ESSAYS BY THE PUPILS AT THE COLLEGE OF THE DEAF AND DUMB, RUGBY, WARWICKSHIRE. LONDON: LONGMAN & CO. BIRMINGHAM: B. HALL, AND WRIGHTSON & WEBB. MDCCCXLV. COLLEGE OF THE DEAF AND DUMB, RUGBY, WARWICKSHIRE, CONDUCTED BY MR. H. B. BINGHAM. Since the period at which DR. JOHNSON, describing his journey to the Western Islands, speaks of a "COLLEGE OF THE DEAF and DUMB" which he visited in Edinburgh, as a philosophical curiosity which no other city had to show, several Institutions have happily been established for the improvement and education of this class of persons. One however has of late been wanting, of a strictly private and domestic character, confined exclusively to the higher classes of society, where they can be received and brought up, in a manner conformable to the principles and habits which belong to their station in life. With a view to supply this want, MR. BINGHAM has withdrawn from the duties in which for many years he has been engaged as a Public Instructor of the Deaf and Dumb, and now devotes iv himself to the work of giving, with the comforts of a domestic circle, a sound and liberal education to those persons of the higher classes, of both sexes, who, being DEAF AND DUMB, or having IMPEDIMENTS OF SPEECH, are thus incapacitated for receiving instruction by the usual channels. Ample testimony, of the highest kind, to MR. BINGHAM'S success as a Teacher of the Deaf and Dumb, with all other necessary particulars, may be had on application. TERMS: EDUCATION, BOARD, WASHING, &c. &c., from Sixty to One Hundred Guineas per Annum, according to age and circum INTRODUCTION. THE catalogue of infirmities and calamities to which human nature is liable, exhibits, perhaps, no case of our fellow creatures (insanity excepted,) which more forcibly, or more justly excites our commiseration than that of the uneducated deaf and dumb, for although blindness may and does claim a readier sympathy, from the deep interest it excites, yet, on attentively comparing these two great calamities, we cannot fail to discover that the former possesses the heavier privations. It is remarkable that until about the middle of the sixteenth century no attempt was made to instruct the deaf and dumb; and that in the time of Justinian they were considered as idiots, and abridged of their civil rights. a 2 |