D V M 
ever combined by the disposition of the har- 
svronv, the parts are not necessarily to be si- 
milar in their motion ; indeed it is when the 
composer is sufficiently master of his art to 
be able to vary them by contrary direc- 
tions, that the happiest effects of which this 
species of composition is capable are most fre- 
quently produced. 
DUKE, is either the title of a sovereign 
prince, as the duke of Savoy, Parma, &c. 
lire grand-duke of Tuscany, &c. or it is the 
title of honour and nobility next below 
princes. The commanders of armies in time 
of war, the governors of provinces, and 
wardens of marches, in time of peace, were 
called duces, under the latter emperors. 
The Goths and Vandals divided ail Gaul into 
duchies and counties, the governors of which 
they sometimes called duces, and sometimes 
comites. In France, under the second race 
of kings, though they retained the name and 
"form of ducal government, there were scarce- 
ly any dukes except those of Burgundy, 
Aquitaine, and France. 
In England, among the Saxons, the com- 
manders of armies, & c. were called dukes, 
duces, without any addition, till Edward III. 
madeliis son, the Black Prince, duke of Corn- 
wall ; after whom there were more made in 
the same manner, the title descending to their 
posterity. Duke, at present with us, is a mere 
title of dignity, without giving any domain, 
territory, or jurisdiction over the place 
whence the title is taken. A duke is created 
by patent, cincture of sword, mantle of state, 
imposition of a cap and coronet of gold on 
his head, and a verge of gold put into his 
hand. Flis title is Grace; and in the style 
of the heralds, 'Most high, potent, high- 
born, and noble prince. 
DULCIMER, a triangular instrument, 
strung with about fifty wires cast over a 
bridge at each end ; the shortest, or most 
acute of which, is eighteen inches long, and 
the longest, or most grave,, thirty-six. It is 
performed upon lip striking the wires with 
little iron rods. T his name is also given by 
the translators of holy writ to an instrument 
used by the Flebrews, concerning the form, 
size, and tone of which, there have been va- 
rious conjectures, but of which nothing cer- 
tain is known. 
DULCINO, the name formerly given to 
a certain small bassoon, which was used as a 
tenor to the hautboy. 
DULEDGE, in gunnery, a peg of wood 
which joins the ends of the six felloes that 
form the round of a wheel of a gun-carriage. 
The plate of iron on the outside of the wheel, 
which strengthons.the joint, is called the du- 
ledge-plate. 
DUMBNESS, the privation of the faculty 
of speech. The most general, and frequently 
the sole cause of dumbness, is the want of 
the sense of hearing (see Deafness) ; lan- 
guage being originally acquired by imitating 
.articulate sounds, I rom this source of in- 
telligence deaf people are entirely excluded : 
they cannot acquire articulate sounds by the 
ear: unless, therefore, articulation can be 
communicated to them by some other me- 
dium, these imhappv people must forever 
be deprived of the use of language;' and as 
language is the principal ■-ource of knowledge, 
whoever has the misfortune to want the sense 
of hearing, must remain in u suite little supe- 
VoL. i. 
D U M 
wor to that of the brute creation. Of late 
years, however, it has been shewn, that al- 
though deaf people cannot learn to speak or 
read by the direction of the ear, there are 
other sources of imitation, by which the same 
effect may be produced. The organs of 
hearing and speech have little or no connec- 
tion. Persons deprived of the former gene- 
rally possess the latter in such perfection, that 
nothing further is necessary, in order to make 
them articulate, than to teach them how to 
use these organs. This indeed is no easy 
task ; but the regular seminaries kept near 
the metropolis, by the late Mr. BraicUvoodand 
Mr. i elfair, in which the instruction of deaf 
and dumb persons lias been successfully con- 
ducted, shew that it is certainly practicable. 
The former began with a single pupil in 1764 : 
and since that period has taught great num- 
bers to speak so as to be understood, to read, 
to write, to understand figures, the principles 
of religion and morality, & c. 
The first thing attempted in the practice of 
his method is, to teach the pupil to pro- 
nounce the simple sounds of the vowels and 
consonants. The teacher pronounces the 
sound of the letter a very slowly, pointing out 
the figure of it upon paper at the same time ; 
and makes tiie pupil observe the motion of his 
mouth and throat. He then puts his finger 
into -his pupil’s mouth, depresses or elevates 
the tongue, and makes him keep the parts in 
that position ; then he lays hold of the out- 
side of the throat, and applies such a kind of 
pressure as shall indicate to the pupil a cer- 
tain necessary action to be performed by the 
muscles. All the while he is pronouncing a, 
the pupil is anxiously imitating him, but at 
tirst seems not to understand what lie would 
have him to do. In this manner he proceeds, 
till the pupil has learned to pronounce the 
sounds of the letters. Ide goes on in the 
same manner to join a vowel and a conso- 
nant, till at length the pupil is enabled both 
to utter distinct words, and to read. 
