6'2 ACCOUNT OF A BOY 



NO. III. 



The foregoing sheets were not only printed but cast off be- 

 fore the following letter reached me. I subjoin it, without 

 any comment, to the papers on the same subject which I have 

 already laid before the Society ; and have only to return my 

 thanks to the Author, for the trouble he has so judiciously ta- 

 ken in recording a variety of minute details, which, to a su- 

 perficial observer, may appear of trifling importance, but 

 which will be considered in a very different light by all who 

 are able to perceive, how strongly they bear on some of the 

 most interesting questions which relate to the characteristical 

 endowments of the Human Mind. Solitary as Mitchell is 

 in the midst of society, and confined, in his intercourse with 

 the material world, within the narrowest conceivable limits ; 

 what a contrast does he exhibit, — in those rudiments of a ra- 

 tional and improvable nature, which we may trace even in his 

 childish occupations and pastimes ; and more particularly, in 

 that stock of knowledge, scanty as it is, which he has been 

 prompted to acquire by the impulse of his own spontaneous 

 curiosity, — to the most sagacious of the lower animals, though 

 surrounded with all the arts of civilized Man, and in the fullest 

 possession of all the powers of external perception ! 



Letter 



