But this melancholy being is not always a _solitary_ curiosity. In many districts, especially in the stream-fed valleys of Europe and Asia, nature fails, by wholesale, in the development of that “paragon of animals,” man. Such are the _Capots_, or _Cretins_, of Chinese Tartary, as we learn from Sir George Staunton; those of the Rhone and Tyrolese valleys; the _Coliberts_ of Rochelle; the _Cagneux_ of Brittany; the _Gaffos_ of Navarre; the _Gavachos_ of Spain; and the _Gezitani_ of the Pyrenees. The condition of the lowest class of these wretched beings is indeed that of idiocy; their intellectual power being little more than the mental blank which would mark the _acephalous_, or brainless monsters, could such abortions attain the age of maturity. It is mere _animal life_, with the very faintest stamp of intelligence. The _Cretin_ is from four to five feet high, cadaverous, flabby, the head immensely out of proportion, the skin studded with livid eruptions, the eyes blear and squinting, the lips slavering, the limbs weak and crooked; and (like the _Stulbings_ of Swift) the senses are imperfect, the hearing and speech often absolutely lost,—the expression being that of a fool or a satyr. And dissection demonstrates the frequent causes of all this; for, in the skull of these beings, we often find a _bluish jelly_, instead of healthy brain. This diseased _pulp_ is thus the source of both animal and intellectual apathy. The idiot will often seem insensible to pain, while his flesh is burning; and objects or subjects do not cause sufficient impression on this pulpy brain to produce their _image_, so that the being may almost live without a sense. CAST. This is a dreary, but, I suppose, a faithful picture, and shows us one of those impressive contrasts which nature is fraught with. The Cretin dwarf amidst the gigantic sublimity of the Alps; the lava stream rolling over the chestnut groves of Valombrosa; the malaria that steams up from the Pontine even to Albano; the murky sulphur cloud that floats over Avernus, and the Solfaterra; and the poison-snake creeping among the honied flowers and purple festoons which gild the prairies and interlace the forests of Columbia, show us how intimately are blended the lights and shadows of creation. Yet Evelyn will let me ask him if there are not many beautiful stories, which we may have deemed the creation of poesy, proving that idiotism is not always _definite_ and _permanent_. I ought to blush while I recite them. The romance of Cymon and Iphigenia is not a mere fable. I have heard a story of a youth who was an idiot to his 17th year. At this time he saw a beautiful girl, and instantly felt deep and devoted love for her; and became, from this almost divine influence, as acute in intellect as his playmates.