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In this mansion, sanctified by its present use, Dr. Brown and his family reside, and within hearing-distance are the rooms assigned to the worst cases of bodily and mental infirmity, so that none can suffer without being heard either by Dr. or Mrs. Brown, whose care and watchfulness over the welfare of all under their charge is constant and all-engrossing. The other buildings are occupied by other pupils and their attendants, according to their fortune and the treatment which may be necessary; to each building are attached all necessary conveniences, gardens, walks, etc.; the new building, recently completed under Dr. Brown's supervision, surpasses the rest in the completeness and perfection of its accommodations. With such ample provisions as these for the comfort of its inmates, the institution of Barre fulfils its twofold object-being a school for those who can improve, a retreat for those who cannot.

Here the training and nursing of individuals is as strictly carried out as the general training is at Syracuse. Private apartments, servants, horses, carriages, or any other comfort, may be indulged in, which is beneficial to the pupils and within the limits of their means. There are many benefits, as we shall see presently, derived from this somewhat large liberty.

There are at Barre about fifty patients brought from all parts of the country. How many of these are offshoots from some kind of aristocracy, miserable sprouts dried up with paralysis, softened by imbecility, shaken by the St. Vitus's dance, epilepsy, and what else that may befall haughty and empty families for believing themselves above the brotherhood of man, the universal family of patient workers, God alone knows. Mrs. Brown, whose opportunities for gathering observations in. regard to children of this class have been greater than those of any other person now living, remarked to me that these children of endless siestas and satieties, or of moneyed and sensualistic indulgences, differed materially from those made idiotic by local influences, home-privations, and motherly suffering during pregnancy; the former presenting more variety, the latter more uniformity in their symptoms.

It was already empirically known that some idiots can be better improved by general training (a kind of attraction), and some by individual training (a kind of incubation, if I may call it so). The fitness of either exclusively, or of its preponderance in the educational process, was presumed from observation of the functional anomalies, and, in doubtful cases, a trial of both methods was resorted to, to determine which was best. Diagnosis is rendered more easy by the new criterion just laid down, and a rational diversity of treatment may be insisted upon, almost from the start, to the benefit of the pupils and to the more complete satisfaction of the teachers, since they will the better understand their task.

The part of this task mostly insisted upon at Barre is, for the reasons assigned above, the individual training. Sexes being separated, varieties and even individuals in some cases being kept apart, the school and gymnasium do not, of course, present as lively an appearance as they do in a State institution. But on an examination of these smaller groups, or of the single idiots engaged either with a teacher or with a child of higher grade than themselves, you can easily discern the character of this individual training. It is the training of deficient functions by the immediate action of the teacher on the child. But, lest this definition should itself seem obscure, I will illustrate it by some examples of the method actually pursued in Barre. One of these has reference to imitation, which, after instinct, is the first lever of instruction for the idiot. Imitation, in its varied forms, opens the way to instruction proper. By it every member of the body, as well as the body as a whole, is drilled to regular action; the hands, in particular, are repeatedly trained to take all those positions which will be required in the acts of ordinary life or in the course of education. By it children, whose whole gait and manner is stiff and unyielding, or who are restless or immovable, are in more than one sense rebuilt into human shape and for ready usefulness. Under the same individual incubation-like training, sensorial gymnastics extend the sphere of knowledge, at the same time that they perform the more important function of increasing the modes of vitality from without to within: as the sap comes up the tree from under the bark, so the blunted surfaces of the idiot are taught to circulate the feelings. The touch is developed by a series of tactile impressions, in which the pupil is told nothing, shown nothing, but made to feel extremely opposite properties of matter by contact alone. In other exercises it is the sight or hearing which is trained to perceive, unaided, impressions more and more delicate. Sometimes the exercises tend to develop the accuracy of feeling, sometimes to increase the rapidity of perception. By one series of exercises, one set of apparatus, the ultimate nerve-fibrils (innumerable and infinitesimal brains of the periphery) have their sensibility exalted; by other exercises, another set, the white conductors (or wires) are taught to forward in normal time a dispatch from the periphery to the central office of registration of impressions, etc. The improvement in these processes is capable of positive measurement, since, at the beginning, some idiots require several seconds to transmit an impression from without within, or a volition or order from within without, whereas the normal time for these operations is only 1/25th of a second for the former operation, and 1/25th for the latter. Thus the progress of sensation, perception, volition, and even self-control, may become susceptible of mathematical measurement, just in proportion as the method of physiological education is rendered more positive by the precision of those who apply it.