pered by that penitence, and sanctified by a firm determination to lead a new life; and in this determination, and the carrying on of it, his former cheerful heart returned. With all his renovated strength and spirit he bent himself to run a good, sober, and honorable course; and in this he succeeded so well that, after some years of honest labor, he was able to return as a well-to-do merchant to the dear German land, where he married; and where in his old age he frequently told his grandchildren, as a useful warning, the story of the Bottle-Imp.

CALIFORNIAN GIANTS.

LL the world has heard of the great

fore let us imagine ourselves to be in that quarter of the world where those great trees grow, say in Calaveras County. We follow the course of an affluent of the Stanislas, which winds serpent-like, and with many an eddy, along one of the valleys that penetrate the Sierra Nevada; and at about fifteen miles from Murphy's, we come to a circular basin sequestered among the hills. Its diameter may be a mile, and its elevation from four thousand to five thousand feet above the sea-level. Here we find ourselves in presence of the giants-real giants of the vegetable kingdom, such as we should never have expected to see in these post-diluvian days. Not without emotion, and a profound sense of admiration, do we gaze upon them. The wind blows cold, and the heights around are covered with snow; but we heed not the blast; the snow brings out the trees in better relief; the sight repays us for all our fatigue, and makes us forget the wearisome return-journey yet to be encountered. It is not an every-day occurrence to stand under the shadow of trees that began to grow about the time that Hannibal was marching victorious upon Rome, and were still in their infancy at the birth of Christianity. What changes have come over the world-how many empires have risen and fallen since first their branches waved in the breeze! There they stand, ninety of them, living witnesses of a past far more remote than the earliest dawn of American tradition.

The smallest of these giants is fifteen feet in diameter. They occupy an extent of about fifty acres in the basin above men

tioned, where they tower above all others of their species. The tall trees among the latter appear dwarfs in comparison. Long fringes and festoons of yellow moss and lichen hang around their proud trunks; and a parasite growing from their rootsa kind of hypopithys-shoots its graceful stems, adorned with bractea and rosecolored flowers, to a height of ten feet. The place has thus the double charm of beauty and magnificence.

It will be understood, of course, that the giants here spoken of are pine-trees. The tops of many are broken and mutilated by the weight of the snow which in winter accumulates on their terminal branches; and some have been injured at the base by the camp-fires of Indians. A

peated burning, that a whole family might lodge with all their household gear in the blackened excavations. The bark generally is marked by deep longitudinal furrows, presenting the appearance of pillars or fluted columns. One has been stripped of its bark to a height of one hundred feet; and a spiral row of pegs driven in, forms a not very safe means of ascent around the bare portion, yet the tree flourishes above as vigorously as ever.

The proprietor of the neighboring tavern conducts his guests to the site of these prodigies of vegetation, and tells their names—he in most instances having been sole sponsor. First he calls attention to the Big Tree, which is, or rather was, ninety-five feet in circumference, and three hundred feet high; for now it lies prostrate, a monarch pulled down by the hands of republicans. Five men were employed for twenty-five days in felling it. They drew a line all round seven feet from the ground, and along this they bored holes close together to the very center of the stem with an enormous auger, so that the tree, losing its equilibrium, at last fell with a shock that echoed like thunder among the hills. Three weeks more were spent in stripping off the bark for a length of fifty-two feet only and now the king of the forest has one side flattened to be used as a "bowling alley," at the end of which stands a small wooden house, where the players may quench their thirst with juleps and cocktails. To what base purposes may we not descend! To be told that a wagon and horses could travel easily along the overthrown stem, excites no surprise

IN

THE BLIND.

the instruction of children endowed with sight, reading and writing necessarily form the basis of all education, and they are consequently taught, even in the primary department of the public schools. | With the blind, on the contrary, a large portion of the instruction conveyed to them must be oral; and in many cases where instruction is not commenced until the pupil has attained to adult age, the tactile sensibility is so imperfect, that the ability to read the raised letters is not acquired.

In regard to writing, there is another difficulty. The blind may be taught to write with pencil or pen, but they cannot read what they have written, and, of course, if they have committed any error, they cannot correct it. These difficulties render such writing irksome to them, and they rarely practice it voluntarily. It has, however, its advantages. As the sentence once written cannot be corrected, they acquire the habit of perfecting what they wish to write in their minds, before committing it to paper.

