To revert, however, to the deaf and dumb (or deaf-mute) not deprived of eyesight, we may observe, that these persons, formerly neglected and deemed incapable of instruction, are not now excluded from the school of knowledge and of religion. Men have at length confessed that they possess rational souls--that they are capable of receiving information--and that the mind may be made the recipient of a certain amount of knowledge, varying of course according to the natural powers of the intellect. Not that the amount of knowledge acquired by such persons can ever, _cæteris paribus_, equal that which may be acquired by those who labour under no defect; nevertheless, the inferiority is only one of degree, and is easily accounted for. An able writer makes the following pertinent remarks: "From the advantages which instruction has afforded to a certain proportion of the deaf and dumb for the last half century, a tolerably correct estimate may be formed of their capabilities for improvement. The deaf-mute, living in society, but without instruction, must be regarded as one of the most solitary and melancholy of beings. He is shut out from all but the most imperfect intercourse with his species, and the very intellect, by the possession of which he is raised above the lower creation, serves only to heighten his calamity, and render the sense of his deprivation more acute. His perceptions of external objects are indeed accurate, but superficial, and confined to a very small sphere. "Of the various arts by which the necessaries and conveniences of life are produced, he can have no knowledge beyond that which is included in the range of his own vision. Animal desires he feels, and he is led by the conventional usages of society to the performance of moral duties, and the avoidance of open and flagrant crime. Thus he becomes experienced, as other human beings are, in what is right or wrong. He sees that virtuous actions have a certain amount of reward in the opinions of good men, for he learns to discriminate between those whose actions are proper, and those who do wrong; and, again, he sees that in many cases vice meets with disapprobation and punishment among mankind. How this kind of experience shall affect his own conduct, must depend not only on the circumstances in which he is placed, as to example, and the moral influence of those with whom he has to associate, but also on his own natural tendencies. The performance of moral duties implies the exercise of intellectual faculties, and from his birth the deaf-mute makes use of his reasoning powers. He is subject to changes of purpose, to changes of feeling, the pleasures and the infirmities common to his species. He is sensible of kindness; he gives proof of affection. That such is the uneducated state of the deaf and dumb might be proved by the observations of their parents, friends, and instructors, in hundreds of instances. That such must necessarily be the case,