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Diderot, in his ingenious dissertation, remarks, that 'of all the senses the sight is the most superficial; the ear the most dainty; (1) the smell the most voluptuous; the taste the most whimsical and inconstant; the touch the most profound and philosophic.'

But we will leave metaphysical discussion, and consider the improvement of the senses, in the light in which it has the most direct bearing upon the situation and the education of the blind.

And first, of the hearing: people are not generally aware of the powers of the ear, and instances which we may quote of it in the blind may at first appear incredible; we have known blind men, for instance, who could not only ascertain the shape and dimensions of an apartment by the sound of their voice, but who could, on entering one with which they were familiar, tell by striking their cane on the floor, and listening to the echo, whether any of the large articles of furniture had been removed from it, or shifted from their usual places. What seeing person would think it possible with his eyes bandaged, to tell which was the tallest, and which was the shortest of a number of speakers, merely by the direction in which the sound came from their mouths to his ear? Yet many blind persons can not only do this, but can ascertain very nearly the ages of the persons. We have made this experiment in more than fifty instances with the blind, and in the great majority of cases they came as near the mark as we did, aided by the eyes. There is no doubt that the voice is changed with every changing year; we seize only upon the extremes of the chain; we can tell the shrill scream of the child, from the rough firm voice of manhood, and the trembling tones of old age; but besides these, -- besides the difference in the volume and pitch which exists between the voices of different persons, there is another produced by the course of years; and time stamps his impress upon the voice, as surely as upon the face. The blind man tests these by his practised ear, and not only can ascertain with tolerable correctness the age of the speaker, but pronounce upon his height, the dimensions of his chest, and so forth.

Nor is this the most extraordinary part of the discriminating power of some blind men, who seize upon the slight variations of the intonation of the voice, as we do upon the. changes of the countenance, and judge by them of what is passing in the mind of the speaker. We all of us wear at times a mask upon the countenance, and draw the curtain of hypocrisy over this window of the soul, to conceal what is going on within; but we seldom think of the voice; and it is upon this that the blind man seizes, as upon a thread, to direct him to the seat of the passions. Hence it is, that some of them can ascertain on so short an acquaintance the disposition and character of persons: they are not imposed on by the splendor of dress, they are not prejudiced by an ungainly air, they are not won by a smile, nor are they dazzled by the blaze of beauty or led captive, as many are wont to be, by the fascination of a lovely eye. The voice is to them the criterion of beauty, and when its melodious tones come forcibly stamped with sincerity from the soul, their imaginations at once give to the speaker a graceful form, and a beautiful face. It is recorded of the father of Fletcher the novelist, that he was long continued in the post of Judge in the Police Court of London, after he became blind; and that he knew the voices of more than three thousand of the light-fingered gentry, and could recognise them at once when brought in.

The ear of some animals is surprisingly acute, and there is no doubt that it is improved by blindness; we know of a horse who, after becoming blind, evidently had his hearing very much sharpened, for when feeding in the pasture with others, far from the road, he would hear the sound of hoofs, and raise his head and whinny out his salute, long before his companions betrayed any consciousness of the approach of the passing stranger.

So with the blind man, when he is walking along the street he can tell whether it is wide or narrow, whether the houses are high or low, whether an opening which he may be passing is a court closed up at the end, or whether it has an outlet to another street; and he can tell by the sound of his footsteps in what lane, or court, or square he is. He goes along boldly, seeming to see with his ears, and to have landmarks in the air.

The accuracy of the ear gives to blind persons a very great advantage in music; they depend entirely upon it; and hence they harmonize so well together, and keep such perfect accord in time, that Paganini, after listening to some pieces performed by pupils of the Institution for the Blind in Paris, declared that he never before had an adequate notion of what harmony was.