the blind," was not attained, Chaptal, minister of interior, recommended that it be transferred to the old establishment of the Quinze-Vingts, or asylum for fifteen scores (300) blind soldiers. This step was probably taken to get rid of Hauy, who had proved incompetent to direct the establishment which he had created. He was pensioned; and his unfortunate pupils were utterly demoralized by being mingled with the inmates of the Quinze-Vingts; all of whom were paupers; and some of whom were beggars. After an eclipse of fourteen years, the school was rescued from its demoralizing relations, and moved to a house in Rue St. Victor, where it revived under the care of Dr. Guille. His successor, Dr. Dufau, completely regenerated it; obtained for it liberal patronage of the government; and made it the leading establishment of the kind upon the Continent.

Haiy attempted, upon the strength of his reputation, to establish a boarding-school for children. It was dignified with the name of Musée des Aveugles, but had no success; and lived only about two years. He then went to St. Petersburg, and commenced, under royal patronage, the establishment of a school for the blind. He had partial success in awakening public interest; but he failed in the management of his school for the same reasons as in Paris. He was, however, treated with great respect, and received the decoration of the order of St. Vladimir. He then tried his hand in Berlin; but although the institution which he founded took root, and still flourishes, his connection with it was ended, and he returned to Paris, to die a dependent upon his less brilliant but abler brother.

The fruits which Hauy planted have multiplied, until all the principal countries of Europe have their special institutions for the instruction of the blind in the rudiments of learning, in music, and in the mechanical arts.

SKETCH OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF INSTITUTIONS FOR THE BLIND IN THE UNITED STATES.

The first public and systematic efforts made in the United States to secure for blind children a share in the advantages of common-school instruction, were made in Boston

in 1829.

Dr. John D. Fisher while studying medicine in Paris had visited the French school for the blind; and on his return home associated himself with a half dozen benevolent gentlemen, among whom was William H. Prescott, the eminent historian, who was himself partially blind. It was shown by experiment, in the meetings of these gentlemen, that blind children could be taught to read embossed type, to distinguish outline maps, &c. They therefore obtained from the legislature an act (dated March 2, 1829) incorporating an institution, to be styled the New England Asylum for the Blind; which name has been since changed to that of Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind. The act of incorporation provided that the institution should be under the control of twelve trustees, eight to be chosen annually by the corporation, and four by the governor and council. The trustees proceeded at once to collect money to establish a school, and appealed to the legislature for aid. That body had previously made a grant of $6,000, to be continued annually, for the education of indigent deafmute pupils at the American Asylum in Hartford, and as there were not beneficiaries enough to exhaust the appropriation, the unexpended balance was granted to the institution for the blind.

In 1831 Dr. Samuel G. Howe took direction of the establishment, and he has continued at its head ever since.

The grants by the legislature were during many years proportioned to the number of beneficiaries received and educated; but were increased with the growth of the establishment, and with the number of State beneficiaries received. Now the sum appropriated is $30,000 a year, upon condition that all indigent blind persons belonging to Masssachusetts who are recommended by the governor and council, shall be received and educated gratuitously.

The other New England States immediately took measures to secure for their blind children the advantages of instruction; but, instead of erecting institutions at home, sent their beneficiaries to the Massachusetts school.

This history is given somewhat in detail, because nearly the same course has been followed in establishing kindred institutions in other States. It shows, also, how our citizens are accustomed to work. Two or three zealous persons gather together in a small chamber, and pass resolutions that such and such an institution is desirable and must be had. If it meets approval, others come into the movement. They procure an act of incorporation, and when the establishment has got successfully at work, they ask, and generally obtain, aid from the public treasury.

It shows, also, an important fundamental feature in respect to which our public institutions for the blind differ. Some are, legally, private corporations. They may, or may not, receive aid from the State, in shape of payment for beneficiaries; but the State has no direct control over the management. This is left to a board of trustees, chosen annually by the members of the corporation. Such is the original New York Institution for the Blind, in the city of New York.

Some are strictly State institutions; the State owns the property, appoints the trustees, (virtually the superintendents,) and pays all the expenses. Such is the New York State Institution at Batavia, and the Ohio Institution for the Blind.

A third class are partly private, partly public establishments. The property is held by a corporation; but the State appoints a certain number of the board of trustees, generally one-third, sometimes one-half. Such is the Perkins Institution of Massachusetts.

