CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL
CONTENTS
WOLF-CHILDREN.
THE LITERATURE OF PARLIAMENT.
LIGHTS FOR THE NIGHT.
OUT-OF-DOORS LIFE IN CENTRAL EUROPE.
MY FIRST BRIEF.
ELECTRO-BIOLOGY—(SO-CALLED.)
NEW MOTIVE-POWER.
GOOD-NIGHT.
ENGLISH INDEPENDENCE.
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'SINFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
| No. 446. New Series. | SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1852. | Price 1½d. |
WOLF-CHILDREN.
It is a pity that the present age is so completely absorbed inmaterialities, at a time when the facilities are so singularly greatfor a philosophy which would inquire into the constitution of ourmoral nature. In the North Pacific, we are in contact with tribes ofsavages ripening, sensibly to the eye, into civilised communities; andwe are able to watch the change as dispassionately as if we were inour studies examining the wonders of the minute creation through amicroscope. In America, we have before us a living model, blind, mute,deaf, and without the sense of smell; communicating with the externalworld by the sense of touch alone; yet endowed with a rareintelligence, which permits us to see, through the fourfold veil thatshrouds her, the original germs of the human character.[1] Nearerhome, we have been from time to time attracted and astonished by thespectacle of children, born of European parents, emerging from forestswhere they had been lost for a series of years, fallen back, not intothe moral condition of savages, but of wild beasts, with thesentiments and even the instincts of their kind obliterated for ever.And now we have several cases before us, occurring in India, of thesame lapses from humanity, involving circumstances curious inthemselves, but more important than curious, as throwing a strangelight upon what before was an impenetrable mystery. It is to these wemean to direct our attention on the present occasion; but before doingso, it will be well just to glance at the natural history of the wildchildren of Europe.[2]
The most remarkable specimen, and the best type of the class, wasfound in the year 1725, in a wood in Hanover. With the appearance of ahuman being—of a boy about thirteen years of ag