speaker, although his ear could distinguish, under ordinary circumstances,
that the sound came from the man. The knowledge conveyed to him by his ear
is, in this case, made to yield to the more forcible conviction that the
language and accents of a child could come only from the child; this
conviction would be still further increased if the child should use
gestures, or accommodate his features to the childish accents uttered by
the man. If the man were to speak in his own character and his own voice,
while the child exhibited the gestures and assumed the features which
correspond with the words uttered, the auditor might be a little puzzled;
but we are persuaded that the exhibition made to the eye would overpower
his other sources of knowledge, and that he would believe the accents of
the man to be uttered by the child: we suppose, of course, that the
auditor is not allowed to observe the _features_ of the person who
speaks.

In this case the man has performed the part of a ventriloquist, in so far
as he imitated accurately the accents of the child; but the auditor could
not long be deceived by such a performance. If the man either hid his face
or turned his back upon the auditor when he was executing his imitation, a
suspicion would immediately arise, the auditor would attend more
diligently to the circumstances of the exhibition, and would speedily
detect the imposition. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that the
ventriloquist shall possess another art, namely, that of speaking without
moving his lips or the muscles of his face: how this is effected, and how
the art is acquired, we do not certainly know; but we believe that it is
accomplished by the muscles of the throat, assisted by the action of the
tongue upon the palate, the teeth, and the inside of the lips--all of them
being movements which are perfectly compatible with the immutability of
the lips themselves, and the absolute expression of silence in the
countenance. The sounds thus uttered are necessarily of a different