equally severe on the wise friends of the insane. They honestly believed that terrible evils would necessarily result from giving greater freedom to the afflicted patients in asylums. Dickens took the side of freedom and common sense, and the strait-jackets, and handcuffs, and fetters have been taken off, and, even as a means of restraint, kindness and freedom have done better work than all the coercive fetters that "ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured since the creation of the world."

So all teachers who have grown wise enough have found that kindness and freedom are much better even as restraining agents, and infinitely better in the development of true, independent, positive, progressive characters than all the coercive terrors of rod, rule, strap, rawhide, or any form of cruelty ever practised on helpless childhood by ignorance, prejudice, and perverted theology since the creation of the world.

In American Notes Dickens gave a long description of Laura Bridgman written by Dr. Howe, and showed his intense interest in what was then a new movement in favour of the education of the blind.

Speaking of Laura Bridgman, Dickens himself wrote:

The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb; destitute of smell, and nearly so of taste; before a fair young creature with every human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection inclosed within her delicate frame, and but one outward sense-the sense of touch. There she was before me; built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound; with her poor white hand peeping through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that an immortal soul might be awakened.

Her

Long before I looked upon her the help had come. face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about her head, whose intellectual capacity and development were beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and its broad open brow; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted lay be

side her; her writing book was on the desk she leaned upon. From the mournful ruin of such bereavement there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, gratefulhearted being.

The touching story of Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter was intended to arouse interest in blind children.

Doctor Marigold should be one of the best beloved of all the beautiful characters of Dickens. If any kind of language could awaken an intense interest in the education of deaf-mutes, the story of the dear old Cheap Jack must surely do it.

The sad picture of the cruel treatment of his own little Sophy by her mother; of her dying on his shoulder while he was selling his wares to the crowd, whispering fondly to her between his jokes; and the suicide of the mother, when she afterward saw another woman beating her child, and heard the child cry piteously, "Don't beat me! Oh, mother, mother, mother!"-these prepare the heart for full appreciation of the tender, considerate, and intelligent treatment of the deaf-mute child adopted by Doctor Marigold in Sophy's place.

I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart outside the town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the performing was going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy cart wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb. At the first look I might almost have judged that she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show; but at the second I thought better of her, and thought that if she was more cared for and more kindly used she would be like my child. She was just the same age that my own daughter would have been, if her pretty head had not fell down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night.

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me began to travel in the cart. I at once gave her the name of Sophy, to put her ever toward me in the attitude of my own daughter. We soon made out to begin to understand one another, through the goodness of the Heavens, when she knowed that I meant true and kind by her. In a very little time she was wonderful fond of me. You have no idea what it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you,

unless you have been got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better of me.

You'd have laughed-or the rewerse-it's according to your disposition-if you could have seen me trying to teach Sophy. At first I was helped—you'd never guess by what— milestones. I got some large alphabets in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and say we was going to WINDSOR; I gave her those letters in that order, and then at every milestone I showed her those same letters in that same order again, and pointed toward the abode of royalty. Another time I give her CART, and then chalked the same upon the cart. Another time I give her DOCTOR MARIGOLD, and hung a corresponding inscription outside my waistcoat. People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what did I care if she caught the idea? She caught it after long patience and trouble, and then we did begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you! At first she was a little given to consider me the cart, and the cart the abode of royalty, but that soon wore off.

The way she learned to understand any look of mine was truly surprising. When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart, unseen by them outside, and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would hand me straight the precise article or articles I wanted. And then she would clap her hands, and laugh for joy. And as for me, seeing her so bright, and remembering what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy cart wheel, it give me such heart that I gained a greater height of reputation than ever.

This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen years old. By which time I began to feel not satisfied that I had done my whole duty by her, and to consider that she ought to have better teaching than I could give her. It drew a many tears on both sides when I commenced explaining my views to her; but what's right is right, and you can't neither by tears nor laughter do away with its character.

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to the Deaf and Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentleman come to speak to us, I says to him: "Now, I'll tell you what I'll do with you, sir. I am nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid by for

a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my only daughter (adopted), and you can't produce a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her in the shortest separation that can be named-state the figure for it-and I am game to put the money down. I won't bate you single farthing, sir, but I'll put down the money here and now, and I'll thankfully throw you in a pound to take it. There!" The gentleman smiled, and then, "Well, well," says he, "I must first know what she has learned already. How do you communicate with her?" Then I showed him, and she wrote in printed writing many names of things and so forth; and we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about a little story in a book which the gentleman showed her, and which she was able to read. "This is most extraordinary," says the gentleman; "is it possible that you have been her only teacher? "I have been her only teacher, sir," I says, "besides herself." Then," says the gentleman, and more acceptable words was never spoke to me, "you're a clever fellow, and a good fellow." This he makes known to Sophy, who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs and cries upon it.

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Now, Marigold, tell me what more do you want your adopted daughter to know?"

"I want her, sir, to be cut off from the world as little as can be, considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to read whatever is wrote with perfect ease and pleasure."

No one ever read this story and its delightful closing without being more deeply interested in deaf-mutes and their education.

All the children, especially poor and defective children, should be taught how much they owe to Dickens, that they might reverently love his memory.

One of the most awful pictures shown to Scrooge by the Phantom was the picture of the two "wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable children."

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels

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might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. They are Man's,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end! "

Dickens bravely fought the battle against the enemies of the children, and helped to win the grandest victories of Christian civilization.