O
ne of the best educated and most distinguished deaf mutes was Massieu, who gave the following remarkable replies to questions put to him by various friends:—

"What is hearing?" "Hearing," said he, "is auricular sight." Another party asked him whether he made any distinction between a conqueror and a hero? "Arms and soldiers made a conqueror; courage of heart a hero. Julius Caesar was the hero of the Romans; Napoleon the hero of Europe," was the answer he wrote on the blackboard, without hesitation.

In reply to the following questions, he instantly wrote answers. "What is hope?" "Hope is the blossom of happiness." "What is happiness?" "Happiness is pleasure that ceaseth not; and misfortune is grief that endeth not." "What is the difference between hope and desire?" "Desire is a tree in leaf; hope is a tree in flower; and enjoyment is a tree in fruit." Another pupil standing by wrote, in reply to the same question, "Desire is the inclination of the heart; hope is a confidence of the mind." A stranger asked Massieu, "What difference do you think there is between God and nature?" His reply was "God is the first maker, the Creator of all things. The first beings all came out of His divine breast; He has said to the first beings, ye shall make the second; to the second ye shall make the third beings; His wills are laws; His laws are nature."

"What is time?" "A line that has two ends, a path that begins in the cradle and ends in the tomb." "What is eternity?" "A day without yesterday or to-morrow, a line that has no end." "What is God?" "The necessary being, the sun of eternity, the mechanist of nature, the eye of justice, the watch-maker of the universe, the soul of the world." The deceptive and acute question, "Does God reason?" was put to him, it is said, by Sir James Macintosh, Massieu at once wrote, "Man reasons because he doubts; he deliberates, he decides; God is omniscient; He knows all things; He never doubts; He therefore never reasons."

Lucien Buonaparte once asked Massieu, "What is laziness or idleness?" "It is a disgust from useful occupation; a disinclination to do anything; from which result indigence, want of cleanliness and misery, disease of body and the contempt of others." In writing this answer the gestures and looks of Massieu were in perfect accordance with the ideas that might be supposed to exist with him and the words he was writing. When he had finished the last word he turned round, and then his whole person, with his countenance and his eyes, exhibited one of the justest pantomimic representations of laziness which it is possible to conceive. After he had a moment dwelt upon this personification, which his fancy suggested to him, he made an expressive transition to the looks and manners of a person filled with that dread and abhorrence which the idea of laziness should ever inspire.