There are advantages and disadvantages in each mode, but the two chief advantages claimed for the third class are strong. First, institutions so organized call for the personal sympathy and the intelligent co-operation of a considerable number of private citizens, and such are sure to be found when called for. Second, they are kept out of the sphere of local politics and the scramble for office. Some institutions already suffer from the fact that practically, however excellent the superintendent may be, however valuable his knowledge and experience, he is turned out when the political party which put him in, is defeated at the polls.

But to return to history. In 1831 Dr. Akerly, of New York City, who had been active in introducing instruction for deaf-mutes, interested himself and others in procuring like benefits for the blind. Some children were taken from the almshouse and instructed, by "way of experiment," in a small room in Canal street, by Dr. John D. Russ, who raised the infant institution to maturity; and though he long since ceased to superintend it officially, he has not yet ceased to be its efficient friend.

The first thought and purpose of building up special institutions for the instruction of the blind seems to have occurred to benevolent persons in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania almost simultaneously, but without concert.

In Philadelphia the benevolent Robert Vaux had been urging the matter for several years upon his friends in that city, before they fairly organized the excellent institution which has grown to be among the foremost of the world.

The success of these institutions awakened an interest over the whole United States. A detachment of pupils from the Perkins Institute visited seventeen States, and were exhibited before the legislatures and people. Schools were established successively in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Maryland, Michigan, Texas, Arkansas, Minnesota, California, New York State, Kansas, Louisiana, and West Virginia Thus it has become part of the fixed policy of the country that the blind shall have

a full share of the instruction.

The legislatures of thirty-one States make special appropriations, either for the maintenance of schools for the blind, or for the support of a certain number of beneficiaries in the institutions of other States.

Nineteen special institutions are in operation for the sole benefit of the blind, and seven others of which the blind share the benefits with the deaf mutes. The aggregate of their property is about $3,500,000. Their aggregate annual income is about half a million. They have received in all 6,476 pupils. Their actual present number is 2,018. The general statistics of these institutions are given in the table subjoined. They are made up from recent written returns, given by the several superintendents.

We propose, in another article, to give a sketch of the course of instruction pursued in these institutions; to consider the principles upon which they are founded, the mode in which they are administered; and to compare them with European institutions of the same kind.

SAM'L G. HOWE

EDUCATION OF THE DEAF AND DUMB.

As will be seen from the tables, the number of schools for the instruction of the deaf and dumb in the country is thirty-eight. In these were gathered during the last academic year more than four thousand pupils, an increase of over two hundred from the preceding year. Pennsylvania has taken a step towards clearing herself from the charge of making insufficient provision for her deaf-mutes, by incorporating an institution to be located at Pittsburgh.

No essential changes have been made in the methods of instruction pursued in the several institutions. Articulation is, however, receiving increased attention, as an accomplishment for the comparatively few, who, having acquired speech before losing hearing, retain more or less facility of vocal utterance.

CONVENTION AT INDIANAPOLIS.

An event of interest and importance was the assembling of a convention of experts in this profession, at Indianapolis, on the 24th of August, 1870. Twenty-four institutious were represented by eighty-three officers and teachers, and the deliberations of the convention were continued for nearly four days. The subjects presented and debated were as follows:

Language, considered in reference to the instruction of primary classes, by Horace S. Gillett, A. M., instructor in the Indiana institution.

Prizes as rewards for superiority in scholarship, by H. A. Turton, esq., instructor in the Iowa institution.

The proper order of signs, by E. G. Valentine, A. B., instructor in the Wisconsin institution.

The higher education of deaf-mutes, by John C. Bull, A. M., instructor in the Connecticut institution.

Religious services for deaf-mutes, by H. W. Milligan, A. M., instructor in the Illinois institution.

Day-schools for the deaf and dumb, by Edward A. Fay, A. M., professor in the National Deaf-mute College.

The nobility, dignity, and antiquity of the sign language, by J. C. Covell, A. M., principal of the Virginia institution.

Compulsory education in its relation to deaf-mutes, by J. L. Noyes, A. M., principal of the Minnesota institution.

Organization of institutions for the deaf and dumb, by Philip G. Gillett, A. M., principal of the Illinois institution.

Method of preaching to deaf-mutes, by Franklin Read, esq., instructor in the Illinois institution.

A practical view of deaf-mute instruction, by Isaac Lewis Peet, A. M., principal of the New York institution.

The progress of deaf-mute instruction, by Harvey P. Peet, Ph. D., LL. D., late principal of the New York institution.

Mimography.

Articulation.

