to it with good will and assiduity: provided, what is indeed essential to secure success, that the avocation form a permanent livelihood for them.

Should any father, or mother, master, or mistress of a deaf and dumb child in the country, be at a loss to understand the feregoing explications, delivered with all the perspicuity I could, as to the mammer of teaching deaf and dumb children to pronounce, I have to recommend to them as follows:

At the age of four or five, when the child is before them or between their knees, let them often raise his face towards theirs

;

then, bribing his attention with something, let them strongly and deliberately pronounce (but not bawl) pa, pe. It will not be long before they obtain these two syllables. Afterwards let them say pa, pe, pi, joining by degrees po and ри.

Having succeeded, they will next take ta, te, ti, to, tu, gradually as before: and so pro

ceed to fa, fe, fi, fo, fu, always pronouncing strongly and deliberately, and letting success be constantly attended by rewards.

They will only be careful not to pass from a first syllable to a second, nor from a second to a third, before the preceding one has been well pronounced. I see very young deaf and dumb children every day, who are taught in this, and in no other way. By the word strongly, which I have made use of on this occasion, I mean nothing more than laying a long stress upon the syllable pronounced.

Next, let these fathers and mothers, masters and mistresses, carry this method (of which I am necessarily to suppose them in possession) to some one of greater learning than themselves; and showing him the second part of the work, which is not long, they will request him to read it, and to instruct them how to proceed.

CHAP. III.

The manner in which the Deaf and Dumb are taught to understand by the Eye, merely from the motion of the Lips, without any manual Sign being made to them.

The deaf and dumb have learned to pronounce letters by considering with attention the various modifications of our organs as we distinctly pronounced each, comprehending that they were to modify theirs after the example we were setting them. We were the living picture which they endeavoured to copy; when by our assistance they succeeded, they experienced in their organs a very sensible impression, which they could not confound with the impression produced by a different modification of those organs.

It was impossible not to see with their eyes and not to feel in their organs, that the

pa, the ta, and the fa, created movements quite diverse from each other. Thus when they perceived these diversities of movement on the mouth of any person with whom they were living, they were as well apprized thereby whether this person pronounced a pa, a ta, or a fa, as we could be by the diversity of sounds striking our ear.

But we are not to imagine that the hard consonants only, such as p, t, f, g, s, ch, produce modifications sensible to the eye, in pronouncing. They produce the most striking, I admit; but it is certain that the other vowels and consonants also have their distinct characteristics perceptible to the sight, as our instructions (Chap. I. page 25,) concerning the method to be pursued for teaching the deaf and dumb to pronounce them evince; it will not be amiss, however, to call in a testimony likely to carry still greater weight, the testimony of experience.

Of the two alphabets we teach our pupils, the manual and the labial, the former is

common to all countries and all people; the latter, different in different nations ; the former may be learned in an hour, or thereabouts; the latter takes a considerable portion of time, as the scholar must needs comprehend and carry into practice the whole of what has been said concerning pronunciation in the two preceding chapters.

But when once master of all the respective modifications given to the organs of speech in the prolation of letters, it matters not by which of the two alphabets we address him; he will apprehend us equally by either. We may dictate entire words to him, letter by letter, by the labial as well as by the rual alphabet; he will write them without a fault; I say merely write, not understand, because I speak of a physical operation, and of a child yet untutored in learning.

The deaf and dumb, acquiring very early this facility, and being moreover to the full as curious as other folks to know what is