I will not counsel you, Astrophel, as to the _extent_ of your belief in these strange tales, but extreme exaggeration often lessens the interest which scientific minds would take in these curiosities. These pictures are correct in their _outline_, but the artists _have not spared their colours_. They will remind _us_, who are learned in legends, of that illusive monomania among the monks of Mount Athos, who believed that they could at pleasure attain a celestial vision by communing devoutly with the Deity, _while their attention or their sight were directed to the umbilicus_! And they were therefore called “Omphalopsychians.” We discover also very close analogies to this mental concentration, in the acuteness with which _one_ sense is endowed on the failure of _another_. The delicacy of touch in the blind is often _extreme_; I knew a blind lady who played an excellent rubber, passing her finger lightly over the card spots; and more curious still are the cases of Miss M’Avoy, of Stanley the organist, and of Professor Saunderson. De Luc tells us of a lady, who read distinctly by passing her fingers over the page, even of a strange book. In Laura Bridgman, an American girl, an inmate of the Institution of Boston since 1837, the _whole faculty of perception_ was concentrated in the one sense of touch. At the age of two, sight, and hearing, and smelling, and almost taste, deserted her. To this interesting creature, through the acuteness of her sense of touch in tracing letters, has been imparted so much knowledge, that the _moral sentiments_ and the congenial affections of the heart are now beautifully displayed in her character. If by the dumb alphabet, or finger-talking, conversation is commenced with her, she follows the fingers with her arm with extreme rapidity, so that scarce a letter escapes her. Such are the wonders of this child’s intelligence, that her mind has been cited as illustrative of _innate sentiment_; but the very _facility_ is enough to explain her actions. Le Cat writes of a blind sculptor at Voltera, who modelled features most faithfully by the touch. A French gentleman lost the integrity of _every sense_, but _sensation_ remained in half of his face, on which he received the correspondence of his friends by their tracing on it letters or forms. In Mr. Eschke’s establishment at Berlin, conversation was carried on by tracing letters on the _clothes of the back_. A Bolognese, on witnessing a woman in acute _hysteria_, became occasionally convulsed, and impenetrably deaf; if, however, the slightest whisper was breathed to the _pit of the stomach_, he heard distinctly. From Andral’s Lectures, to please you, Astrophel, I will select this fragment: