lously developed in blind and deaf mutes, especially, it would appear, when the reason is somewhat weakened. It seems then to acquire something of the fineness and discrimination which it has in the lower animal races. In speaking of the special senses, we have somewhat anticipated the subject of the intellectual qualities which the absence of sight seems to foster. A remarkable power of concentrated attention, natural in those whose minds are not solicited by the attractions of the multifarious objects of vision, is the fundamental quality of their understanding. To this may be attributed the strength of memory for which as a class they are celebrated. Attention and memory are the two constituents of the faculty of comparison, or the discernment of resemblances and differences, on which all knowledge depends. We have already, in quoting from M. Dufau, shown how the successive apprehension of the several properties and parts of a complex object, alone possible to the sense of touch, favours habits of abstraction and analysis. These are just the qualities needful for success in science, and just the qualities fatal to poetry and imagination, which deal not with constituent elements, but with concrete and living wholes, and which have their source with the intuitive rather than the discursive faculties of the mind. Of the moral qualities which generally accompany blindness it is less easy to speak with decision. Diderot attributes to them a deficiency in modesty, and also in compassionate feeling. His reasons for the latter deficiency are worth giving: "Since of all the exterior demonstrations which arouse in us commiseration and the idea of pain, the blind are affected only by the cry of grief, I suspect them, as a general rule, of inhumanity. . . Do not we ourselves cease to feel compassion when the distance or the smallness of objects produces in us the same effects that the privation of sight does in the blind? so much do our virtues depend on the mode of our sensations, and on the degree in which exterior things affect us. I have no doubt, therefore, that, except for the fear of chastisement, many people would have less pain in killing a man at a distance, which made him appear no larger than a swallow, than they would have in cutting the throat of an ox with their own hands. If we have compassion for a suffering horse, and if we crush an ant without any scruple, is it not the same principle which sways us?" To this (rather by way of compliment than of accusation) he adds an insinuation of irreligion. Dr. Guillié expresses himself much to the same effect. He echoes Diderot's charge of want of modesty on the part of the blind; decides that they are very imperfectly acquainted with the emotions which draw us one to another, and decide our affections and attachments; and though he acquits them of atheism, is unable "altogether to justify them from the reproach of impiety, which, with some foundation, has been urged against them. . . . Conscience, in short," he sums up by saying, "has not the influence over their actions which it has over ours. The moral world does not exist for the blind; . . . . he acts as if he alone existed, he refers every thing to himself. . . . Their situation, which compels them to keep on their guard against all mankind, often leads them to rank in the same category their benefactors and their enemies, and, perhaps without intending it, to show themselves ungrateful." Immodesty, inhumanity, selfishness, irreligion, and ingratitude, are the attributes which Dr. Guillié assigns to those whom he elsewhere calls "his poor adopted children" (ces infortunés, mes enfants adoptifs). His authority is deservedly so high on every point connected with the blind, that we are glad to find his testimony on this matter contradicted by an observer entitled to even greater deference-M. Dufau, who strenuously combats the injurious estimates of his predecessor in the Institution at Paris. The reserved, self-contained nature of the blind; their undemonstrative character; their aversion to mere sentimental effusion; and want of attention on the observers' part to the very different way in which the same feelings will express themselves in the blind and in the seeing,-have led, according to M. Dufau, to the errors of Diderot and Dr. Guillié. With regard to the first charge against them, the sense of modesty "passe chez eux de la vue à l'ouïe. . . . . Cette chasteté d'oreille exclut en général de leur langage les paroles légères et les équivoques sans décence; il en resulte aussi que des traits qui ne sont que gais pour nous dans quelqu'uns de nos meilleurs écrivains, dans nos anciens comiques, par exemple, deviennent inconvenans pour eux; si leur âme est pure, ils n'en rient pas, et restent parfois déconcertés et mal à l'aise" (p. 20). M. Rodenbach himself, a very distinguished blind man, pronounces that three * "Alexander Rodenbach, born at Roulers (West Flanders) in 1786, lost his sight when he was eleven years of age. He entered the Musée des Aveugles, then under the direction of Hauy, and soon became one of his most distinguished pupils. On returning home he gave himself up to profound inquiries into different questions of public interest, which he afterwards discussed in several publications, which attracted to him the attention of his fellow-citizens. A lively opposition to the tendencies impressed on the country by the House of Nassau was formed. M. Rodenbach joined the ranks of the periodical press, in order to give his support to this opposition, and became one of the most active promoters of the revolution from which the Belgian nationality sprang. He was elected a member of Congress in 1830, and has ever since continued to sit in the Chamber of Representatives, where he has distinguished himself on several occasions by the soundness of his views as well as by an animated and ready style of elocution. M. Rodenbach has been elected burgomaster of the commune where he lives, near Roulers. He is member of several academies, Knight of the Order of St. Leopold, and has been decorated with the Iron Cross" (Dufau, Des Aveugles, pp. xxiii. xxiv.). fourths of the blind men whom he has known have felt more strongly than others the need of religious consolations, and have been remarkably alive to religious feeling. The accusations of inhumanity and ingratitude are rebutted by M. Dufau, and the mistake, which has led to their being preferred, pointed out. There is probably this amount of foundation for the charges of Diderot and Dr. Guillié, that the suspicion and timidity which M. Dufau acknowledges to belong very frequently to the blind, and which may be referred to the sense of disadvantage under which they labour in regard to the seeing, do, so far as they alone operate, tend to produce the defects which have been too absolutely laid to their charge. And further, an isolated