Maguire (mentioned in the Philosophical Transactions), who made tartan (parti-coloured) dresses without mistake, Madam von Paradis, the Dutchman alluded to by Leibnitz and the Count of Mansfeldt, of whom Keckermann gives an account, are instances. A more recent example is given by Dr. Bull, on the testimony of a friend.* Two eminent blind men, Dr. Blacklock and M. Rodenbach, have declared themselves totally destitute of this power, and sceptical as to its existence. But the fact that most blind people are without it, does not prove that some few do not possess it. It is not pretended that it is any thing but an exceptional faculty. Mr. John's remark, that "if the testimony of all the inmates of the largest blind school in Europe is to be believed, they have not the least power of detecting colour," does not prove much. The pupils in the Southwark school, to which he refers, are habitually employed in handicraft trades, the effect of which is to harden and blunt the sensibility of the skin. M. Dufau mentions that the blind have often complained to him, that the sensibility of the finger-ends diminishes as they grow up, and renders reading and similar tasks more difficult to them; and he wisely insists on the necessity of the blind guarding their touch from injury as carefully as the seeing do their eyes.† what colour it was; and after applying her fingers attentively to the figures of the embroidery, she replied, that it was red, blue, and green, which was true. The same lady having a pink-coloured ribbon on her head, and being willing still further to satisfy her curiosity and her doubts, asked what colour that was. Her cousin, after feeling some time, answered that it was pink. Her answer was yet more astonishing, because it showed not only a power of distinguishing different colours, but different kinds of the same colour; the ribbon was discovered not only to be red, but the red was discovered to be of the pale kind called pink."-Encyc. Britan., article “Blind.” *Visiting in 1847, some friends in Gloucestershire, one morning a man about twenty-five, perfectly blind; for the eyes were entirely gone, called to return thanks for his admission into a blind asylum, in which he had been residing for some years past. In giving an account of what he had learnt there, he mentioned the power of distinguishing colours by the touch, and begged those present to try him. I made him feel my dress, a French merino, and he replied, 'I should say this is a reddish brown,' which it was. The next given him was of the Rob-Roy tartan; he said, 'This is a material of two colours, red and black.' Another person made him feel her blue gauze veil. This is blue, but a very thin dress for the time of the year,' was the reply, The only other trial to which he was put was a printed cotton, which he pronounced to be of various colours. Being asked how he attained such power, he replied A piece of cloth was given me, and its colour named, which I felt till quite familiar with it; then another, which I continued to examine until I could correctly distingnish one from the other; and so on until I knew all the colours,' and as it seemed to us, even shades of some. The darkest colours appeared to him to have most body in them. He said it required a very sensitive touch, and great patience and perseverance, and that consequently very few attain the power." (Bull. pp. 54, 55). + M. Rodenbach relates that, while at the Musee des Aveugles in Paris, M. Fournier and he, in order to develop their sense of touch, procured some pumice stone, with which they rubbed the index-finger, taking care to wear on the finger a covering of fine leather, (un doigtier de peau). In the Annual Report of the Boston Institution for 1842 (p. 20), it is said that "an old blind soldier, in order to render the hardened Other examples of tactile sensibility in the blind to which we may briefly refer are the power possessed by Dr. Sanderson and Madame Paradis of distinguishing false from genuine Roman medals, which connoisseurs with eyes were unable to do; and the still more astonishing circumstance related of Dr. Moyse, who with his fingers measured the length of a stroke, which was invisible to the eye, made by an etching tool on a plate of steel. Even in the case of seeing, minute inequalities of surface not cognisable by vision may be discerned by the touch. When the movement of the fingers is called into play, in the recognition of the forms of objects, such as the larger plants, animals, and shells,still more in ascertaining the dimensions and shapes of rooms, &c., the muscular sense aids the merely tactile perceptions. "The world of the blind," says Mr. Prescott, "is circumscribed by the little circle which they can span with their own arms. All beyond has for them no real existence." (Essays, p. 47). This remark is by no means true even of the blind who