The artists repository and drawing magazine: exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches (3.1789)

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guishing the actual situations of objects ? By
habit; by the exercise of another sense (I mean
Touching) as another medium of arriving at cer-
tainty. This habit commences much too early
for us to perceive its progress in ourselves; we
mud therefore endeavour to trace it in those
not yet accudomed to the use os their faculties.
New born infants scarce make any use of their
organs of sight, as they do not possess consid-
ence sufficient to afford a certain conduct to
the rays of light. By degrees this confusion.
ceases, and the retina receives the rays in their
due order; now they look, and dare, and exert
their attentionj but in vain, till, by innumera-
ble efforts, they discover the jud situations, first
of luminous bodies, (whose rays issue in a
compadt order) and afterwards of objedts in
general.
As infants cannot inform us of the progress
of their acquisitions, we seek for information
on this subject from those who at years of ma-
turity have received the invaluable faculty of
seeing. With what sensations mud the minds
of such persons be overwhelmed ? sensations of
unutterable delight! especially in those whose
transition srom darkness to light, was momen-
tary and miraculous; and here indulge the
remark, how happily the Evangelid Luke
expresses