nt of
intelligence, scholarship, and skill in various ways, far excels many
who have all their faculties. Having been educated partly in Paris, she
is a good French scholar, and her general composition is really
wonderful. She has a shorthand system of her own, and when writing
letters, etc., she uses a peculiar machine, somewhat of the nature of a
typewriter.

Among the deaf persons who have acquired fame in literature and the
arts have been Dibil Alkoffay, an Arabian poet of the eighth century;
the tactician, Folard; the German poet, Engelshall; Le Sage; La
Condamine, who composed an epigram on his own infirmity; and Beethoven,
the famous musician. Fernandez, a Spanish painter of the sixteenth
century, was a deaf-mute.

All the world pities the blind, but despite their infirmities many have
achieved the highest glory in every profession. Since Homer there have
been numerous blind poets. Milton lost none of his poetic power after
he had become blind. The Argovienne, Louise Egloff, and Daniel Leopold,
who died in 1753, were blind from infancy. Blacklock, Avisse, Koslov,
and La Mott-Houdart are among other blind poets. Asconius Pedianus, a
grammarian of the first century; Didyme, the celebrated doctor of
Alexandria; the Florentine, Bandolini, so well versed in Latin poetry;
the celebrated Italian grammarian, Pontanus; the German, Griesinger,
who spoke seven languages; the philologist, Grassi, who died in 1831,
and many others have become blind at an age more or less advanced in
their working lives.

Probably the most remarkable of the blind scientists was the
Englishman, Saunderson, who in 1683, in his first year, was deprived of
sight after an attack of small-pox. In spite of his complete blindness
he assiduously studied the sciences, and graduated with honor at the
University of Cambridge in mathematics and optics. His sense of touch
was remarkable. He had a collection of old Roman medals, all of which,
without mistake, he could distinguish by their impressions. He also
seemed to have the ability to judge distance, and was said to have
known how far he had walked, and by the velocity he could even tell the
distance traversed in a vehicle. Among other blind mathematicians was
the Dutchman, Borghes (died in 1652); the French astronomer, the Count
de Pagan, who died in 1655; Galileo; the astronomer, Cassini, and
Berard, who became blind at twenty-three years, and was for a long time
Professor of Mathematics at the Col