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"4. Experience has also shown, that, with the deaf and dumb who have acquired a facility in speaking, all subsequent instruction is more successful than with those who have been taught merely the language of signs and writing."

Supposing the fact were as above stated, we might ask how many wearisome months, nay, years, must be spent in teaching articulation to a deaf mute, before he will acquire this important facility for subsequent instruction. The pupil must spend months in "echoing," to borrow a phrase from Mr. Mann, "the senseless table of a, b, c"; for, with the deaf and dumb, the teacher of articulation has no choice but to begin with isolated letters ; and when he proceeds to syllables, far the greater number of the first syllables taught (pa, ba, ma, fa, po, bo, mo, and so on) must be either unmeaning, or above the comprehension of beginners. "How," to quote again from Mr. Mann, "can one, who is as yet utterly incapable of appreciating the remote benefits which, in after-life, reward the acquisition of knowledge, derive any pleasure from an exercise that presents neither beauty to his eye, nor music to his ear, nor sense to his understanding ?" In many cases, "a facility in speaking," in spite of all the skill and labor of the instructer, is never attained; and in many more cases, the whole period allowed for the instruction of the child must be exhausted in acquiring this facility, leaving no time for that subsequent instruction which it is to make more successful. But apart from these considerations, we seriously question the fact. We think, that, even where the observation may seem true, it is a confusion of cause and effect. Of the deaf and dumb from birth, only those of remarkably quick perceptions and uncommon docility will acquire "a facility in speaking," and with these, "subsequent instruction" is always the most successful, whether they have been taught to speak or not. On the other hand, every teacher of the deaf and dumb knows, that, in the case of those deaf mutes who retain such a recollection of sounds as to be able to employ, in their own meditations, sensations primarily received through the auditory nerves as the signs of ideas, and thus to regard written words as representatives of their reminiscences of sounds, the acquisition of a language of words is much easier than with those who do not possess this faculty of conceiving words as sounds. It is the want of this faculty, which no skill or labor can impart, where it has not been acquired through the ear, that, whatever be the method of instruction employed, constitutes the great difficulty in the task of teaching a language of words to the deaf and dumb. Where there are no ideas of sounds, a language of characters, representing, not ideas, but the elementary sounds of words, might reasonably be supposed, as it is found in fact to be, a most difficult and inconvenient mode of intercourse, and a very heavy burden to the memory. The teaching of articulation does not remove this difficulty (and it is the great error of the German schools to suppose that it does) ; for, as Mr. Mann himself correctly observes (page 77), "as the pupil has no ear, he only learns motions and vibrations, the former by the eye, the latter by the touch." Hence, at the utmost, his ideas of words will be only ideas of these motions and vibrations which have been called the labial and oral alphabet. Words to him will consist, not of sounds, as with men in general, -- not, indeed, of distinct lines upon paper, or of obvious motions of the fingers, as with deaf mutes educated upon our system, -- but of indistinct lines upon the face, and of scarcely visible movements of the vocal apparatus. That it would be greatly to the advantage of the deaf and dumb to have a mode of representing words more simple as well as more expeditious than alphabetic writing, or even than the ordinary manual alphabet, we fully believe ; but the oral alphabet is not such a mode. Its characters are so fugitive, so indistinct, that, far from granting to them the power of making the deaf mute's conceptions of words possess any thing like the ease and simplicity .of conceptions of sounds, many eminent teachers have denied that they were as easily conceived, retained, and combined in the mind, as are written characters used as the immediate signs of ideas. These remarks are designed, not to refute any thing Mr. Mann has advanced, for he does not appear to have investigated the philosophy of this subject, but to show the false foundation of the German notions on the subject of articulation. The limits of an article like the present will not admit of going into a full examination of this point; but we may safely appeal to experience, and challenge the teachers of articulation to produce instances of deaf mutes from birth instructed under their system, with whom "subsequent instruction has been more successful" than in the instances of Massieu, Clerc, Loring, and others whom we might name, who were never taught to utter a syllable.