Voerda, or of Woerden (sometimes also called Nicasius of Mechlin, or Malines), taught the canon and civil law in the University of Cologne, in the fifteenth century, and is said to have possessed extraordinary erudition both in literature and science, although he had been blind from his third year. He was wont to quote with great readiness the books of which he had acquired a knowledge only from having heard them read by others.* To these instances we may add that of the COUNT DE PAGAN, who was born in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and has been accounted the father of the modern science of fortification. Having entered the army at the early age of twelve, he lost his left eye before he was seventeen, at the siege of Montauban. He still, however, pursued his profession with unabated ardour, and distinguished himself by many acts of brilliant courage. At last, when about to be sent into Portugal with the rank of Field Marshal, he was seized with an illness which deprived him of his remaining eye. He was yet only in his thirty-eighth year, and he determined that the misfortunes he had already sustained in the service of his country should not prevent him from recommencing his public career in a new character. He had always been attached to mathematics; and he now devoted himself assiduously to the prosecution of his favourite study, with a view principally to the improvement of the science of fortification, for which his great experience in the field particularly fitted him. During the twenty years after this which he passed in a state of total blindness, he gave a variety of publications to the world; among which may be mentioned, besides his well-known and largest work on Fortification, his "Geometrical Theorems," and his "Astronomical Tables." He is also the author of a rare book called "An Historical and Geographical Account of the River of the Amazons," which is remarkable as containing a chart asserted to have been made by himself after he was blind. It is said not to be very correct, although a wonderful production for such an artist. The great GALILEO lost his sight three or four years before his death, from exposure to the night air while prosecuting his observations on the satellites of Jupiter; but he is rather to be reckoned on this account among the martyrs of science than as being to be noted for having con * It was the example of Nicasius of Woerden, or Nicaise de Vourde, as he is called by French writers, which excited another blind individual, Dr. Nicolas Bacon, to pursue the study of the law. Dr. Blacklock, in the article on the Blind which he wrote for the "Encyclopædia Britannica," informs us that he had corresponded by letter with this gentleman, who resided in the Netherlands, but was, he says, of the same family with the Lord Chancellor Bacon. He lost his sight, when only nine years old, by a wound from an arrow; but, having recovered his health, he determined to continue his studies as before, until, as well as Nicaise, he should obtain his degree of Doctor of Laws. Accordingly, having finished his education at school, he proceeded to college, where, having greatly distinguished himself, he in due time attained the title of which he was so ambitious, and became eventually one of the most eminent advocates in the council of Brabant. tinued his researches notwithstanding the deprivation that had befallen him. Yet, for the short time that his life was prolonged, he did not relinquish his favourite studies. The celebrated EULER, however, affords us a better instance for our present purpose. This distinguished mathematician was struck with blindness in his fifty-ninth year, his sight having fallen a sacrifice to his indefatigable application. He had literally written and calculated himself blind. Yet after this misfortune he continued to calculate, and to dictate books, at least, if not to write them, as actively as ever. His "Elements of Algebra," a work that has been translated into every language of Europe, was thus dictated by him to an amanuensis, who was only a tailor's apprentice; but who, though altogether unacquainted with algebra when he began his task, is said to have acquired a complete knowledge of that science in the course of merely taking down what Euler spoke, with such admirable clearness and simplicity is the work composed. His Algebra was followed by several other most ingenious and elaborate works, among which particularly deserve to be mentioned his "New Theory of the Moon's Motions," and the tables by which it was accompanied, the computation of which, by a person in Euler's situation, not only deprived of sight, but harassed by other misfortunes (for, while he was engaged on this work, his house was burned to the ground by a fire, from which he narrowly escaped with his life), cannot but be regarded as one of the most wonderful triumphs ever achieved by the energy of mind over the opposition of circumstances. But Euler affords us in every way the most remarkable example on record of activity in scientific labours. The mere catalogue which has been published of his works extends to fifty printed pages. "It may be asserted, without exaggeration," says Lacroix, in the "Biographie Universelle," "that he composed more than one half of the mathematical memoirs contained in the forty-six quarto volumes which the Academy of Petersburg published from 1727 to 1783; and he left at his death about a hundred memoirs ready for the press, which the same Academy inserts successively in the volumes it still continues to give to the world. In addition to this immense mass of productions, he composed various separate works, extremely important in respect of the subjects of which they treat, and many of them of considerable magnitude. He likewise greatly enriched the collections of the Academy of Berlin, during the twenty-five years which he passed in that city. He presented several memoirs to the Academy of Sciences of Paris, the prizes offered by which he ten times succeeded in carrying off or dividing; nor did he disdain to contribute to the transactions of less illustrious associations of the learned. In fine, it requires the incontrovertible evidence of facts to convince us that so many labours can all have been performed by one man, who passed the last seventeen years of his life in a state of blindness." As a proof that even this statement rather underrates than exaggerates the amazing industry and fertility of Euler, we may just add, that, in the list of his works already referred to, there are enumerated, of separate publications alone, twenty-nine volumes quarto, and two octavo, in Latin; one volume quarto, and six octavo, in German; and five volumes octavo, in French. Euler died in 1783, at the age of seventy-six. Dr. HENRY MOYES was born at Kirkaldy, in Fifeshire, in 1750, and lost his sight by small-pox before he was three years old, so that he scarcely retained in after life any recollection of having ever seen. Yet he used to say, that he remembered having once observed a water-mill in motion; and it is characteristic of the tendencies of his mind, that even at that early age his attention was attracted by the