his whip; then proceeds to the stable, and handles his horse with great care, and with the utmost seeming at*tention. The servants were instructed to prevent his visits to the horses of strangers in the stable; and after his wishes in this respect had been repeatedly thwarted, he had the ingenuity to lock the door of the kitchen on the servants, in the hope that he might accomplish unmolested his visits to the stable.

Having appeared to distinguish, by feeling, a horse which his mother had sold a few weeks before, the rider dismounted to put his knowledge to the test; and the boy immediately led the horse to his mother's stable, took off his saddle and bridle, put corn before him, and then withdrew, locking the door, and putting the key in his pocket.

In 1811, when this poor boy was in his sixteenth year, he lost the guidance of his father. His feelings on the occasion are somewhat variously represented. Some of his relations represent him as betraying the liveliest sense of his irreparable loss; but the testimony of his sister and of Dr. Gordon appears to prove, that attention, curiosity, and wonder, were excited by the novelty of the outward circumstances, rather than that he felt those sentiments which pre-suppose some conception of the nature of the change which had occurred in the state of bis

parent.

He had previously amused himself with placing a dead fowl repeatedly on its legs, laughing when it fell; but the first human dead body which he touched was that of his father, from which he shrunk with signs of surprise and dislike. He felt the corpse in the coffin; and on the evening after the funeral, he went to the grave, and pat-ted it with both his hands; but whether from affection, or imitation of the art of beating down the turf after the

grave was closed, his sister could not determine. For several days, he returned repeatedly to the grave, and re gularly attended every funeral that afterwards occurred in the same church-yard.

On one occasion, after his father's death, discovering that his mother was unwell and in bed, he was observed to weep. At another time, soon aster, a clergyman being in the house on a Sunday evening, he pointed to his father's Bible, and then made a sign that the family should kneel.

The boy's only attempts at utterance, are the uncouth bellowings by which he sometimes labours to give vent to that violent anger to which his situation seems prone. His tears are most commonly shed from disappointment in his wishes; but they sometimes flow from affectionate sorrow. He displays by boisterous laughter his triumph at the success of contrivances to place others in situations of ludicrous distress.

His sister has devised some means for establishing that communication between him and other beings, from which nature for ever seemed to have cut him off. By various modifications of touch, she conveys to him her satisfaction or displeasure at his conduct; which is not only the means of communication, but the instrument of moral discipline. To supply its obvious and great defects, she has had récourse to a language of action, representing those ideas which none of the simple natural signs cognizable by the sense of touch, could convey. When his mother was from home, his sister allayed his anxiety for her return by laying his head gently down on 2 pillow once for each night that his mother was to be absent; implying, that he would sleep so many nights before her return.

Diderot alludes to a case like that of Mitchell, and the Abbé de L'Epée had anticipated the possibility of such a misfortune. But no account of any being, doomed from birth to a privation so complete, both of sight and hearing, has hitherto been discovered in the records of science, unless we except that of an American girl, and which appears to have been unknown to Professor Stewart, but who was four years of age before she united such accumulation of misfortune as that which distinguishes the case of poor Mitchell.

The following additional anecdote of him has been recently communicated by his sister to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

"There is a point of land leading from Nairn, (the town where he lives) along the side and to the mouth of the river, and which with high tide is overflowed by the sea, where there are boats frequently left fastened to something for the purpose. He had been in the habit, it seems, of going down to these boats; and had that day gone down and stepped into one of them as usual. Before he was aware, however, he was afloat, and completely surrounded with water. Had he remained quietly there until the tide had ebbed, he probably would not have been in any danger; but instead of that, upon perceiving his situation, he undressed himself and plunged into the sea, seemingly with the intention of attempting to drag the boat with his clothes to land. Finding that, however, impracticable, he next attempted returning to the boat, but failed in getting into it, and with his struggling upset it; and there is not a doubt but he must have perished, had not some salmon-fishers been most providentially employed within sight of him, and rowed to his assistance. By the time they reached him, he was

nearly exhausted by his exertions; and having been repeatedly completely under water, was so benumbed with cold, that they were obliged to strip themselves of what clothes they could spare, and put them on him, his own being quite wet from the upsetting of the boat. They then very humanely brought him home, carrying him great part of the way, until he recovered strength and warmth sufficient to enable him to walk. "It is curious enough," says his intelligent sister, "to observe the sagacity displayed in some of his actions. His shoes were found with

a stocking and a garter stuffed into each of them, and his tobacco-pipe in his coat pocket, rolled up in his neckcloth. The shoes (having got them on new that morning) were the only articles he discovered any anxiety to recover; and these he seemed much delighted with upon their being restored to him, they having been found when the tide ebbed. His first action when I met him, upon being brought home, was to pull off a worsted night-cap, and give it to me with rather an odd expression of countenance. The men had been obliged to put it upon him, his hat having shared the fate of his clothes in the boat, and he certainly made a most grotesque appearance altogether, which he seemed to be in some degree aware of, as after getting on a dry suit of his own clothes, he frequently burst out laughing during the evening, although upon the whole he appeared graver and more thoughtful than usual."

AVARICE OUTWITTED.

THE case of John Eyre, Esq. who, though worth upwards of £30,000, was convicted at the Old Bailey, and

sentenced to transportation, for stealing eleven quires of common writing paper, was rendered more memorable by the opportunity which it gave Junius to impeach the integrity of Lord Mansfield, who was supposed to have erred in admitting him to bail. An anecdote is related of Mr. Eyre, which shows in a striking manner the natural depravity of the human heart; and may help to account for the meanness of the crime of which he stood convicted. An uncle of his, a gentleman of considerable property, made his will in favour of a clergyman, who was his intimate friend, and committed it, unknown to the rest of his family, to the custody of the divine. However, not long before his death, having altered his mind with regard to the disposal of his wealth, he made another will, in which he left the clergyman only £500, leaving the bulk of his large fortune to his nephew and heir at law, Mr. Eyre. Soon after the old gentleman's death, Mr. Eyre, rummaging over his drawers, found this last will, and perceiving the legacy of £500 in it for the clergyman, without any hesitation or scruple of conscience, put it in the fire, and took possession of the whole effects, in consequence of his uncle's being supposed to have died intestate. The clergyman coming to town soon after, and inquiring into the circumstances of his old friend's death, asked if he had made any will before he died? On being answered by Mr. Eyre in the negative, the clergyman very cooly put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out the former will, which had been committed to his care, in which Mr. Eyre had hequeathed him the whole of his fortune, amounting to several thousand pounds, excepting a legacy of £500 to his nephew.