ing to have these scenes actually take place and, in addition to this, exhibit the emotion of love strongly in his own countenance, and the islander at once comprehends him; and thus a new word, and a new symbolical sign are settled for future use. By similar processes of description, he may speedily add the names of all the passions and emotions of his vocabulary. He advances to the operation of the intellect, and what an herculean task is before him. By what process shall he present to the observation of the islander, such operations of the mind, as to think, to remember, to forget, to understand, to contemplate, to imagine. He sees at a distance a man building his hut; the man finds a difficulty in the construction of the door, he stops and assumes the attitude of thought; the moment is a happy one, and the missionary inquires by what term that visible exhibition of the internal working of the mind is denoted, and receives a satisfactory reply. But this illustrative example might not have occurred for hours, or even days. By the language of signs, however, he can pourtray this very example, and a hundred others equally pertinent, and thus, on the spot, acquire the new word which

the memory revive, the associated thought.

Our fellow-students need a few adjectives to add to their nomenclature; such as high and low, hard and soft, long and short, round and square, bold and cowardly, alive and dead. They are quickly learned, for the various objects to which these epithets belong can easily be presented to the imagination by signs, and also the qualities which are denoted by the above-mentioned terms; and all this is done while our missionary and his friend are calmly reposing beneath their bread-fruit tree.

And now pronouns must be learned, and the cases of nouns, and the comparison of adjectives, and the moods and tenses of verbs. "I give you a fish," says the missionary: "what is that in your language?" He speaks an unknown tongue; but he makes the sign for a fish: he points to himself as possessing it, he hands it to his companion, and signifies that he will not take it back, that it is to belong to his companion. He is immediately furnished with the appropriate phrase. He multiplies such examples, and he soon has a little stock of phrases, by the comparing of which together he begins to elicit the structure and idioms of the language. Were he not to pursue this course, he must wait day after day till the suitable occasions occur, illustrative of the phrases, the import of which he seeks. "How many tenses have your verbs?" The question is useless. He must allude to some known past, and some anticipated future event, in order to obtain knowledge on this point; and what carefulness is necessary, if he depends on the common occurrences of life, as they transpire during his intercourse with the natives, in order to acquire an accurate knowledge of this very difficult part of all languages! But if he has well settled, by appropriate signs, the diurnal motion of the great lumi

nary of heaven, the succession of days and nights, of weeks and months, nay of hours and minutes, all of which is quite practicable; and if he is expert in describing motions and actions, he can easily pourtray a variety of events in such an order and connexion, as to mark all the varieties of time, and thus ascertain how this order and succession are denoted in all the various tenses of the language which it is his aim to acquire.

These illustrations might be made to any extent; and they would all go to establish the first position which was laid down, that the language of the countenance, signs, and gestures, is an accurate, significant, and copious medium of thought. Consider, too, that it is only by the eye that it is possible to acquire a purely oral language; for suppose that the missionary knows nothing of the systematic language of signs and gestures, employed in the instruction of the deaf and dumb-and that he arrives among a people who have neither a written nor a printed language. The words which he hears uttered, are at first quite unintelligible to him. How does he acquire the meaning of them? Solely by noticing with his eye the objects to which they are applied, the actions which they denote, the passions or emotions which they describe, the occasions on which they are used, together with all that variety of visible circumstances, and those references to past, present, or future periods of time, which furnish the full and exact import of what they are intended to convey from another mind to his own. Now all this is in fact a language of signs and gestures; and the ear, except as furnishing a certain set of audible symbols and signs, has nothing more to do with it, than have the fingers of the deaf and dumb in their acquisition of language, by furnishing a certain set of visible symbols and signs. If, then, instead of waiting for the actual presence of

these objects, and the recurrence of these actions, passions, emotions, occasions and circumstances, he can pourtray and describe them by the countenance, signs, and gestures whenever he wishes to take his lesson in the language which he is anxious to learn, how much time and labour will be saved. Besides being master of all the varieties of signs and gestures, and of the various expressions of the countenance, he can do that systematically, which he must otherwise perform in a desultory, unconnected manner, and at distant intervals of time. It is important, too, in the acquisition of the meaning of words, which depend upon a variety of circumstances for their illustration, to select those circumstances only which are fairly comprised in the import of the terms, and to reject those which are irrelevant.

And here is the principal difficulty in the acquisition of a new language, by merely hearing it used among the people who speak it. The occasions on which words are used must be repeated again and again, before the exact assemblage of circumstances can be selected to which the words belong. But a person who is versed in the language of signs and gestures, forms his own occasions, introduces only the appropriate circumstances, and rejects all adventitious ones. And this doubtless is the principal reason why the intelligent deaf-and-dumb pupil is often so happy in the accuracy of his definitions, and the precision of his use of words. The language, too, of the deaf and dumb, admits of a kind of permutation and combination, of which scarcely any other is susceptible, unless indeed the Chinese furnish an exception. The missionary, for instance, has settled with the native the sign for a man, and the sign for a sheep. He wishes to learn the native's term for shepherd. He first describes by signs a sheep, he adds the sign for many, he pourtrays in his own person a man

