drum and of the trumpet, that soldiers are led to combat, and that their ardour is increased or diminished? No art, as well as music, can serve to establish a language, a means of communication by the aid of which a certain degree of education may be given to idiots, who apparently are the least susceptible of receiving it. It is not the same with the education of the weak in intellect as with children endowed with intelligence and intellectual gifts beyond the common order. While the aptness of precocious children must be moderated, advantage must be taken of the aptness of idiots. In precocious children aptness leads to superiority or madness; in idiots, aptness leads to an ordinary state.

Signs have been successfully employed in the education of the deaf and dumb, they may be equally so in the education of idiots. It has been advised to simulate events, to impress on the mind feelings of morality and virtue; simulated events may be created with a proper view of conveying ideas and feelings to the brain of imbeciles. Nothing, perhaps, may better serve to attain this end than travelling; change of scene brings every day new sensations, awakens the sensibility, and generally presents much interest: the beauties of nature, the mode of life of foreigners, the ignorance of the language, and the daily wants of life, may facilitate every kind of simulated events. Public feasts, military movements, leave a deep impression both

on the minds of children and imbeciles. The inany trifling accidents that may occur in a journey, and which cause trouble and discomfort, may also serve to awaken the sensibility of children born with weak minds.

If the views we have here given do not appear generally applicable, they will at least be found partially so, and principally for the rich, born with inferior intellect. The rich have full power to employ all the means necessary to withdraw their children from the state of ignorance and imperfection in which they are placed by nature. Time, the first-rate masters, books, are at their command, and if well directed, may ensure success.

We cannot here detail the assistance to be derived from medicine; to obtain sensations we know that electricity and galvanism have been employed. We now resume our former statement, and assert that it is possible to give to some imbeciles and idiots an education which may enable them to mix with the world without being a disgrace to their families; we may develop the faculties of the brain, if not in a normal manner, at least to a degree far beyond a state of idiotcy. Music, rhythm, gymnastic, gests, example, may have great influence on them, particularly when their attention is attracted. Care should be taken to bring all the senses into play; and what Dr. Itard did for the young savage confided to his care, may

be done for idiots and imbeciles. Baths and shampooing may be employed to develop the sense of touch. Who can doubt the possibility of giving an education to the young girls who formed the subject of the two first cases? and yet what was done for them?-nothing; -not more for them than for Peter the Wild Boy; yet they were alive to music and rhythm. This road to education offers an ample harvest, and great success is reserved for the man who will have the patience and talent to track the arduous furrow that no one has traced before him.

CHAP. V.

Influence of the Mind on the Body.

IN the chapter devoted to nervous constitutions, our study of children is confined to the age at which their intellectual education commences. We have treated convulsions, chorea, epilepsy, idiotcy. We returned to the subject of idiotcy, because it is prolonged during the whole period of life, unless we endeavour to improve this state as much as possible by means of the light furnished to us from a knowledge of the human organization, and the influence of physical agents on the development of the intelligence. It now remains for us to study a subject of equal importance, the education of individuals in whom the nervous system is too highly developed, whether by nature, or forced by education. This study relates rather to girls than boys, for the defects of education are more common among the former than the latter.

Nature has endowed woman with a greater degree of delicacy and sensibility than man; and through an extraordinary error, which has existed nearly in all ages, the education of women, excepting perhaps those of Lacedemon, has always tended to the extreme development of this sensibility. This defect in education, originating in maternal affection, may be traced

as far back as the time of Moses, who said, "The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter." (Deut. xxviii. 56.) At Rome, Athens, and in the capital cities of both continents, the children of the opulent are brought up so as to increase the delicacy of their constitution, under the specious pretext of being made lady-like. Their organs are debilitated; their complexion becomes pale; their bodies thin; and their nerves so sensitive, that the slightest impressions induce nervous attacks. The effect of music on the organization is so powerful, that it even affects the brain of an idiot; music is the art most cultivated among women, and one of those which most powerfully contributes to enervate them.

Absence of muscular movement, of exercise, and action,-a sedentary life, novel reading, plays, false and ill-directed education; such are the means by the aid of which young girls are brought up, and the finest constitutions are depraved. It is so well known that modern education tends to sur-excite the nervous system, that every author who has treated of nervous diseases, whether general or local, has pointed out hysterical affections, so common to young ladies, as originating in bad education.