ledge credible. The English have naturalized credible the adjective, and have substantified it into credibility.

Such is the use of analysis joined to that of methodical signs, on which I beg leave to produce the judgment of a person in the first rank of literature.

2

"The professor for educating deaf and "dumb persons at Paris, has contrived," says the Abbé de Condillac," a methodical

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art, extremely simple and easy for the language of signs, by which he gives his

pupils ideas of every species ;-ideas, I do "not hesitate to say, more exact, more pre"cise than those commonly acquired by the "medium of the ear. As we are left to

judge of the signification of words, in our "infancy, by the circumstances wherein we "hear them uttered, it often happens that "we take hold of their sense but by halves, ❝and we content ourselves with this by "halves all our life. But such is not the

66 case with the deaf and dumb instructed

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by **

***** (de l'Epée). His method "of giving them ideas, which do not fall "under the senses, is entirely by analysing " and making them analyse along with him. "He thus conducts them from sensible to “abstract ideas, by simple and methodical

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analysis; and we may judge what advantage "his language of action possesses over the "articulate sounds of our school-mistresses " and preceptors.

"I have thought it incumbent upon me "to seize an opportunity of paying a tribute of justice to the talent of this

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citizen, "to whom I am not personally known, I " believe, although I have been at his aca

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demy, have seen his scholars, and have "obtained from himself a knowledge of his system.”—(Abbé de Condillac's Course of Instructions, &c, Vol. II. Part 1. Chap. i.

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I add in my turn, that I have thought it incumbent upon me to report this testimony

in favor of a method which it were to be much wished, might be adopted by all who take upon them the instruction of the deaf and dumb.

CHAP. XV.

How the Deaf and Dumb may be brought to understand, in some measure, what it is to hear, auribus audire.

IN attempting to explain this article to the deaf and dumb, I go to work as follows:

I direct a large pan to be brought and order it to be filled with water. The water

being perfectly settled, I take an ivory ball, or something similar, and drop it perpendicularly in. I make my pupil observe the undulation produced in the water, which would be much greater in a pond or river; but the deaf and dumb having seen this undulatory motion in both, call it to mind very easily. Then I write down as follows:'I drop the ball into the water; the water being displaced, runs up and strikes the

edge of the pan.' Not a word of this is unintelligible to my pupils.

Next I take up a screen, or some thing similar, and flapping it in my hand, the curtains flutter and leaves of paper fly about. I blow upon the hands of one of my pupils with my mouth; and call all that air. Then I write down further: The room is full of

'air, as the pan is full of water: I strike

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upon the table, the air is displaced and ' strikes against the walls of the room, ' in the same manner as the water is displaced and strikes against the edges of the 'pan.'

I now take out my alarum watch, and setting it properly, I make each of my pupils feel the little hammer which strikes against his finger with great rapidity. I then tell him that we have all a little hammer in the ear; that the air being displaced in making its way towards the walls of the room, meets with our ear, which it enters, and causes the little hammer there to move