are confined to touch for their knowledge of the outer world. It is still less so of those who can hear also, as we shall show when we come to speak of the sense of hearing. Blind guides, like Metcalf and Simon Moyser,* and indeed all those who are able without eyes to find their own way from place to place, must, it is obvious, have some perception of objects lying beyond the "little circle which they can span with their own arms." The currents of air as they meet the face report with exactitude the direction, the proximity, the size, and the character of the objects which partially intercept and modify them, enabling the blind traveller to recognise, as he passes them, houses, trees, hedge-rows, gates, posts, bridges, and other objects to be avoided or approached. Dr. Bull, who became blind in mature life, states that this faculty developed itself in him after his blindness to a degree which skin of his fingers capable of perceiving characters in relief, applied blisters to them on several occasions.' The following passage from M. Dufau's Souvenirs d'une Aveugle-nee may be added: "Every substance likely to injure the delicate susceptibility of the epidermis was withdrawn from my habitual contact; and my hands even were usually covered with a fine and supple skin-glove, which preserved their tactile envelope without hindering free movement. This expedient took the place with me of the glasses worn by those who wish to take precautions against the loss or enfeeblement of their sight. Had not nature, in fact, in my case placed my eyes at my finger-ends"? (p. 19.) * "Simon Moyser, who was born among the alps of Tyrol, lost his sight at two years of age; he devoted himself to so patient an exploration of the surrounding mountain-tops, that he was soon capable of directing thither the steps of all those who visited them. Carried away by a sort of passion for travelling he pushed his excursions further and further, betook himself to Gratz, and became a messenger, carrying letters and money in these mountainous countries, in which scarcely any other method of communication is possible. In 1818, when he was thirty-three years of age, he perished in a torrent in which several seeing persons had lost their lives before him." (Dufau, p. 97). astonished himself, though far inferior to that in which it exists in those born blind. We come now to the sense of hearing; to which principally, though not exclusively, the blind owe their conception of objects which lie beyond the 66 narrow circle which they can span with their own arms." "Dr. Saunderson, by the reverberation of his tread, could judge with wonderful accuracy as to the character of objects from five to twenty yards' distance. Thus he was enabled to distinguish a tree from a post at the distance of five yards, a fence from a house at fifteen or twenty yards. The sound of his footfall in a room enabled him to judge of the dimensions and character of the apartment. Having once crossed a threshold, so distinct was his individualisation of every locality, that he would at once know it again, even after the lapse of many years."* Dr. Moyse had the same faculty. "A person," says Dr. Kitto, "who knew him relates, that whenever he entered a room he remained for some time silent. The sound directed his judgment as to the dimensions of the room, and the different voices and number of persons in it. His distinctions in these respects were very accurate; and his memory so retentive, that he was seldom mistaken."† 6 "A young blind man told me one day," says M. Dufau, “that in his walks .. he at once perceived a wall, a hedge, a mountain, any obstacle, in short, which might be before him. When I find myself in a vast plain,' he added, raising his hand to his ear, with a very expressive gesture, it seems to me that I am a perte d'ouie.' This remarkable expression, imitated from our a perte de vue in an analogous situation, enlightened me much as to the importance of this sense to the blind." By means of a light cry, or a gentle tap with the foot, at the entrance of an apartment, the blind are able to tell whether any one is present in it or not, its extent, the nature of, and any alteration in, the furniture.§ "There is now living in the city of York," says Mr. Johns, "a gentleman of fortune, who, though totally blind, is an expert archer; so expert," says our informant (who knows him well), "that out of twenty shots with the long-bow, he was far my superior. His sense of hearing was so keen, that when a boy behind the target rang a bell, the blind archer knew precisely how to aim the shaft." Diderot tells a tale of the blind man of Puisaux, who, in anger at one of his brothers, occasioned by some boyish dispute, threw a stone at him with such exact aim, that it struck him in the middle of the forehead, and levelled him with the ground.