The question has been often discussed whether, if man were deprived of articulate speech, he would still be able to think, and to express his thought. The example of the deaf and dumb, who evidently think, not by associations of sound, but of touch,--using combinations of finger-speech, instead of words, as the symbols of their thought,--appears to show that he might find a partial substitute for his present means of reflection. The telegraph and railway signals are, in fact, new modes of speech, which are quickly familiarized by practice. The engine driver shuts off the steam at the warning signal, without thinking of the words to which it is equivalent; a particular signal becomes associated with a particular act, and the interposition of words becomes useless. It is well known that persons skilled in gesticulation can communicate by it a long series of facts and even complicated trains of thought. Roscius, the Roman actor, claimed that he could express a sentiment in a greater variety of ways by significant gestures than Cicero could by language. During the reign of Augustus, both tragedies and comedies were acted, with powerful effect, by pantomime alone. When the Megarians wanted help from the Spartans, and threw down an empty meal-bag before the assembly, declaring that “it lacked meal,” these verbal economists said that “the mention of the sack was superfluous.” When the Scythian ambassadors wished to convince Darius of the hopelessness of invading their country, they made no long harangue, but argued with far more cogency by merely bringing him a bird, a mouse, a frog, and two arrows, to imply that unless he could soar like a bird, burrow like a mouse, and hide in the marshes like a frog, he would never be able to escape their shafts. Every one has heard of the Englishman in China, who, wishing to know the contents of a dish which lay before him, asked “Quack, quack?” and received in reply the words “Bow-wow.” The language of gesture is so well understood in Italy that it is said that when King Ferdinand returned to Naples after the revolutionary movements of 1822, he made an address to the lazzaroni from the balcony of the palace, wholly by signs; and though made amidst the most tumultuous shouts, they were perfectly intelligible to the assemblage. It is traditionally affirmed that the famous conspiracy of the Sicilian Vespers was organized wholly by facial signs, not even the hand being employed. Energetic and faithful, however, as gesture is as a means of expression, it is in the domain of feeling and persuasion, and for embellishing and enforcing our ordinary language, that it is chiefly useful. The conventionality of language, which can be parroted where there is little thought or feeling, deprives it in many cases of its force; and it is a common remark that a look, a tone, or a gesture is often more eloquent than the most elaborate speech. But it is only the most general facts of a situation that gesture can express; it is incapable of distinguishing or decomposing them, and utterly fails to express the delicate shades of difference of which verbal expression is capable. Natural expression, from the cry and groan, and laugh and smile, up to the most delicate variations of tone and feature which the elocutionist uses, is emotional, subjective, and cannot convey an intellectual conception, a judgment, or a cognition.