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where in the dark much better than those who could see. After he was enabled to see he did not soon lose this faculty, nor desire a light to go about the house in darkness. He said every new object was a new delight, and the pleasure was so great that he wanted words to express it; but his gratitude to the operator was extreme, never seeing him for some time without shedding tears, and if he did not happen to come at the time he was expected, the boy could not forbear crying at the disappointment. A year after his first seeing, being carried to Epsom Downs, he was exceedingly delighted with the largeness of the prospect, and called it a new kind of seeing. He was afterwards couched of the other eye, and found that objects appeared large to this eye, but not so large as they did at first to the other: looking upon the same object with both eyes, he thought it appeared about twice as large as to the first couched eye only, but it did not appear double.

Mr. Cheselden performed the operation of couching on several other persons, who all gave nearly the same account of their learning to see as the preceding. They all had this curious defect after couching in common, that never having had occasion to move their eyes, they knew not how to do it, and at first could not direct them to any particular object, but had to move the whole head, till by slow degrees they acquired the faculty of shifting the eye-balls in their sockets.

Several philosophical inferences may be deduced from the above-cited experiment. First it is evident that the eye is not a judge of direct, though it may be of transverse distance, i. e. that it cannot estimate the distance between two trees, for example, nearly in a line with itself, though it may, if they are at equal lengths from it, but not in the same line with it. Hence when we look at a chair standing against the wall of our chamber we really do not see that the fore legs stand out upon the carpet, we see both them and all parts of the chair painted as it were (projected is the philosophical word) on the wall. It is only by having felt that they do stand out from the

wall that we judge them so to do, when we merely see them exhibiting the same appearances they had when we felt them before. The boy upon whom Mr. Cheselden operated, thought, it seems, "that all objects whatever touched his eyes," i. e. all objects and parts of objects appeared equally distant from him, the forelegs of a chair as distant as the hind, in short he could not see direct distance at all. It was only by habit, by feeling a table, for instance, by then observing the lights and shades its different surfaces presented to his eye (for of colour the eye is a judge), it was only by this process that he was at length enabled to know a table when he merely saw it. And it is the same process which gradually teaches us in our infancy to correct the errors of our sight by the testimony of our feeling, and to know that that is protuberant which appears flat, as every object does to the eye of a new-born child. This habit which the mind gets of deciding upon the massive form of objects immediately upon seeing them, is that from which the whole effect of painting results: when we see a landscape or a group of figures on canvas, the parts assume to our eyes a depth or protuberance, though really flat, because, exhibiting the same light and shade which the objects represented by them do themselves in rerum naturâ present, we judge them to be similar in all their dimensions, and to recede or come forward from the canvas in the same manner as the real objects would do if placed against a wall. In conformity with this reasoning it appears that the boy who was couched had no perception of the effect of painting: not having yet obtained experience of the lights and shades reflected by real bodies, when he saw these lights and shades imitated on canvas they could not deceive him, as they do a person of sound sight, into the supposition that they were reflected by massive bodies, he only saw flat canvas diversified with a variety of paint.

Secondly, as it appears that the boy could not tell a cat from a dog until he had felt them, it is plain that neither could he tell a cube from a globe. It is to be observed, however, that although at first all dis

tinctions of shape were unperceived, yet experience would shortly have taught him to distinguish, by sight alone, a cat from a dog, a cube from a globe. All that Locke and his partisans asserted was,-that sight alone would never have taught him to determine (unless by chance) which of the bodies was the cube of his feeling, which the globe. He would in a short time have seen that one of these bodies was even, and the other angular, but he could not certainly tell that the former would feel as the globe felt before he saw it, nor the latter as the cube did. That which was a cube to his sight he would probably have fixed upon as that which was the globe to his feeling. At least, there is no reason why, because a given body appeared evenly shaped to his sight, it should enable him to determine that this body must necessarily, when he touched it, give him that sensation which he denominated smoothness before he was made to see.

