1867.] Light and Darkness. 349 



and we can well believe that "two of its stanchest allies" are 

 " typhus and scarlet fever." 



Here comes another piercing cry on behalf of the poor which 

 reaches to our inmost souls ; a cry for pure air ; pure water ; light ; 

 roomy and cleanly dwellings ; and a blow at that great curse of our 

 day, the gin-shop ! Ask, What is the cause of deafness ? and you 

 will hear, Scarlet fever and typhus. Whence arises blindness ? again, 

 "Scarlet fever and typhus." Epilepsy? "Typhus." Insanity? 

 " Typhus." Ask again, Whence comes scarlet fever and typhus ? and 

 the answers are, " Drunkenness ; overcrowding ; filth ; impure 

 water ; impure air ! " When will men turn their earnest thoughts 

 to " reform bills " for the cure of these evils ? 



Mr. Johns gives some short but interesting biographies of blind 

 men ; of Huber, the well-known blind naturalist ; Metcalf, the road- 

 maker; Stanley, the musician ; Saunderson, the mathematician. He 

 also tells some humorous anecdotes of blind tramps and beggars; 

 and gives a poetical account of a visit of Mendelssohn to the Blind 

 School at Zurich : — 



" He was there in the hot summer of 1842 to rest and recruit 

 his overtaxed brain, and though besieged by a crowd of eager 

 musicians and amateurs, would accept of no invitation. But hearing 

 that the pupils of the Blind School were most anxious, as they said, 

 to see him, in their favour he made an exception. He spoke to the 

 sightless assembly in kindest words ; he listened to their songs and 

 choruses, and score in hand, to some even of their own com- 

 positions, showing clearly his interest and pleasure. Seeing a cor- 

 rection on the score, and finding it to be the blind musician's own 

 work, ' It is right,' he kindly said, ' and makes the passage more 

 correct, but it was better and more striking before ; take care that 

 your corrections are improvements — a cultivated ear wants no rules, 

 but is its own rule and measure.' And then the great musician 

 asked permission to sit down at their piano, and wandered away 

 into one of those wild and tender strains of speaking melody for 

 which he was so famous. His silent, wrapt audience listened so 

 intently to the ' song without words,' that a pin-fall would have 

 broken the stillness. One by one, over the eager faces, crept the air 

 of deep, quiet joy, until in the midst of the great flood of mingling 

 harmonies, a voice came to them out of the very chorus they had 

 just been singing. Then their enthusiasm knew no bounds. The 

 great master had carried them away at his will, to heights of joy 

 and triumphant praise before unknown ; he had whispered to them 

 of sorrow, and the cloudy ways of life, in words of soft unbroken 

 tenderness ; and now he stirred their inmost depths by a strain of 

 their own weaving, into which he poured a new tide of living song, 

 new grace, and new meaning. No words could tell what they felt ; 

 they could have pressed him to their very hearts for joy. This was 



