orrow and despair." In an Ohio report[207] they are said to be
in "intellectual and moral midnight;" and in a Michigan report[208] to
be "groping in thick darkness." In a Louisiana report[209] they are
called "sorrow-stricken children of silence;" and in a Kentucky
report[210] their lives are described as "dark, dreary and comfortless."
The _Southern Literary Messenger_[211] of Richmond, Virginia,
characterizes their existence as "intellectual night." The New York
_Commercial Advertiser_[212] in the year the first school was opened
affirms that "their intellectual faculties ... are ... locked in the
darkness of night and shrouded in silence." In an address delivered
shortly after the opening of the Tennessee School[213] they are referred
to as "entombed in a prison." The _Albany Argus_ and _Daily City
Gazette_[214] points to the deaf man as "abandoned to his hard fate, to
wander in darkness, the pitiable object of dismal despair." In an
address delivered in the Capitol in Washington[215] the deaf are said to
be "doomed to wear out their lives in intellectual darkness."

The results of education were to be great beyond measurement, and the
passing of the deaf from ignorance to education is likened even to the
glories of the Resurrection. A Committee of Congress[216] in
recommending the granting of land to the Kentucky School speaks of
education as "the only means of redeeming this unfortunate portion of
our species from the ignorance and stupidity to which they would
otherwise be consigned by the partial hand of nature, and, indeed; of
transferring them from a state of almost mental blindness to that of
intellectual and accountable beings." The New York _Statesman_[217]
speaks of the effects in "improving the moral principle, which is torpid
and almost obliterated, and opening the way to moral and religious
instruction and knowledge of the Deity which is almost void." An early
report of the American School[218] tells of the transition of their
"imprisoned minds which have too long been enveloped in the profoundest
shade of intellectual and moral darkness to the cleansing and purifying
light of Divine Truth." An Ohio report[219] states that they "have come
forth into the light of truth, that truth that teaches them that they
possess a rational and immortal spirit." In the address in behalf of the
New York Institution before noted,[220] it is said of the deaf that the
"powers of torpid and dormant intellects are resurrected