Probably no subject is of greater importance in the instruction of deaf-mutes than the one brought forward in the article first named above, for it is well understood by instructors that when a mute child has written language well in use, his education proceeds with no greater difficulty than that of his hearing brother.

FAMILIARITY WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ESSENTIAL.

Mr. Gillett, an instructor of long experience in the Indiana institution, stated tho question and the difficulty as follows, in opening his paper on language: "The more familiar a deaf-mute is with the English language at any period of school life, the more satisfactory, in general, will be his progress in study at any subsequent period. The advantages possessed and acquisitions made in this branch of education during his first year will favorably affect every remaining part of his course. It is of the highest importance, then, that he begin and proceed according to the best methods. And here arises the great question which takes precedence of every other in the literary education of this class of persons. What is the best method of making them acquainted with our language?

"Are the processes now employed the best? Do deaf-mutes graduate from our institutions with that ability, not to say accuracy, in the expression of their thoughts, which may reasonably be expected? Does the average acquirement of the ordinary and high-class scholars approach that of the common-school and academic graduates

of our public schools as nearly as, under the different circumstances, we have a right to demand?

"However these questions may be answered, there seems to be among the instructors of deaf-mutes a prevailing dissatisfaction with their usual rate of progress and amount of attainment in language. Their advancement should be more rapid, the results of study larger and more complete. Their minds are believed to be capable of something better. They should leave the school, if they finish the prescribed course, with an ability to express their thoughts more correctly and with greater facility; some, at least, with elegance."

Again the difficulty was stated in a paper on the proper order of signs, by Mr. Valentine, a young teacher in the Wisconsin institution, as follows:

"It must be evident to you who are so conversant with deaf-mutes, to you who have watched their conversation and read their productions, that they do not want for ideas. They could talk from morning till night, with no intermission, if permitted; and their productions, all in all, show much thought. What, then, is the difficulty? I believe it to be this: When they write out their thoughts, they express them, not in the English order, but in the order they have been most accustomed to use, in the socalled natural order. In short, they fail in the converting process. Their minds not being sufficiently strong to grasp two opposite systems at once, they naturally acquire the system most commonly used. They never learn to use the English order correctly, because they never learn to think in that order."

Referring to the importance of requiring deaf-mute children to practice the verbal language taught them in school, Mr. B. Talbot, principal of the Iowa institution, and a teacher of many years' experience, said:

"If a pupil must make signs, and cannot get along without it, of course we must let him make signs, but we can very easily encourage the other form of expression. I know that sign-making is the easiest-it is the laziest process-and that is probably the reason why we follow it; but if we do our whole duty to the deaf-mute we must, as soon as possible, get him out of the habitual use of signs, and as soon as possible get him into the constant practice of words put together into sentences. I do not care how short they are; in fact, the fewer words in a sentence the better for a deaf-mute, until you get him into the ready and habitual use of the simpler forms of expression. We should, in every way that we possibly can, secure this practice in the use of words. I am sure, from my experience in the school-room and out of it, as well as from what others testify as the result of their observation and experience, that there is no easier method of promoting the early use of verbal language. It seems to me that this is the point of the article before us-practice, practice, over and over again.”

QUESTIONS DISCUSSED BY MESSRS, GALLAUDET AND KEEP.

Alluding to the essays of Messrs. Gillett and Valentine, the writer of this article spoke as follows:

"I have listened to the paper which has been read this afternoon, as I listened to the paper read this morning, with a very great interest. I have followed the discussions as closely as I might with no less interest; and I see running through it all the fact which I am very glad to have acknowledged so plainly in this convention, and which we have all to look in the face, that the deaf and dumb, as a class, do not master the English language. I take it that it is the confession of the discussion and of the article that the deaf and dumb in our institutions, as a class, do not master the English language. I consider this a very serious confession. I do not know that I can say when I first became aware of this great fact, though I can look back to the time when I was not aware of it, in my experience as a teacher of the deaf and dumb. But it is a fact ot which I am fully satisfied, and I find it pretty well confessed here to day. Other evidences of this fact have also come to my knowledge. To the college at Washington have come students from various parts of the country, representing a large number of the institutions. These pupils have come to us for the purpose of extending their edu cation; of going into the study of various branches of learning not taught them elsewhere. We, of course, have to examine them, in order to learn what have been their previous attainments; to learn how far they have mastered that language, which in the college at Washington is made the basis of communication and instruction; I meas. not the sign language, but the English language. In the working of our college, we find young men of fine minds, who have had the best advantages that the country can afford, in institutions second to none, who, doubtless, have had faithful teachers, and have been earnest and persevering themselves, and had a great ambition to be schoiars-we find such young men not by any means masters of the English language. la saying this, I mean, not masters of the English language in its comparatively simpler forms-not, of course, the elementary forms, but the simpler forms of expression. In some of the middle classes of the college we have young men whose minds are well stored with facts, who have a good knowledge of mathematics and the natural sciences. who, perhaps, know something of French and a good deal of Latin, and who yet are noi

masters of the English language, as we feel, and as every one of you would admit, if placed in communication with them, they ought to be."

