rs. Even a very
moderate degree of deafness (just enough to make listening irksome)
might have kept her in perpetual obscurity.

The next instance I intend to give is that of a distinguished
contemporary, Mr. Ruskin. His peculiar position in literature is due to
his being able to see as cultivated artists see. Everything that is best
and most original in his writings is invariably either an account of
what he has seen in his own independent inimitable way, or else a
criticism of the accurate or defective sight of others. His method of
study, by drawing and taking written memoranda of what he has seen, is
entirely different from Madame de Stael's method, but refers always, as
hers did, to the testimony of the predominant sense. Every one whose
attention has been attracted to the subject is aware that, amongst
people who are commonly supposed, to see equally well, and who are not
suspected of any tendency to blindness, the degrees of perfection in
this sense vary to infinity. Suppose that Mr. Ruskin (to our great
misfortune) had been endowed with no better eyes than many persons who
see fairly well in the ordinary sense, his enjoyment and use of sight
would have been so much diminished that he would have had little
enthusiasm about seeing, and yet that kind of enthusiasm was quite
essential to his work.

The well-known instance of Mr. Prescott, the historian, is no doubt a
striking proof what _may_ be accomplished by a man of remarkable
intellectual ability without the help of sight, or rather helped by the
sight of others. We have also heard of a blind traveller, and even of a
blind entomologist; but in all cases of this kind they are executive
difficulties to be overcome, such that only the most resolute natures
would ever dream of encountering them. When the materials for the "Reign
of Ferdinand and Isabella" arrived in Prescott's house from Europe, his
remaining eye had just suffered from over-exertion to such a degree that
he could not use it again for years. "I well remember," he wrote in a
letter to a friend, "the blank despair which I felt when my literary
treasures arrived, and I saw the mine of wealth lying around me which I
was forbidden to explore." And although, by a most tedious process,
which would have worn out the patience of any other author, Mr. Prescott
did at last arrive at the conclusion of his work, it cost him ten years
of labor--probably thrice as much time as would have been needed by an
author