On these points we have sufficiently enlarged. Our main purpose is now to show how great an inlet to knowledge the ear is. To the eye speak the writings of antiquity, the accumulated wisdom of successive generations, the experience of sages, and those holy records which contain the oracles of God, the sacred truths, and the revelation of the purposes of the Almighty towards a fallen race. It is by language, as it appeals to the eye, that we commune with the mighty dead--that we receive into our minds the sublime ideas of a Milton, the learning of a Bacon, or the philosophy of a Newton. But it is to the ear that the conversation of ordinary life is directed; the directions, the requests, the commands that we continually issue forth or receive--words of congratulation, consolation, encouragement, or information--the eloquence of the senate or the bar--the strenuous admonitions or exhortations of the preacher. What a wonderful thing the mind of man is, that a few atmospheric vibrations on the auditory nerves, or a few pictures on the retina, should produce sorrow or joy, hope or fear--should communicate instruction or pleasure--should excite sympathy or love, contempt or aversion! And, again, how wonderfully is the organic frame constructed, and adapted to the conditions of our planet, that light and air should communicate through two of our external senses with the mind, affording it food for cogitation, stores of knowledge, and intellectual gratification! Does this arise in any degree from the superiority of the organs of sight and hearing in man? Certainly not. The vulture, soaring in the upper sky, far excels man in the power of vision. Yes, and so does every bird that skims the air, or hovers in quest of prey over the surface of the great deep. The dog, the horse, the antelope, and numerous other lower animals, have quicker ears than man; but then the mind! it is there that the difference lies; with a weaker sight than is usual, with a more imperfect hearing than is ordinary, sages and philosophers, and historians and poets, have left to posterity the brightest productions of mental power. Homer and Milton were blind.