watching over these sheep, and he is at once put in possession of the term which he sought. Signs and gestures have a peculiar significancy from their resemblance to the object which they are intended to denote ; and this is true, even of those that are employed to denote intellectual objects, from the fact that there is scarcely any emotion of the heart, or operation of the mind, which is not accompanied with some corresponding expression of countenance, or attitude of the body, or position of the limbs. Almost all the terms which we employ in spoken language to denote these emotions and operations, are derived from the material world, or from some state, or motion, or action of the body: and philosophers have complained of this, as involving their discussions on the philosophy of the mind, in adventitious difficulty and obscurity. Be that as it may, if the fact be so, the emotions of the heart, and the operations of the mind, may as pertinently be expressed in symbolical signs, as in symbolical words. And without incurring the charge of materialism, it may safely be asserted, that all the emotions of the heart are accompanied with corresponding changes in the body; and that many, if not all, the operations of the mind, produce the same effect, and that most of these changes are visible to the eye. In confirmation of this opinion, it may be remarked, that, as is well known, the deaf and dumb, previous to instruction, have many natural and universal signs, by which they denote various states of their minds and feelings. The missionary, therefore, who should be acquainted with these signs, so far as there is a real foundation for them in nature, would possess a very important aid in acquiring the language of a heathen people, and establishing a speedy medium of intercourse with them.

In the former part of this essay, the latter of the two position's pre

mised was, that instances have occurred in the instruction of the deaf and dumb, in which, in the space of two years, five thousand words have been taught several intelligent pupils who were previously entirely ignorant of them, and of all language excepting that of their own natural signs, together with a command of language which would place them on an equality, with regard to the expression of their ideas, with the most intelligent persons among those heathen nations who have nothing but an oral language. In this nothing is assumed as au hypothesis. An actual fact is taken, and it forcibly suggests the following inquiry. If such a command of written language can be imparted by means of signs and gestures, in so short a space of time, to a mind enveloped in complete ignorance of words and their construction into sentences, what would hinder the communication of the same command of language to a heathen who should be entirely ignorant of our language, and the obtaining from him also the corresponding words and their construction into sentences in his own language. If intelligent, he would be as capable of instruction by signs and gestures as the deaf-and-dumb pupil; and taking this language of signs and gestures as the medium of communication while he would be learning the English tongue, if master of his own, he could, in his turn, teach it to his instructor. Thus a double object would be accomplished at the same time, and by the same process. Indeed, a class might be formed of pupils from different heathen countries; and while the English language was taught all its members by means of signs and gestures, by the same means each would be enabled, without any confusion or embarrassment, to express the corresponding words and phrases in his own tongue. Without being, therefore, at the expense of exploring the western wilds, or visiting the islands of the sea, or the remote

regions of the east, could intelligent natives be procurred from these different countries, all of whom should be well skilled in their respective languages, complete vocabularies, grammars, and dictionaries of these languages could be formed for the future operations of the missionary, and able interpreters be trained up to accompany them; and all this might be accomplished at home, in a shorter time, and at much less expense, and with less labour, than are now bestowed upon the same object. How is it that the mind of the unlettered deaf-and-dumb pupil, and that of his instructor, are enabled to communicate with each other? When they first come in contact, they have no medium by which to interchange their thoughts. This medium is furnished by the language of signs and gestures; and it soon becomes so significant, accurate, and copious, as to give the teacher the capacity of eliciting all the intellectual and moral powers of his pupil, and of gradually conveying to his mind a thorough knowledge of the English language. No wider separation could possibly exist between the teacher and the rudest native of a heathen people; there would be no greater difficulties to be encountered, or mightier obstacles to be removed, in the one case than in the other. So that the experiment seems to have placed it beyond all doubt, that under similar circumstances the same result would be produced. How far a school for heathen youth, conducted upon such a plan, would be more rapid and successful in its operations than those which employ the common modes of instruction, by means of grammars and dictionaries, might soon be determined. Let some intelligent heathen youth, amiable and tractable in his disposition, quick and lively in his conceptions, master of his own language and absolutely ignorant of ours, be taught upon the plan which is pursued in the instruction of the deaf and dumb, and there is every reason to believe

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that he would acquire a more accurate and copious use of the English language than could possibly be imparted to him, in a given space of time, by any other method; while the important advantage would also be gained of his being enabled by his familiarity with signs and gestures to teach his own language to his instructor; and thus, with the aid of each other, a grammar and dictionary of his language might be formed for the future use of the missionary among his countrymen.

Should this interesting experiment succeed, a new era would be opened in the history of missionary efforts, and new proof be afforded of the admirable connexion which God often establishes between one part of his providential dispensations and another; making the most unlikely and long-neglected means, which some happy discovery brings to light, efficacious for the accomplishment of his wise and inscrutable designs. Should it fail, at least some new phenomena with regard to the human mind would be noticed that might aid the philosopher in his researches. At all events, no injury would be done, except that a small expense would be incurred, and no greater disappointment or mortification would happen than often attends the efforts of those who would reduce every new hypothesis to the test of experiment, and who are willing to run the risk of being thought to be sometimes too sanguine or even chimerical in their projects, if there be but a probability that such projects may terminate in doing good to their fellowmen. The philosopher who devotes his time and talents to the development of the intellectual and moral powers of the human mind, should be as willing to witness the overthrow of his most interesting hypothesis, as the chemist whose happiest discoveries have often been the unexpected result of his most unsuccessful experiments.

I might apply the principles developed in the foregoing essay to