Thirdly, the above-mentioned experiment appears to suggest a doubt of the truth of that philosophical distinction which has usually been put between Reason and Instinct. If it is by an exertion of judgment that a man coming into a room where there is a real chair and one ill-painted on the wall, will sit down upon the former and neglect the latter, it is certainly by an exertion of a similar faculty, that a cat coming into a room where there is a real mouse and an ill-painted one, will spring upon the former and neglect the latter. And from the same principle it is, that the man will attempt sitting down on a well-painted chair, and a cat will attempt catching a well-painted mouse, neither discovering their error till they come near enough either to see the defects of the painting or to feel the delusive objects, and thus correct the mistake of their judgment acting upon the information of sight alone. For it is to be remembered that, in this case, it is not their sight which deceives them, but their judgment; sight informs them that certain colours, lights, and shades, appear before them, and its

information is true; whilst judgment tells them that these colours, lights, and shades, indicate a massive substance (viz. a chair or mouse) which is false. From this it would appear, that instinct has no more to do with a cat mouse-catching, than with a man hare-hunting; and similar considerations may perhaps teach us, that brute animals approach much nearer to us in faculties than philosophers are generally disposed to allow.

Lastly, it may be inferred, that the staring and vacant expression of countenance, which is to be seen in children and idiots, proceeds rather from an inability to move their eyes than from a want of thought at the time. The former through inexperience, the latter through mental weakness, have not been sufficiently conversant with different objects to have exercised the moving powers of the eye, which therefore remains generally fixed. Both, when they wish to observe a new object, turn the whole head rather than the eyeball. And, that vacancy of look does not always proceed from want of ideas in the mind at the time, is evident from this, that men intently engaged in contemplating certain ideas generally stare with a fixed and foolish countenance, whilst their reverie continues. If a child were shut up in a dark room where he might exercise all his senses but one, it is obvious that upon light being admitted at the end of some years, when he had acquired a good stock of ideas by means of these four senses,-it is obvious that he would still continue to stare like an infant, how full soever his mind might be of ideas. For the motion of his eyes is consequent upon an act of his will so to move them, and he can have no will to move them from the object at which he first looks, because he knows as yet of no other object existing, and could therefore have no motive to excite his will to action.

There are many other inferences which might be drawn from this curious experiment, but I will leave them to the reader's own sagacity or fancy.

Δ.

THE ORAMAS.

MY DEAR EDITOR.-I perambulate the streets every morning, as you well know, for the exercise of my body and eye-sight, with my hands in my breeches pockets, and my legs in a pair of inexpressibles, popping my poll into every curiosity-shop that hangs out a good bill of fare for a hungry inquisitor. These places, you know likewise, are at present generally dignified with heathenGreek compound names, which puzzle a plain Englishman to pronounce,— jaw-breakers, as we term them,-all ending in the same word, orama, and all meaning as much as this-Here is a great sight, good people! tell out and ye shall see it. Shillings are not half so plentiful with me as shop-keepers' bills, but I have nevertheless spent some in this way lately, and you shall have the benefit of my experience. Though too mad a fellow to mind any thing past or impendent, I am the more inclined to do this as you sent me a letter-full of compliments, and five guineas, (by no means the least agreeable part of your correspondence) for my 66 Peep into the Piccadilly Museum." So much by way of preamble.

The Panorama of Pompeii, in the Strand, is not worth climbing up Bow Steeple to see, but that in Leicester Fields is. They belong to the same pair of proprietors, were drawn by the same draughtsman, I believe, and may have been painted by the same painter, provided he was not the same man at the two different performances. This might have been easily managed. For instance, I am the same man that I was when I wrote the "Peep," but I am not the same man that I was when I wrote my "Fugitive Poems," which were published by the present Sheriff Whittaker, of Avemary, and had vast circulation through all the pastry cooks in the city, to the great emolument of no one. The first of the aforesaid Oramas is, as I hinted, pretty enough: there is, indeed, a group of dancers on the foreground, designed I suppose to enliven the dead imagery around them, which put me in mind of the figures on my grandmother's bedhangings, where a flock of shepherds SEPT. 1824.