circumstance of the water flowing in one direction, while the wheel (being what is called an undershot wheel) turned round in the opposite, a mystery on which he reflected for some time before he could comprehend it. Blind as he was, he distinguished himself when a boy, by his proficiency in all the usual branches of a literary education. But “mechanical exercises," says Mr. Bew, who has given a short account of him in the first volume of the "Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester," 99.66 were the favourite employments of his infant years. At a very early age he made himself acquainted with the use of edged tools so perfectly, that, notwithstanding his entire blindness, he was able to make little windmills; and he even constructed a loom with his own hands, which still show the cicatrices of wounds he received in the execution of these juvenile exploits." Besides a knowledge of the ancient languages, and of music, he is stated by Mr. Bew, who became acquainted with him about the year 1782, to have made himself extensively conversant with Algebra and Geometry, and with Chemistry, Mechanics, Optics, Astronomy, and the other departments of Natural Science. At this time he was engaged in delivering lectures on Chemistry and Natural Philosophy in the different large towns throughout the country. He used to perform all his experiments, we are told, with his own hands, and with extraordinary neatness. Moyes possessed all that extreme delicacy in the senses of touch and hearing for which the blind have usually been remarkable. We have been told, that having been one day accosted in the street by a young friend whom he had not met with for a good many years, his instant remark, on hearing his voice, was, "How much taller you have grown since we last met!" When first brought into a company, his custom was to remain silent for a short time, until, by the sound of the different voices, he had made himself acquainted with the size of the room, and the number of persons in it. He was then quite at his ease, readily distinguished one speaker from another, and shone greatly himself by his powers of conversation. Although at that time not in affluent circumstances, and having indeed Distinction acquired by the Blind. 201 nothing to depend upon except the very precarious occupation to which he had betaken himself, he was remarkable for his cheerfulness and buoyant spirits. He contrived for himself a system of palpable arithmetic, on a different principle from that of Saunderson, and superior in neatness and simplicity. An explanation of it may be found in a letter from himself, inserted in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" under the article Blind. Dr. Moyes, who must have been a person of extraordinary mental endowments, and who affords us certainly, next to Saunderson, the most striking example on record of attainments in mathematics, made without any assistance from the eye, received his degree from a college in America, in which country he lectured for some years. He eventually made in this way a good deal of money; and some time before his death had retired to the town of Pittenweem, not far from the place of his nativity, where his society was much courted. He survived till 1807. His lectures are said to have been well delivered, and his explanations were eminently perspicuous. It has been reported that he could distinguish colours by the touch; but, as this circumstance is not mentioned in his friend Dr. Blacklock's article just referred to, we may fairly assume that he did not himself pretend to the possession of any such power. CHAPTER XVII. DISTINCTION ACQUIRED BY THE BLIND IN OTHER INTELLECTUAL FIELDS :HOMER; MILTON; SALINAS; STANLEY; METCALF; HENRY THE MINSTREL; SCAPINELLI; BLACKLOCK; ANNA WILLIAMS; HUBER. MATHEMATICAL investigation is, strictly speaking, merely a mental exercise, and it is certainly conceivable that every theorem man has yet demonstrated in abstract science might have been discovered by him without the aid of his external senses. But, on the other hand, every operation of mind is so greatly facilitated by the employment of sensible symbols, and especially the processes of acquiring, apprehending, and recollecting knowledge, as well as of pursuing long and intricate calculations or deductions, receive such important assistance from those lines, figures, letters, and other marks which may be made to present the record of every thought faithfully to the eye, that we are justified in quoting any remarkable case of progress, even in abstract science, attained without the aid of this invaluable organ, as a noble example of what perseverance may accomplish in the face of the most formidable difficulties. It is much even for the mind to rise superior to so crushing a calamity as the loss of sight, and to maintain or recover its spirit of exertion under a deprivation which may be said to take from it for ever that which nature has appointed to be at once the chief helpmate and sweetener of its labours. It would seem almost as if life could scarcely continue desirable to him whose hourly thought may be expressed, in the language, familiar to all, of Milton's beautiful and pathetic lamentation: "with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased." What an attestation to the medicinal value of intellectual labour, that it has so often cheered even such desolation as this! and how strong must be the natural love of knowledge in the human mind, that even in the midst of such impediments to its gratification it has in so many instances so eagerly sought and so largely attained its end! After the examples we have mentioned of individuals who in this state of blindness have distinguished themselves by their eminence in the severest exercises of the mind, it may be thought less surprising that others should, in the same condition, have devoted themselves with success to pursuits of a less laborious character, and not so rigorously taxing the attention and the memory. Poetry and music, for example, may be deemed the especially appointed occupations of the blind, as having their subject and their materials chiefly in the imagination and the affections, and being apparently better fitted to dispense with the aid of visible symbols than the intricate reasonings and calculations of science. Yet even poetry owes much of its inspiration to the eye wandering in freedom over nature; and more to that serenity and gladness of the soul, which so heavy an affliction as the loss of sight is apt to destroy or impair. Whosoever, therefore, suffering under this doom, shall not "bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer be the healing and strengthening toils in which he exercises his spirit those of science or of song, still presents us with an example of heroic wisdom well worthy of our admiration. It seems to have been the tradition of Greece, that the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were both composed by HOMER after he was blind, although, of course, from materials which he had collected before that misfortune befell him; for it is very evident that the author of these poems must, at one time of his life, have sur |