There must, of necessity, be some provision made, in writing in this way, to enable them to follow a line, and to preserve the proper distance between the words; various methods have been adopted to effect these ends; the most common apparatus is a sheet of pasteboard, on which strips of the same material, half an inch wide, have been pasted, half an inch apart; this is fitted to a frame something like that of a double slate, and a sheet of paper being laid upon the pasteboard, is held in its place by shutting the upper half of the frame upon it. The writing is usually done with a pencil or crayon, the raised edge of pasteboard serving as a line, and the spaces below steadying the little finger; the space between the words is determined by placing the point of the little finger of the left hand at the end of a word, and commencing the next at the other side of it. Another method is to use, in place of the pasteboard, a frame with horizontal wires, like the numeral frame without the balls. Either plan answers a very good purpose, but neither enables the blind to communicate with

or others have written.

To accomplish this object has been a desideratum with all teachers of the blind, and the ingenuity of inventors has been tasked to overcome the difficulties which prevented its execution. Writing with tangible inks was proposed, and tried, but with indifferent success; for if the ink was so thick as to be tangible when dried, it was very difficult to write with it; an earlier process, the earliest, indeed, which was attempted, and which has remained in use to the present day, was the use of what are called pin-types; small slips of wood having a letter in relief at one end, and at the other the same letter made with steel or iron points set in the wood. They are used in this way: the letters being arranged in a frame somewhat like a printer's case, the blind person picks them up, type after type, and pricks the letters through a sheet of paper from right to left; when completed the sheet is reversed, and the raised or burred surface of the letters can be read by the writer himself, or by any other blind person who can read the ordinary raised letters. Something like this process was adopted by Mademoiselle de Paradis in corresponding with her friends, and was communicated to Haüy by her in 1784.

At

It is liable to many objections, from its slowness, the liability to lose a portion of the type, and the expense of the apparatus, which, though not very great, is yet beyond the means of many of the blind. tempts have been made to accomplish the object by a machine analogous to that of House's printing telegraph; but although speed, neatness, and legibility are attained by this, the necessary expense of the machine is too great for it to be adopted, except in institutions, or among the rich. M. Hirzel, the Director of the Institution for the Blind at Lausanne, Switzerland, has contrived an apparatus which answers a tolerable purpose, printing, he says, thirty-seven letters a minute; but his description is unaccompanied with a plate, and is not sufficiently definite to be readily understood without it. It evidently bears some analogy to the House telegraph machine, and would be liable to objection on the ground of expense.

The best system of writing for the blind

Braille, invented, or rather improved from

that of M. Ch. Barbier, in 1829. M. Barbier, in 1825, invented a method of writing by points, using the points to represent sounds rather than letters. As a phonetic system, his invention was very faulty, omitting many recognized sounds, and inserting some not recognized. As a method of writing it was objectionable, because very few letters were represented by less than six points, and some even by ten, eleven, and twelve. It was, however, an advance upon the pin-type. Subsequently he modified it with a view to make it more

compact, but in so doing rendered it much less simple. At this point, M. Braille, a blind man from birth, and then, as now, a teacher in the Institute for Blind Youth, at Paris, took up the invention, and by a complete modification, making it, in fact, a new invention, produced a system at once simple, easy to write and to read, and capable of extensive application.

As the basis of his system, M. Braille adopts ten characters, which he terms fundamental signs. They are the fol lowing:

All the other signs or characters are formed from these by placing one or two points in a line below them. Thus the second series are made by placing one point under the left side of each fundamental sign. The third series are formed by two points placed under each fundamental sign. The fourth series have one point under the right side of the fundamental signs. Three supplementary signs give us ì ò œ.

The punctuation marks are the fundamental signs themselves, placed two lines below; thus the first represents the comma, the second the semicolon, etc. The fundamental signs also serve to represent the nine digits and cipher.

The application of these signs to the writing of music has rendered that process easier for the blind than for those who can see.

