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'to look
Along the pages of a book;'

but our admiration is qualified by regret, when we think of how much improvement they are susceptible, -- to what a comparative degree of perfection they might be brought, and reflect that nothing has been done towards it. The books now used are exceedingly bulky and expensive, -- and the New Testament would be extended to at least ten volumes of folio size, if printed entire for the blind. The French seem to have been arrested in the progress of improvement, by a blind adherence to the false maxim established by the Abbe Haüy, that in all things, 'il faut autant que possible rapprocher les aveugles aux clairvoyans;' hence, say they, we must make their books resemble those of seeing persons, and print them with the same shaped letter. Now this is a foolish adherence to the letter of the rule, without regard to its spirit, even were the spirit of it correct, which is not the case. It is not possible, as it respects their books, de rapprocher les aveugles aux clairvoyans: because a blind man never can read the books of seeing persons, and seeing persons never will read those of the blind, be they printed ever so like his own: it is therefore ridiculous to adhere to our clumsy and ill shaped letters in printing for the blind. They are quite aware of this in Scotland, and Mr. GaIl of Edinburgh, with a praiseworthy zeal, and at great expense, has made many experiments, and succeeded completely in avoiding the error of the French, by running into one on the opposite extreme. He has succeeded in bringing the lines much nearer together, and saves something in space on each page; but he founds his principal claim for improvement, upon the change in the shape of the letters, which he makes entirely angular; and distinguishes one from the other by the different positions of the angles, -- for instance, a triangle with the acute point turned to the left, shall signify one letter, and the same shaped triangle, with the point turned to the right, shall signify another letter. Now in this way Mr. Gall overlooks what we maintain to be an indisputable maxim in printing for the blind, -- viz. make the letters to differ as much as possible from each other in shape, and do not let the difference be in position merely; and for this obvious reason, that if an acute-angled triangle shall signify a when its angle is turned to the left, and signify b when it is turned to the right, -- then you require two mental processes to be carried on in the mind of the blind man before he can tell a from b; first, he has to feel the shape of the letter, -- he finds it is an acute angled triangle, -- and having ascertained this, he must feel whether the acute angle is turned to the right or to the left, before lie knows whether it is a, or b. Now it is true that the operation is carried on in an inconceivably small space of time, but nevertheless it is a space of time, and if it be multiplied by the number of letters on a page, it amounts to something; the principal objection, however, is the double mental operation which is required. Mr. Gall asserts that he has tried the experiment upon blind children, and found that they could learn his system of letters much quicker than the common shaped ones; this may be, and still his system may be a very imperfect one; but we do not place much confidence in such experiments, unless they be tried upon great numbers, and with most marked results. We have also tried the two systems, and the children who learned only one each, seemed to learn them with equal rapidity, while those who learned both, declared that they learned them with equal ease. Let us grant, however, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Gall's angular characters may be more easily learned; this by no means proves that they should be adopted. It by no means lessens the regret which every enlightened friend of the blind feels, that so much expense has been incurred, and so much pains taken to introduce a system of printing, so manifestly imperfect, since this is an objection to changing it; and we think the persons connected with the Edinburgh Institution were right in withholding from Mr. Gall their countenance and support to his plan of printing the New Testament for the blind, in a character which supplied none of the desiderata.

Another system of letters has been devised by Mr. Hay, a blind man, teacher of languages in Edinburgh; but there exist as powerful objections to it as to that of Mr. Gall, viz. the size and similarity of the characters; his may be called the right lined system, while Gall's is the angular one.

But the clumsiest and most uncouth system which ever was devised, is that practised in the Glasgow Asylum; where they have letters made by different kinds of knots tied on a string, which of course must be wound up in a ball, so that the pupil must unroll the whole ball, before he comes to the part he wants. A chapter of the Testament makes a ball as large as an eighteen pound shot; and the whole Bible would require a store room as large as a church.