single fact; and that one false fact betrayed Lardner into his ridiculous demonstration, that to cross the Atlantic by steam is mathematically impossible. Thus men of theory and of practice stand affected toward each other, like the French engineers and soldiers in Egypt. The

engineers thought the soldiers were machines, while the soldiers, when certain engineers fell into a ditch from which they could not extricate themselves, answered their cries for help, saying: 'Where's your plan? Show us your plan. You surely don't think we can help you till you show us your plan." Next we meet a mathematician asking concerning Paradise Lost, What does it prove ? as if no man were anything more than one of Babbage's calculating machines. And there stands a poet, pretending that his memory is poorer than it is, as if the elements of all his creations, however sublime or fairy-like, were not furnished him by memory; the faculty which the ancients hence styled "Mother of all the Muses." Moreover, there are jealous lovers of excellence who, like old Hunker exclusionists, arrogate it all to themselves, and think that they are dispraised, whenever anybody else is praised. There is a straitest sect of purists who thank God that they are not as other men, because they never touch-a novel, or review, or work stitched in yellow paper. There are idolaters of the past, who in Dante's vision rose before him with heads so twisted that their chins hung over their back-bones. There are bigots who vegetate like rhubarb under a barrel, and see the world only through its bung-hole.

I need not say that a true scholar will shun all these arts of dwarfing, as the navigator shuns the beacon-fire, and that he will make his own, the truths these one-ideaed men have rallied round. When he sees monomaniacs rushing to contradictory extremes, he will reflect that each may be hastening to the niche he was ordained to fill, as the counterpoise of some other; as in politics, oppositions keep administrations from trenching upon the constitution; and as on board a man-of-war, marines keep sailors from mutiny. Even when constrained to view some of his opponents in the light of Philistines, left on the borders of Canaan to prove Israel, he will still recognize them as needful thorns. If he be a Conservative, he will not marvel that others are reformers, since they know that revolutions are best prevented by reforms; that every improvement is a change; that the changes accompanied by the greatest evils have been the greatest improvements; that the good is the enemy of the better; and that the law of habit makes physicians let patients die according to rule, rather than recover through departing from rule. But if he be a Reformer, he will not marvel that others are conservatives, when they consider how many changes, rooting up wheat with tares, are no improvements; how much movement is, as in a squirrel's rolling cage, without progress; how many dream that even religion was intended for nothing else but to be mended; how following the wisest movements of others may be as foolish for us, as Pharaoh's following Moses into the Red Sea proved for him. If he be the nursling of an Alma Mater, he