218 A HISTORY OF 



not finding "11* parents so handsome as he conceived them to be. It 

 was near two months before he could find that a picture resembled a 

 solid body. Till then he only considered it as a flat surface, variously 

 shadowed ; but, when he began to perceive that these kind of shadings 

 actually represented human beings, he then began to examine, by his 

 touch, whether they had not the usual qualities of such bodies, and 

 was greatly surprised to find, what he expected a very unequal sur- 

 face, to be smooth and even. He was then shown a miniature pic- 

 lure of his father, which was contained in his mother's watch-case, 

 and he readily perceived the resemblance; but asked, with great as- 

 tonishment, how so large a face could be contained in so small a com- 

 pass ? It seemed as strange to him as if a bushel was contained in a 

 pint vessel. At first, he could bear but a very small quantity of light 

 and he saw every object much greater than the life; but, in propor- 

 tion as he saw objects that were really large, he seemed to think the 

 former were diminished ; and although he knew the chamber where 

 he was contained in the house, yet until he saw the latter, he could 

 not be brought to conceive how a house could be larger than a cham- 

 ber. Before the operation he had no great expectations from the 

 pleasure he should receive from a new sense ; he was only excited by 

 l he hopes of being able to read and write; he said, for instance, that 

 lie could have no greater pleasure in walking in the garden with his 

 sight, than he had without it, for he walked there at his ease, and was 

 acquainted with all the walks. He remarked also, with great justice, 

 that his former blindness gave him one advantage over the rest of 

 mankind, which was that of being able to walk in the night with con- 

 fidence and security. But when he began to make use of his new 

 sense, he seemed transported beyond measure. He said that every 

 new object was a new source of delight, and that his pleasure was so 

 great as to be past expression. About a year after, he was brought 

 to Epsom, where there is a very fine prospect, with which he seemed 

 greatly charmed; and he called the landscape before him a new me- 

 thod of seeing. He was couched in the other eye, a year after the 

 former, and the operation succeeded equally well : when he saw with 

 both eyes, he said that objects appeared to him twice as large as when 

 he saw but with one ; however, he did not see them doubled, or at least 

 he showed no marks as if he saw them so. Mr. Cheselden mentions 

 instances of many more that were restored to sight in this manner; 

 they all seemed to concur in their perceptions with this youth; and 

 they all seemed particularly embarassed in learning how to direct 

 their eyes to the objects they wished to observe. 



In this manner it is that our feeling corrects the sense of seeing, 

 and that objects which appear of very different sizes, at different dis 

 tdiices, are all reduced, by experience, to their natural standard. " But 

 not the feeling only, bu. also the colour, and brightness of the object, 

 contributes, in some measure, to assist us in forming an idea of the 

 distance at which it appears.* Those which we see most strongly 

 marked with light and shade, we readily know to be nearer than those 



* Mr. Buffon gives a different theoty, for which T must refer the r eader to the original 

 That I have given, I take to be easy, and saiisfactr y enough. 