and shepherdesses are kicking up their heels to the edification and amusement of several bullfinches, who are piping open mouthed within arm's length amidst the chintz evergreens of the pattern. Many a time I gazed at these mute" tuneful warblers," and the figurantes before them, when I was a little chubby snubby fellow, (being always a mischievous ill-conditioned whelp, I was idolized by my grandmother, and indeed by all the pious old people in the parish),-and now that I am a man I gazed at the group in the Panorama with equal astonishment if not admiration. The scenery however may be put into the other scale; there is something (as we Reviewers say)-redeeming in it. One likes also to see the relative appearance of the volcanic and ante-volcanic places: a forest of modern trees growing on the top of an ancient city! The hanging gardens of Babylon were nothing to this. In that part of Pompeii now at the Strand there is not much excavation to be seen, and what is to be seen is not much worth seeing. A Temple of Venus and Bacchus appears in comparative shape and preservation (Love and Wine we know will stand as long as men are mortal). The twin Panorama in the Fields is better worth money and seeing. Here are the remains of more old Roman houses than would build a city with cock-tail mice (coctilibus muris) for all the Lazzaroni in Naples. There is the groundwork of a huge Theatre remaining in fine form and dimensions: Covent Garden and Old Drury might serve as vomitoria, or entrances to it. What a barbarous, luxurious, ferocious, refined, brutal, omnipotent people were those descendants of the shepherdrobbers! Who would think that Cicero could write, and a gladiator fight within a brick wall of each other? The Fives-Court is a place of elegant amusement compared to a Roman arena. Some of the mountain-scenery in this orama reminds me of another orama which I will treat of presently-the Diorama: it is beautiful.

The next curiosity-shop I popped into was a Glass Exhibition within

T

a handful of doors of the Strand the gape-seed and glass-blowing, the Pompeiiorama. I saw a glass-case full value of his or her admittancefull of poodle-dogs, seventy-fours, money in the manufacture* itself. landaus, handbaskets, and several The proprietor, at my departure, other gimcracks, nailed to a door- blew me a dog, wrapping him up in post with "only a shilling," on a cotton, and enclosing him in a shav board beside it. Walked in, up, on, ing-box, all of which I conveyed round, out. By the bye, this is not into my waistcoat-pocket. A young a fair account of my peregrinations friend of mine, to whom I presented through the glassery. I staid there my new-found-glass dog, in teaching poring over the brittle machinery till him to "give the paw," broke off I was almost cracked myself, and one of his legs, but the gentleman like Locke's lunatic was afraid to sit aforesaid very politely blew it on down lest I might break myself in again. He added, that he should be pieces. Along with a parcel of very happy to blow on a leg for me whenwell-behaved gentlemanly old ladies ever I wished it. Upon the whole, I beheld the whole operation of glass- the only thing wanting to this exhiblowing; and I assure you, Editor, bition is an impudent name; modest in that brief space of time I learned merit never did at any time, and its more of this noble art than I shall ever scarcity in the present age has not in attempt to practise. Seriously; it is any degree enhanced its reputation. an exhibition very well worth a wise Instead of calling his curiosity-shop man's fooling away a few hours in merely what it is,-a Glass Exhibiseeing. The proprietor, who pre- tion, I should advise the proprietor sides at the furnace, blew us up se- to call it a Hyalorama (or a Hyalourveral times--minikin decanters, wine- geiorama, which looks uglier and betglasses, goblets, and tin cans, in a ter): he would by this means infallimuch shorter time than any one could bly seduce more people from the empty them, besides several flower- straight road of the Strand into his baskets and false curls for the ladies. museum, than if he were to blow up There was also a glass-wig in a glass- a house for every customer that asked case there (and a balloon in a bottle), him. which I contemplated with much satisfaction; every hair of it is as fine and elastic as hair itself. Baldness will no doubt in a few ages be universally propagated, it being for the most part an hereditary disease; and there is some consolation in knowing that, in such a deficiency of hair, we can have glass-wigs and frontlets for the price of them. The curls are drawn off from the vitreous fluid, on a wheel,-seven hundred yards (I think) of glass hair being wound off in a minute. One great advantage in a wig of this material would be that it could be melted up into a fresh wig whenever one chose it, and moreover could not be easily blown off the head, except when it was actually blow ing. A word from the THE LONDON is, I know, enough to set all London afire; so I beg leave to recommend this Orama to all those who have eyes in their heads and shillings in their pockets. One powerful induce ment to sight-seeing people to visit the Glass Exhibition is this,-every one gets at his or her final exit, besides