M. Braille represents the seven notes by the last seven of the fundamental signs, and each of these notes may be written in seven different octaves by prefixing a sign peculiar to the octave; and thus he avoids the necessity of designating the particular key of each musical sentence. The mode of writing is very simple; the apparatus consists of a board in a frame like a double slate, the surface of which is grooved horizontally and vertically, by lines one eighth of an inch apart; the paper for writing is placed on this and fastened by shutting down the upper frame. A piece of tin perforated with six holes like é in the third series, and an awl or bodkin.

As the sheet must be reversed to be read, the writing should be from right to left, that it may be read from left to right. By this process several copies may be

made at the same time.* M. Braille's system has now been in use in France twenty-seven years, and is regarded there as an invention of almost as much value as that of raised letters. The Institute has had a number of books printed in points. It is also adopted in the Dutch and Belgian schools, and has recently been introduced into the New York Institution for the Blind.

The only objections of importance to it are, that it is slower than the ordinary penmanship of the seeing, and that not being legible by those who are not blind, (without instruction,) it tends to isolate the blind, and make them a distinct class. We do not regard this last objection as very important, when weighed against the facility which it gives the blind for committing their thoughts to paper. Still, as M. Hirzel has well said, "the problem (of writing for the blind) is not yet fully resolved."

In regard to the other apparatus for teaching the blind, little need be said; the substitute for a slate generally used is a thick plate of zinc, perforated with cells, in which are placed types having the figures or conventional characters representing them, in relief; geography is taught by maps and globes, the former printed in relief, the latter made with a surface of papier maché, representing the hills and mountains in relief, the valleys, lakes, rivers, etc., depressed. Geometrical figures are printed in relief.

Would it not be possible to adapt the simple and ingenious instrument of the Morse telegraph to the execution of this method of writing? If it could be accomplished it would greatly facili tate the instruction of the blind, and diminish the necessity for books in the raised letter.

A simple method of manufacturing maps in relief, where those printed in that way cannot be had, is to purchase two sheet maps of any country or state, and fasten upon one a cord or wire to represent the boundaries, rivers, etc., of the country; then adjusting the other accurately to it, to paste them together. Such a map will give to the blind a very good idea of the general topography of any country.

The course of study pursued in the blind institutions in this country, and in the best European schools, embraces reading, writing, spelling, geography, grammar, mental and written arithmetic, history, rhetoric, logic, chemistry, natural philosophy, natural theology, moral and intellectual philosophy, astronomy, Butler's Analogy, political economy, and algebra. In a few schools French is taught; but the classics are not in the regular course of any of our institutions.

Music is taught in all schools for the blind; and there are very few who do not manifest a taste for it. Where decided talent develops itself, a very thorough course of musical instruction is pursued, and the pupil qualified to become an organist, a piano-forte teacher, or an instructor in vocal music. This offers the means of procuring a comfortable and frequently an ample income to many of the blind, and is readily embraced by them. There are some, however, who, with a correct musical ear, do not possess the other qualities necessary for an organist or music teacher. To some of these piano-forte tuning affords a profitable occupation, or they may obtain employment in choirs, and thus eke out a livelihood in part attained by other labors. VOL. X.-19

Some, however, cannot make music in any way contribute to their support. For these, if indigent, employment is necessary, and therefore industrial education has always formed a part of the course of instruction in all schools for the blind. In England, until a very recent period, it constituted nearly the whole instruction. The blind became very skillful, neat weavers, basket-makers, and fancy bead-workers, but they knew little else. Their book instruction was in most cases limited to the Church of England Catechism, the Lord's Prayer, and perhaps a few simple exercises in mental arithmetic. This was unquestionably a grievous error, but the whole history of industrial education is a chapter of errors.

In France, at one time, the intellectual education occupied two hours a day; at another three hours only were devoted to work. The true rule undoubtedly is that now adopted by the Paris Institution. Their course of instruction, it should be observed, occupies eight years; during the first two they spend three hours a day in the workshops, familiarizing themselves with the use of tools, and performing light labor; if they develop no particular musical talents, and are destined to mechanical pursuits, they spend four hours daily in the workshops during the third and fourth years; six hours during the fifth and sixth ; eight hours during the seventh, and ten hours during the eighth. Those who intend to become musicians work in the shops from three to four hours per day during their whole course, to obtain the necessary handiness in the use of tools, and an occupation by which, if necessary,