self-centered life is unfavourable to the development of the social qualities. Free expression of feeling is needful to the vitality and freshness of feeling. As regards religion, though the logical argument exists in all its force for the blind, the appeal to wonder and awe made by "the two infinities," as Pascal calls them, that surround us, and which are revealed by the telescope and the microscope, is silent for those without "eyes to see." Moreover, the prevailingly intellectual character of the blind presents religion to them rather on its dogmatic than on its emotional side. The same circumstance leads them to base their affections on judgment and calm preference rather than on an impulse. So far from "conscience having less effect on their actions than it has on ours," a profound sense of justice and equity is remarked by M. Dufau as a strikingly prominent feature of their characters. Our exhausted space warns us to bring these remarks to a close. We have freely used the materials presented in the works named at the head of this article, always, we hope, with adequate acknowledgment. We shall be glad if what has been said tends in any way to awaken philanthropic and scientific interest in the condition of that large class (calculated at nearly a million over the entire earth) who journey through this world, like Virgil's travellers "through Pluto's empty mansions and shadowy kingdoms," "Obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram Qualem per incertam lunam sub luce malignâ ART. V.-INTEMPERANCE; ITS CAUSES AND CURES. Suggestions for the Repression of Crime, contained in Charges delivered to Grand Juries of Birmingham, supported by additional Facts and Arguments (Charge of January 1855). By M. D. Hill. London: J. W. Parker. 1857. On Liberty. By John Stuart Mill. London: J. W. Parker. 1859. The Temperance Cyclopædia. Compiled by the Rev. W. Reid. London: Tweedie. Tweedie's Temperance Almanac for 1860. London: Tweedie. An Argument for the Legislative Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic, with Sequel [Prize Essay]. By Dr. F. R. Lees. London: Twee die. 1857. Reports of the United Kingdom Alliance for the Suppression of the Traffic in all Intoxicating Liquors as Beverages. Alliance Offices, 41 John-Dalton Street, Manchester. CRUSADING threatens to become a social danger as well as a fashionable folly of the age. Every year increases the amount spare energy, unabsorbed in the arduous struggles of daily life, which is ready now to devote itself to the service of philanthropy, as eight centuries ago to that of the cross. The field is wide enough for all comers; the enemy mighty enough to tax their powers more severely than Saladin taxed the strength of united Christendom. And in such a warfare we ought to have no cause for aught but hope and satisfaction in seeing the increase of numbers and vigour on the right side. Unfortunately, however, the want of discipline and guidance, and the utter ignorance of the nature and conditions of the contest, too generally displayed by the volunteers, make them not seldom more dangerous to the peace of society at large than to the evils which disturb it, and against which they are enlisted. Their chiefs, competent for nothing better than guerilla command, are wholly unable to wield for good the power bestowed by an unmerited confidence, and lose from vanity the little judgment which enthusiasm had left them. And thus each host of social reformers falls into disgrace and confusion, resembling in its march_rather the rabble rout of Peter the Hermit than the disciplined army of the princes of the crusade. The consequence is, that not only is much power wasted, which, wisely turned to account, might have achieved great results, but actual injury and mischief are the lasting monuments of its misguidance: not only is discredit thrown on a good cause by the folly and fanaticism of its adherents, but sober and earnest men, sympathising in the aim, are forced by the method pursued and the means adopted into resolute opposition, and compelled to strengthen the hands of an enemy they detest as cordially as any. A "holy war," whether against infidels in arms or social evils undermining religion and society, is always liable and likely to be misdirected, and all but certain to become fanatical; and the preacher of a social crusade, were he as able, might prove nearly as mischievous as the Hermit of old. It is this divorce between judgment and benevolence, between discretion and energy, which induces cautious thinkers to look with so much distrust on a great part of the philanthropy which is the boast of the age; which leads to so much bitterness against prudence, science, and moderation, in the harangues of the enthusiast, and to that want of counsel from wiser heads which is so evident in all his practical efforts; and which has done more to hinder social reforms than all the personal passions and class interests enlisted on behalf of existing evils. In nothing is this so manifest as in the case of what is perhaps our worst national vice and misfortune; in no part of that "war with evil" for which, as Mr. Milnes tell us, we have come forth upon the field of life, is the crusading spirit more ardent and earnest than in the struggle against intemperance: in no direction are the defects and dangers of that spirit more clearly shown. Here, if any where, we might have expected to find common sense and moderation prevalent among reformers; for never was there a case in which extravagance and violence were either more clearly foolish or more certain to defeat their own object. Here was a cause for which a sober and rational advocacy would have commanded the support and active sympathies of millions; against which extravagant pretensions and proposals were sure to array irresistible antagonism. Yet this cause we find to have been so managed by its crusaders, that sane reformers have deserted it in despair, and the field is almost wholly abandoned to a horde of ignorant and mischievous fanatics. And yet the evil is one so terrible, that nothing but utter hopelessness of effecting any good with such allies could have driven earnest well-wishers of their country and their kind to relinquish all effort to amend it; and so notorious, that nothing but the worse than folly of those who wage open war against it could have deprived them-as they are deprived of the sympathies of society and the countenance of the educated classes. It is possible to exaggerate the evils even of intemperance; and we all know how certainly reaction or indifference are the effects of detected exaggeration. The sins of the advocates of teetotalism-in no sense of temperance-in this respect have been perfectly enormous. It is astonishing to find statements made by men not wholly devoid of education which carry on their face their own refutation, palpable even to the meanest |