The only serious opposition to the views thus set forth was made by Mr. John R. Keep, for many years an instructor in the institution at Hartford, who said: "I am very sorry, for one, to have the attainments of the deaf and dumb, under all the difficulties that they have to encounter, belittled for the sake of establishing a theory; to have the proclamation made here, to go forth to the world, that, after all [ our efforts to educate the deaf and dumb, they do not master the English language. But who ever claimed that they do? It is the wonder of the age that they accomplish so much, considering the embarrassments under which they labor. To say they do not master the English language is simply saying that they are deaf and dumb, born into the world under very great disadvantages; but God has so wonderfully constructed the human mind that, of its own native force, it has invented a way to communicate its ideas. The question before us is, whether we shall, before we have reached the top of the scaffold, knock out the foundation upon which it rests; whether we shall stand on the ladder and pull out its rounds above us, and flatter ourselves that we are going up all the faster. Would you destroy the French language in order thereby to hasten the acquisition of the English? Where these two spoken languages are used in one family they do not find it necessary to destroy the genius and the idiom of the one and go into a barbarous dialect of jargon in order to acquire a knowledge of the other. On the contrary, each person speaks his own language, and speaks it purely and without regard to the other. It seems to be monstrous that it should be asserted here that the sign language, as is confessed by all, the only medium we have by which to introduce the deaf-mute child into the knowledge of English speech, is a dangerous thing to use in the instruction of deaf-mutes."

CONCLUSIONS.

It is proper to remark that Mr. Keep states what is not a fact when he says "the sign language is confessed" to be "the only medium we have by which to introduce the deaf-mute child into the knowledge of English speech." And, further, he begs the question when he says "the question before us is, whether we shall, before we have reached the top of the scaffold, knock out the foundation upon which it rests."

It is not, however, the purpose of this article to renew the discussion of the convention, but simply to call attention to the fact that a general admission was accorded of the unsatisfactoriness of certain results of the system now generally pursued in this country. This admission may be regarded as a wholesome evidence of a purpose on the part of the body of teachers of deaf-mutes to work out reforms whenever opportunity offers, and not to rest satisfied with repeating the processes of past generations. It would be impossible, in the limits allotted to this paper, to give even a resumé of the discussions of the convention. A full report of the proceedings has been published by the Indianapolis institution, whose generous hospitalities the convention enjoyed, and copies of the document can be procured by any one interested in its subject-matter, on application to Rev. Thomas MacIntire, superintendent of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, Indianapolis, Indiana.

PROFESSIONAL DEAF-MUTE LITERATURE.

It may be of interest to many engaged in the work of general education to know that the profession of deaf-mute instruction has its current literature, embracing a quarterly periodical, besides several monthly and semi-monthly papers.

The periodical entitled "The American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb" has extended through sixteen volumes, its publication having been begun in 1847, in Hartford, Connecticut, under the auspices of the instructors of the institution in that place.

Sustained for two years as a private enterprise, this publication was adopted in 1850 as the organ of the convention of American instructors of the deaf and dumb, which beld its first meeting at New York in that year. For eleven years its publication was continued at Hartford, Connecticut, under the editorial direction of Luzerne Rae for four years, and for seven years under that of Samuel Porter, both instructors in tho institution at Hartford, the latter now a professor in the National Deaf-Mute College at Washington. Suspended in 1861, on account of difficulties growing out of the war, it was revived by the action of the conference of principals, held at Washington in May, 1868. Since that time it has been published in Washington for two years, under the charge of Lewellyn Pratt, followed by the present editor, Edward A. Fay, both professors in the National Deaf-Muto College.

The sixteen volumes now complete present a most valuable series of articles relating to the instruction of the deaf and dumb. They include, in fact, the greater part of the literature of our profession in the English language, excepting, of course, text-books, and are almost indispensable to any who wish to acquaint themselves with the art of