¶ * Bull, p. 208. + Kitto, p. 209. || Johns, p. 103. + Dufau, p. 71. $ Ibid. As a practical guide through the dark ways of their life, hearing is more valuable to the blind than touch, though inferior to it as an instrument of scientific research. It is, perhaps, most important to them as the basis of their judgments in regard to character. Their personal prepossessions and prejudices are founded on the tones and cadences of the voice, and are at least not oftener unjust than those which we derive from the general appearance and physiognomy of men. Their judgment of the physical characteristics of a speaker, his age, height, health, &c. are wonderfully exact. "The blind easily recognise hump-backed people" (as M. Rodenbach, himself blind, avers) "by the sound of their voices. He relates that at a soiree in Brussels, a blind man succeeded in stating with precision, according to their voices, the ages of all the persons present. His only mistakes were with regard to some ladies, who were not displeased at his inexactitude."* The ability which the blind possess of recognising a voice once heard after an interval of years, in spite of attempted disguise, is as well attested as any of their peculiar powers. As a medium of social intercourse, hearing is to the blind much what it is to the seeing; or rather, it is more to the blind than it is to us, since they seek in the tones of the voice that commentary on the bare meaning of the words which we find in the play of features and gesture. But it is most important as being the sole inlet of emotion which they possess. Feelings of solemnity and awe, of grief and joy, of physical pleasure and pain, can only be conveyed to them through the modulation of sound. This is one reason, no doubt, of their passionate attachment to music. Notwithstanding the ingenious distinction of a German philosopher, who, with some show of truth, characterises "sight as the clearest, and hearing as the deepest of the senses," the one appealing to intellectual conviction, the other penetrating to the heart, and more deeply stirring the entire nature, it is a fact, that the understanding of the blind is far better developed than their emotional nature. They excel in science; but no blind man has ever attained eminence in poetry.† Blind Harry, Dr. Blacklock, Miss Frances Brown, among English writers, and one or two French and Italian. authors mentioned by M. Dufau, exhaust the list of the blind-born who have cultivated poetry; but they do not rise above the level of smooth and agreeable versifiers. What is remarkable in them is, that their writings abound in attempted descriptions of visual scenery, made up, often very ingeniously, and with a clever avoidance of the errors to which we should suppose them liable, of epithets and phrases, derived from the works of those who saw, but * Dufau, p. 69. Poets have become blind, as Milton; but this is very different from a blind man becoming a poet. unmeaning to them. Poetry is in their case strictly, as Aristotle called it, an imitative art. The metaphysical poetry, so popular in our day, which paints human emotions and dwells on the inner life of the soul,-to which we should suppose them, from their introspective, meditative, and self-centered turn of mind, particularly prone, is quite remote from the spirit of their verse. As little does the "beauty born of murmuring sound" find any echo or expression there. No such effect (we speak of kind, and not of degree) as Tennyson's bugle-song can be quoted from any blind poet. And yet there is not a line, and only a phrase, in it which the blind man is not as competent as the seeing, or even more competent, vividly to realise : "Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; Blow, bugle, answer echoes dying, dying, dying. O sweet and far, from cliff and scar The horns of elfland faintly blowing. Blow, let us hear, the purple glens replying; Blow, bugle, answer echoes dying, dying, dying." The phrase "purple glens" is the only one in these exquisite lines which would be unintelligible to the blind; and yet it is the only one which reminds us of the "poetry" which they are in the habit of writing. "Azure distances," "yellow corn," " dewy greens,” &c., are the stock images of blind versifiers. It would appear as if, on the one hand, the merely sensuous feelings (which respond to music), and, on the other, the purely intellectual apprehensions, existed in their full force in the blind, but that the emotions in which thought and feeling blend were but feebly present to them. The dislike (which is said to show itself in many ways among them) of appearing different from the seeing, no doubt leads them to parody the description of "coloured nature" which they find in ordinary works. There is also some kind of mysterious attraction to them, perhaps, in realities from the knowledge of which they are excluded. The National Review. |