But the Peristrephic Panorama is that which pleased me best,—as well by the terrors of its name as of its subject. Peristrephic Panorama! What a world of mysterious magnificence is contained in those two tremendous titles! how sublime and unintelligible! how agreeably cacopho nous to the common ear, and how super-syllabically sonorous to the lugs of learning!-As I strolled one evening through the mazes of Spring Gardens, I heard the Peristrephic music shaking the tiles off the neighbouring houses; (there is a trumpeter in the band, by the bye, who would blow the cupola off St. Paul's if he exerted himself beneath it,-he almost blew the roof off my skull with a single blast of his buccina.) The uproar proceeding from this curiosity-shop induced me to enter;-when I was young and innocent I remember that I always broke my drum or humming-top to see what was inside of it that made such a noise. The same philosophical spirit attends me to this day. I went into the Peris

I beg pardon this should be ventrifacture, or more accurately pulmonifacture.

trephic, where however I found some what more internal furniture than ever I heard of in a humming-top,unless this huge round world turning on its invisible spindle may be considered one. I saw the Battle of Wa terloo all the great men, Buonaparte, Wellington, Blucher, Brunswick, General Picton, and Corporal Shaw, painted to the life or death as it happened: cuirassiers, voltigeurs, Scotch sans-culottes, Blues, Greys, Body-guards, all in fine coats and confusion: charges of cavalry and discharges of infantry, great guns, thunder-bombs, flying artillery, lying troops, and dying soldiers: the Marquis of Anglesea up to his belt in blood-red trowsers, and the Duke down to his heels in a blue wrap-ras cal. O'twas a glorious sight! Like Don Quixote and the puppets I longed to attack the peristrephic people sword in hand, and kill a few dozen Frenchmen on canvas. What would I now give to be the old woman who remained the whole time in the farm-house which stood in the very midst of the field of battle! What a sublime situation for an old woman to be in! How I should have felt had I been there! When heaven and earth were coming together, to sit smoking (as she did perhaps) amidst the war of elements, or to" stand secure amidst a falling world" with my hands in my pockets, as the drowned Dutchman was found after shipwreck! Only conceive her (blind of one eye possibly) looking out through a cranny with the other, and beholding two hundred thousand men engaged in mutual massacre, and two hundred pieces of cannon bellowing, bursting, and ball-playing around her! blood streaming, smoke wreathing, dust flying, the scream of agony, the cry of fear, the groan of death, and the shout of victory!-O, if poeta nascitur non fit be not a true maxim, that old woman ought to write a far better epic poem than blind Homer, blind Milton, or Bob Southey himself! But I am becoming too eloquent.

The last of the Oramas which I swallowed was the Diorama.-The difference between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican system of the world may serve to illustrate that between the Periorama (thus let us abridge the Peristrephic) and the Diorama. But

the superiority of the Copernican system above the other is somewhat less problematical than that of the dioramatic principle above the perioramatic. The earth revolving on its own axis saves the sun, moon, and stars, a great deal of unnecessary trouble in performing their several diurnal cir cles according to the old system; but except the giddy delight of partici pating in the vertiginous motion of the dioramatic platform, a spectator posted there is not immediately aware that he reaps any peculiar advantage. Whether the scene perambulates about the spectator, or the spectator about the scene; whether the object moves past the eye, or the eye past the object, is, philosophically considered, quite insignificant. Except, indeed, the spectator have a fancy for orbicular progression,-if he have any inclination for a circular jaunt, I would strenuously recommend him a turn or so on the hori zontal wheel of the Diorama. Indeed I have heard many people express their entire approbation of this new kind of merry-go-round and its unaccompanying scenery. The effect of this ingenious but hasty piece of mechanism however was-that throughout the whole "little world of man" there was propagated a species of awkward sensation which might be denominated by help of a solecism-a terrestrial sea-sickness. This, though amounting to but a trifling quantity, detracted somewhat from the pleasure of my excursion round the inner wall of the Dioramatic establishment.The wheel I speak of is the only thing about that curiosity-shop which has the hue of a humbug. I advise the proprietor of the Diorama (which appears to intend itself for a perma nent exhibition) to divert the enthu siasm of his steam-engine, or whatever "old mole" it is that works beneath his platform, from disarranging the stomach of his visiters, to the less ambitious purpose of moving his scenery around them. Unless there be some better reason than the mere novelty of the thing, for operating upon the spectators instead of the scenes, the innovation had better be reformed back again to its ancient model-the Periorama.

Trinity Chapel and the Valley of Sarnen have been carried about the town these two months by the bill

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