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GENTLEMEN,

LAURA BRIDGMAN has become extensively known. Human sympathies are always ready to be poured out in proportion to the amount of human suffering. The privation of any one sense is supposed to be a dreadful calamity, and calls at once for our sympathy with the sufferer; but when a human being is known to be deaf, dumb, blind, without smell, and with imperfect taste, that being excites the tender compassion of all who feel, and becomes an object of great curiosity to those who reflect, as well as feel. When the supposed sufferer is a child -- a girl -- and of pleasing appearance, the sympathy and the interest are naturally increased.

Such is the case with our beloved pupil, Laura Bridgman; and so general is the interest which she has excited, and so numerous are the inquiries concerning her, that I have thought it would be showing proper respect to the public of this section of the country, to publish, in the next annual report, a short history of her case. It is true, an account of the manner of teaching her, and of her progress from year to year, has been given in the reports of 1838, '39, and '40. But those reports are seldom preserved; and hundreds of people have seen her for the first time during the last year. I therefore submit the following imperfect outline of her history.

She was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the twenty-first of December, 1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble, until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond its power of endurance, and life was held by the feeblest tenure; but when a year and a half old, she seemed to rally; the dangerous symptoms subsided; and at twenty months old, she was perfectly well.

Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, rapidly developed themselves; and during the four months of health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance for a fond mother's account) to have displayed a considerable degree of intelligence.

But suddenly she sickened again; her disease raged with great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears were inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged. But though sight and hearing were gone forever, the poor child's sufferings were not ended; the fever raged during seven weeks; "for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened room; it was "a year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before "she could sit up all day." It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed; and consequently, that her taste was much blunted.

It was not until four years of age, that the poor child's bodily health seemed restored, and she was able to enter upon her apprenticeship of life and the world.

But what a situation was hers! The darkness and the silence of the tomb were around her: no mother's smile called forth her answering smile, -- no father's voice taught her to imitate his sounds -- to her, brothers and sisters were but forms of matter which resisted her touch, but which differed not from the furniture of the house, save in warmth and in the power of locomotion; and not even in these respects from the dog and the cat.

But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated; and though most of its avenues of communication with the world were cut off, it began to manifest itself through the others. As soon as she could walk, she began to explore the room, and then the house; she became familiar with the form, density, weight, and heat, of every article she could lay her hands upon. She followed her mother, and felt of her hands and arms, as she was occupied about the house; and her disposition to imitate led her to repeat every thing herself. She even learned to sew a little, and to knit.

Her affections, too, began to expand, and seemed to be lavished upon the members of her family with peculiar force.

But the means of communication with her were very limited; she could only be told to go to a place by being pushed; or to come to one by a sign of drawing her. Patting her gently on the head signified approbation; on the back, disapprobation.

She showed every disposition to learn, and manifestly began to use a natural language of her own; she had a sign to express her idea of each member of the family; as drawing her fingers down each side of her face, to allude to the whiskers of one; twirling her hand around, in imitation of the motion of a spinning wheel, for another; and so on. But although she received all the aid that a kind mother could bestow, she soon began to give proof of the importance of language to the developement -sic- of human character: caressing and chiding will do for infants and dogs, but not for children; and by the time Laura was seven years old, the moral effects of her privation began to appear. There nothing to control her will but the absolute power of another, and humanity revolts at this: she had already begun to disregard all but the sterner nature of her father; and it was evident, that as the propensities should increase with her physical growth, so would the difficulty of restraining them increase.