The pupils instructed in these academies 
are not only taught the mere pronunciation, 
but also to understand the meaning of what 
they read. Of this Mr. Pennant gives a re- 
markable instance in a young lady of about 
13, who had been some time under the care 
of Mr. Braidwood. “ She readily appre- 
hended (says he) all I said, and returned me 
answers with the utmost facility. She read ; 
she wrote well. Her reading was not by rote. 
She could clothe the same thoughts in a new 
set of words, and never vary from the ori- 
ginal sense. I have forgotten the book she 
took up, or the sentences she made a new 
version of, but the effect was as follows: 
“Original passage. Lord Bacon has di- 
vided the whole of human knowledge into 
history, poetry, and philosophy; which are 
referred to the three powers of the mind, 
memory, imagination, and reason. 
“ f’ersion. A nobleman has parted the 
total, or all of man’s study or understanding, 
into — An account of the life, manners, reli- 
gion, or customs of any people or country; 
verse or metre ; moral or natural knowledge: 
which are pointed to the three faculties of the 
soul or spirit; the faculty of* remembering 
what is past, thought or conception, and 
right judgment.” 
A new and different m -tlnd, equally la- 
borious and successful, has been practised by 7 
the abb£* de i’Epee, of Berlin, who, it is said*, 
4 G 
D U M 56s 
begins his instructions not by endeavouring 
to form the organs of speech to articulate 
sounds, but by communicating ideas to the 
mind by means of signs and characters : to 
effect this, he writes the names of things ; 
and, by a regular system of signs, establishes 
a connection between these words and the 
ideas to be excited by them. After he has 
thus furnished his pupils with ideas, and a 
medium of communication, he teaches them 
to articulate and pronounce, and renders 
them not on! ^grammarians but logicians. In 
this mannendie has enabled one of his pupils 
to deliver a Latin oration in public, and an- 
other to defend a thesis against the objec- 
tions of one of his fellow-pupils in a scholas- 
tic disputation, in which the arguments of 
each were communicated to the other, but 
whether by signs or in writing is not said ; for 
it does not appear that the abbe teaches his 
pupils to discern what is spoken, by observing 
the motion of the organs of speech, which 
those instructed by other teachers do very 
readily. 
There is perhaps no word, says the abbe, 
more difficult to explain by signs than the 
word croire, “ to believe.” To do this, he 
writes the verb with its significations in the 
following manner : 
Je crois, Je dis oui par 1’ esprit, Je pense que 
oui. 
Je dis oui par le coeur, J’aime St 
, penser que oui. 
Je dis oui par la bouche. 
Je ne vois pas des yeux. 
After teaching these four significations, 
which he does by as many signs, he connects 
them with the verb, and adds other signs to 
express the number, person, tense, and 
mood, in which it is used, if to the four 
signs corresponding with the lines a! ->ve- 
mentioned, be added that of a substantive, 
the pupil will write the word foi, “ faith;” 
but. if a sign, indicating a participle used 
substantively, be adjoined, he will express 
la croyance, “ belief;” to make him write 
crovable, “ credible,” the four signs of the 
verb must be accompanied with one that in- 
dicates an adjective terminating in able; all 
these signs are rapidly made, and may be im- 
mediately comprehended. 
M. Linguet, a member of the Royal Aca- 
demy, having asserted that persons thus in- 
structed could be considered as little more 
than automata, the abbe invited him to be 
present at his lessons, and expressed his asto- 
nishment that M. Linguet should be so preju- 
diced in favour of the medium by which he 
had received the first rudiments of know- 
ledge, as to conclude that they .could not be 
imparted by any other : desiring him, at’ the 
same time, to reflect, that the connection 
between ideas and the articulate sounds, by 
which they are excited in the mind, is not 
less arbitrary than that between these ideas 
and the written characters which are made to 
represent them to the eye. M. Linguet com- 
plied with the invitation ; and the abbe hav- 
ing desired him to fix on some abstract term 
which he would by signs communicate to his 
pupils, he chose the word “ uuintelligibilitv ;” 
which, to his astonishment, was almo.-t’ in- 
stantly written by one of them. The abbe 
informed him, that to communicate this word 
lie had used five signs, which, though scarce-. 
