to instruct Persons Deaf and Dumb;" and Sibscote's "Deaf and Dumb Man's Discourse," which were published in the interval between Wallis's practical application of his method and the appearance of Dalgarno's book. Dalgarno, we believe, may claim the merit of having first exhibited, and that in its most perfect form, a finger alphabet. He makes no pretensions, however, to the original conception of such a medium of communication. But the great and distinctive merit of his treatise is not so much, that it improved the mechanism of instruction, as that it corrected the errors of his predecessors, and pointed out the principles on which the art is founded, and by the observance of which alone it can be carried to perfection. As we first attempt to fix and communicate our notions by the aid of speech, it was a natural prejudice to believe that sounds were the necessary instrument of thought and its expression. The earlier instructors of the deaf and dumb were thus led to direct their principal effort to the teaching their pupils to distinguish the different mechanical movements by which different sounds are produced, and to imitate these sounds by imitating the organic modification on which they depend. They did not consider that still there existed no sound for the deaf; that the signs to which they thus attached ideas were only perceptions of sight and feeling; that these were, on the one hand, minute, ambiguous, fugitive, and, on the other, difficult; and that it would be better to associate thought with a system of signs more easy to produce, and less liable to be mistaken. The honor of first educating the deaf and dumb in the general principles of grammar, and in primarily associating their thought with written instead of with spoken symbols, is generally claimed for the eighteenth century, France, and the Abbé de l'Epée. All this was, however, fully demonstrated a century before in the forgotten treatise of our countryman, as in a great measure also practiced by Pontius, the original inventor of the art, a century before Dalgarno. We are indebted, as we formerly observed, to Mr. Dugald Stewart for rescuing the name of Dalgarno from the oblivion into which it had fallen; and the following quotation from that distinguished philosopher affords the most competent illustration of his merits :

"After having thus paid the tribute of my sincere respect to the enlightened and benevolent exertions of a celebrated foreigner (Sicard), I feel myself called on to lay hold of the only opportunity that may occur to me of rescuing from oblivion the name of a Scottish writer, whose merits have

been strangely overlooked, both by his contemporaries and by his successors. The person I allude to is George Dalgarno, who, more than a hundred and thirty years ago, was led, by his own sagacity, to adopt, a priori, the same general conclusion concerning the education of the dumb, of which the experimental discovery, and the happy application, have, in our times, reflected such merited lustre on the name of Sicard. I mentioned Dalgarno formerly, in a note annexed to the first volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,' as the author of a very ingenious tract, entitled "Ars Signorum,' from which it appears indisputably that he was the precursor of Bishop Wilkins in his speculations concerning a real character and a philosophical language; and it now appears to me equally clear, upon a further acquaintance with the short fragments which he has left behind him, that, if he did not lead the way to the attempt made by Dr. Wallis to teach the dumb to speak, he had conceived views with respect to the means of instructing them, far more profound and comprehensive than any we meet with in the works of that learned writer prior to the date of Dalgarno's publications. On his claims in these two instances, I forbear to enlarge at present; but I can not deny myself the satisfaction of transcribing a few paragraphs in justification of what I have already stated with respect to the remarkable coincidence between some of his theoretical deductions, and the practical results of the French Academician.

"I conceive there might be successful addresses made to a dumb child, even in its cradle, when he begins risu cognoscere matrem, if the mother or nurse had but as nimble a hand, as commonly they have a tongue. For instance, I doubt not but the words hand, foot, dog, cat, hat, &c., written fair, and as often presented to the deaf child's eye, pointing from the words to the things, and vice versa, as the blind child hears them spoken, would be known and remembered as soon by the one as the other; and as I think the eye to be as docile as the ear, so neither see I any reason but the hand might be made as tractable an organ as the tongue, and as soon brought to form, if not fair, at least legible characters, as the tongue to imitate and echo back articulate sounds.' 'The difficulties of learning to read on the common plan, are so great, that one may justly wonder how young ones come to get over them. Now, the deaf child, under his mother's tuition, passes securely by all these rocks and quicksands. The distinction of letters, their names, their powers, their order, the dividing words into syllables, and of them again making words, to which may be added tone and accent-none of these puzzling niceties hinder his progress. It is true, after he had passed the discipline of the nursery, and comes to learn grammatically, then he must begin to learn to know letters written, by their figures, number, and order.'

The same author elsewhere observes, that the soul can exert her powers by the ministry of any of the senses; and therefore, when she is deprived of her principal secretaries, the eye and ear, then she must be contented with the service of her lackeys and scullions, the other senses; which are no less true and faithful to their mistress than the eye and the ear, but not so quick for dispatch.'

