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* Twelfth Report of the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, p.20.

We have met one of the most distinguished pupils of the institution in Dublin, who could articulate so as to be intelligible to his own family, but who never attempted to read on the lips. With strangers, he relied on writing; his associates always communicated with him by means of the two-handed manual alphabet, which some of them could use with great celerity; and with other mutes he conversed by gestures. We have seen him, at the first interview, converse readily with a family of uneducated mutes; and though the dialect of the latter was chiefly of their own invention, and his dialect was brought from the other side of the Atlantic, he could relate at some length, in pantomime, an incident that happened to one of his schoolmates, and which was perfectly comprehended by his spectators.

The propensity to prefer gestures, when intelligible, to all other modes of intercourse, is universal among the deaf mutes of all countries ; and whenever they have become familiar with a manual alphabet, they are found to prefer it, with those who are expert in it, to articulation and reading on the lips. On this account, most of the German teachers interdict the use of the manual alphabet entirely. Perhaps this is the "artificial language of signs" mentioned by Mr. Mann as prohibited (page 81); for if there is, or ever was, any language that can claim to be called natural, pantomime is that language. As ordinarily used by the deaf and dumb, it is, indeed, nearly or quite unintelligible to strangers; because nearly all its signs, for the sake of convenience and expedition, undergo in their hands a species of abbreviation, in which one part of an object, or one circumstance of an action, stands for the whole, and a single sign frequently represents an allegory or a metaphor illustrating some idea beyond the material world. Still, the natural character of the language, in its elements, is sufficiently proved by the fact, that not only deaf mutes brought from opposite sides of the globe, and with sign-dialects the most diverse, can readily communicate all familiar ideas at their first meeting, but even savages from our western woods, and natives of China, have conversed intelligibly with deaf mutes in our institutions.

We know, however, that some of the German teachers do "prohibit, as far as possible," -- a very significant limitation, -- all intercourse by even the natural language of signs. On this point we will quote from Kruse, whose authority, which we have already cited, we consider of great weight. Having learned to speak before losing his hearing, he subsequently attained a much greater skill in language, and a much higher degree of intellectual cultivation, than are usually attainable by the deaf and dumb from birth. He had been a teacher in two German institutions, and had visited several others. His views do not always agree with our own; but his writings show him to be more than commonly well versed in the character of the deaf and dumb, and in the true principles of the art of instructing them. On the point under consideration, he thus expresses himself.

"It is, indeed, incontrovertible, that the language of gestures is little adapted to the expression of abstract or metaphysical ideas; it is, further, not to be denied, that it opposes obstacles to that accurate mode of thinking to which the deaf and dumb should be brought; it is, finally, matter of experience, that it causes the deaf mute to neglect the use of words in his intercourse with others; but it can in no wise be prohibited or banished. The language of pantomime is the true element of the deaf mute, in which first his spiritual life began to bud and unfold; in which, also, he can and will receive all the ideas imparted to him. It is his mother tongue, which first gives him the key to open the mysteries in language and in science. It is the only and the natural means of intelligible communication between him and his teacher, without which the latter cannot operate on his pupil. It were, therefore, not merely cruel, but unnatural (widernatürlich), to tie the hands of the deaf and dumb, or to compel them to carry continually in the hand pencils or crayons, as is actually done in many places, or to force them, on all occasions, to express their wants orally, and read on the lips of others." -- Der Taubstumme, etc. p. 70.

Kruse gives biographical sketches of several of the most distinguished pupils of the German schools. We think he oftener celebrates their skill in the language of pantomime, than their skill in articulation and reading on the lips. For instance, he informs us, that a monitress in the institution at Schleswig, though able to speak with tolerable distinctness, and to read on the lips words when uttered slowly and distinctly, was still far from being a proficient in the language of words, but was a perfect mistress of the language of gestures. We see, then, that the German teachers, even by binding the hands of their pupils, have not been able to banish the language of gestures from their schools; and it appears from the testimony of Mademoiselle Morel, whom we have already quoted, that those teachers, while decrying pantomime, do themselves make use of it, not only necessarily in the first lessons, but continually, and almost unconsciously, as an accompaniment to their oral lessons to their pupils, -- thus giving to their words a significancy which they would otherwise fail to impart, and which they are in the habit of ascribing to some mysterious, self-explanatory power in speech.