It is inconvenient to have to bear with personal deficiencies—troublesome and disheartening not to possess all the senses and the faculties which are demanded to enable man to compete with his fellows upon equal terms; and it requires philosophy that we do not repine when we find ourselves in any respect, either physical or mental, compelled to stand aside in the unpleasant attitude of being an exception to the general rule. It is true that the march of science is able, to a considerable extent, to obviate corporeal default. Eyes are constructed so well as to deceive the eye, although the constructed eye is not yet so perfect that we shall hope to see with it far into the opacity of mill-stones. Legs are manufactured more symmetrically beautiful than the majority of real legs; and the skillful artist will, if you are only tall enough, modulate you into a figure which might put an Apollo to the blush. But the steam leg, in its swiftness of locomotion, is as yet no more than a dream of the visionary; and we may pad ourselves into muscularity as much as we please, without gaining a particle of power. We are aware that by the aid of spectacles he who would otherwise be always stumbling over the dog, and tripping in contact with other people’s feet, periling his precious countenance by rude collisions with every species of obstacle, may contrive to see his way through the world in comparative clearness. But science has not perhaps succeeded to the same extent in the work of metaphysical regeneration; nor do we know that any man’s geese have as yet been fully converted into swans, though he may think them progressive creatures in the scale of ornithology, and likely to reach a higher position than has been attained by former members of the race. It is theoretical, we learn, with the phrenologists, and probably practical also, to a greater extent than the world is willing to admit, that there are processes whereby the neglects of dame nature may at least be partially counteracted and repaired, so that “bumps” shall be raised, where depressions exist, and some degree of potency be secured in those “organs” which were originally faint and feeble; just as the muscular fibre is strengthened by exercise, and as our agile capabilities are increased by a judicious practice of the thews and sinews on which activity depends. Now, while we hope for the sake of humanity in general, that these assumptions will fully bear the test of experiment, it must yet be conceded that education fails somewhat in this regard; and that in thinking, as in dancing, much depends upon the configuration of mind and of body with which we were endowed from the outset. The phrenologists are right in the belief that training has its advantages; but there must be a basis on which that training is to proceed, or the result will be such as cannot fail to lead to serious disappointment.