"I shall only add one other sentence, from which my readers will be enabled, without any comment of mine, to perceive with what sagacity and success this very original thinker had anticipated some of the most refined experimental conclusions of a more enlightened age.

"My design is not to give a methodical system of grammatical rules,

but only such general directions, whereby an industrious tutor may bring his deaf pupil to the vulgar use and or of a language, that so he may be the more capable of receiving instruction in the diori, from the rules of grammar, when his judgment is ripe for that study; or, more plainly, I intend to bring the way of teaching a deaf man to read and write, as near as possible to that of teaching young ones to speak and understand their mother-tongue.'

"In prosecution of this general idea, he has treated, in one very short chapter, of A Deaf Man's Dictionary, and in another of A Grammar for Deaf Persons, both of them containing (under the disadvantages of a style uncommonly pedantic and quaint) a variety of precious hints, from which, if I do not deceive myself, useful practical lights might be derived, not only by such as may undertake the instruction of such pupils, as Mitchell or Massieu, but by all who have any concern in the tuition of children during the first stage of their education.

"That Dalgarno's suggestions with respect to the education of the dumb, were not altogether useless to Dr. Wallis, will, I think, be readily admitted by those who take the trouble to compare his letter to Mr. Beverley (published eighteen years after Dalgarno's treatise) with his Tractatus de Loquela, published in 1653. In this letter, some valuable remarks are to be found on the method of leading the dumb to the signification of words; and yet the name of Dalgarno is not once mentioned to his correspondent."

We may add, that Mr. Stewart is far more lenient than Dr. Wallis' disingenuity merited, Wallis, in his letter to Mr. Beverley, has plundered Darlgarno, even to his finger alphabet. It is no excuse, though it may in part account for the omission of Dalgarno's name, that Darlgarno, while he made little account in general of the teaching of the deaf and dumb to speak, had, in his chapter on the subject, passed over in total silence the very remarkable exploits in this department of "the learned and my worthy friend Dr. Wallis," as he elsewhere styles him. On this subject, indeed, it seems to have been fated, that every writer should either be ignorant of, or should ignore, his predecessors. Bulwer, Lana, and Wallis, each professed himself original; Dalgarno entitles his Didascalocophus "the first (for what the author knows) that had been published on the subject ;" and Amman, whose Surdus Loquens appeared only in 1692, makes solemn oath, "that he had found no vestige of a similar attempt in any previous writer."

The length to which these observations have run on the Philocophus, would preclude our entering on the subject of the other treatise the Ars Signorum, were this not otherwise impossible within the limits of the present notice. But indeed the most general statement of the problem of an universal character, and

of the various attempts made for its solution, could hardly be comprised within the longest article. At the same time, regarding as we do the plan of a philosophical language, as a curious theoretical idea, but one which can never be practically realized, our interest in the several essays is principally limited to the ingenuity manifested by the authors, and to the minor philosophical truths incidentally developed in the course of these discussions. Of such, the treatise of Dalgarno is not barren; but that which principally struck us, is his remarkable anticipation, on speculative grounds, a priori, of what has been now articulately proved, a posteriori, by the Dutch philologers and Horne Tooke (to say nothing of the ancients)—that the parts of speech are all reducible to the noun and verb, or to the noun alone.

VI.-IDEALISM.

WITH REFERENCE TO THE SCHEME OF ARTHUR COLLIER.

(APRIL, 1839.)

1. Metaphysical Tracts by English Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century. Prepared for the Press by the late Rev. SAMUEL PARR, D.D. 8vo. London: 1837.

2. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev Arthur Collier, M.A., Rector of Langford Magna, in the County of Wilts. From A.D. 1704, to A.D. 1732. With some Account of his Family. By ROBERT BENSON, M.A. 8vo. London: 1837

WE deem it our duty to call attention to these publications: for in themselves they are eminently deserving of the notice of the few who in this country take an interest in these higher speculations to which, in other countries, the name of Philosophy is exclusively conceded; and, at the same time, they have not been ushered into the world with those adventitious recommendations which might secure their intrinsic merit against neglect.

The fortune of the first is curious.-It is known to those who have made an active study of philosophy and its history, that there are many philosophical treatises written by English authors -in whole or in part of great value, but, at the same time, of extreme rarity. Of these, the rarest are, in fact, frequently the most original for precisely in proportion as an author is in advance of his age, is it likely that his works will be neglected; and the neglect of contemporaries in general consigns a book-especially a small book-if not protected by accidental concomitants, at once to the tobacconist or tallow-chandler. This is more particularly the case with pamphlets, philosophical, and at the same time polemical. Of these we are acquainted with some, extant perhaps only in one or two copies, which display a metaphysical