Almost
quicker than a thing has been uttered we have felt or perceived it. What
marvelous power, too, memory comes to possess, and how tenaciously she
clings to everything, often astonishing even to ourselves; while
imagination, that loftiest and most winged attribute of the soul, not only
becomes more fleet, but literally turns creator, reproducing before our
spirit eyes not only all that we have lost, clothed in the beautiful
ideal, but unbars the gates to every new field of intellectual research,
often enabling us to compete even more than successfully with those who
see.

Alas! if there could be only a seat of learning for the blind, with all
its lessons oral or in the form of lectures, as at most of the German
Universities, what could we not achieve?

But, as it is, enough renowned have arisen from our ranks to prove that,
while blindness fetters the hands and the feet, it verily adds wings to
_thought_. Indeed, the world has but one Homer, who sits forever shrouded
in darkness, _the veiled god_ and father of song; and but one Milton, who
gave to the world its "Paradise Lost" and its "Paradise Regained," while
he bequeathed to the blind of all ages the glory and the beacon light of
his name.

EDUCATION OF THE BLIND.

A brief description of the methods employed in their literary, artistic
and industrial education.

I should not consider this work finished without a chapter on the mode of
educating those who have been so unfortunate as to be deprived of the
readiest medium through which education is imparted--the sight. The
systems, although some of them are in use in nearly every State in the
Union, are very little understood, and are always inquired into with every
evidence of interest by visitors to the institutions, where they often
express quite as much surprise as gratification at what they see. I have
therefore, in the following, endeavored to give as full a description as
possible of the various methods and appliances employed to convey through
the sense of feeling, information to which our eyes are closed.

On entering the schools the children are generally wholly uneducated, and
have first to be taught the form and value of letters. To effect this the
letters are raised, and the pupil learns their form by passing the fingers
over them till their forms, names and their use are fully understood. With
some this is a long and tedious task, but others master it in a short
time. I mastered the alph