and ninety-nine deaths, seven only were
with safety-lamps," and adds that "no instance
has been properly authenticated of explosion from
a proper safety-lamp; and in the most dangerous
mines of England, where the discharge of fire-damp
is greatest, but where locked safety-lamps
are exclusively used, explosions are almost un-
known."

GETTING UP EARLY.

THE human race has, at various periods, been
subject to delusions, more or less widely spread,
more or less enthusiastically accepted, more or
less extended in their duration. But, taking all
these into consideration, from Mahommedanism,
or the worship of the sun, or of Odin,
down to that form of idolatry prevalent in the
present day, which, like a monomania, attacks
otherwise tolerably sane people, and causes them
to adore hideous canine or gallinaceous monsters
called Skye terriers and Cochin-China fowls,
there has been no delusion, I take it, so general
and so lasting as that respecting early rising.

I was, at a very early age, theoretically and
practically opposed to this strange and dangerous
doctrine; and a long experience of its effects
has caused an ineradicable conviction against it,
where formerly there only existed an instinct.

Insects are early risers, so are birds, so are
beasts (those whose intelligences have been
improved by domesticity, less so, generally speaking,
than wild beasts), savages, children whose physical
is much ahead of their mental development,
manual labourers who are similarly situated,— all
these rise " with the lark," go forth when damp
and miasma are rife, pass through a day of
restless activity that it is fatiguing even to witness,
and then, when the calm and beauteous and
thoughtful evening arrives, are stupified and
stultified with an offensive somnolence.

It has been my fate to mix much with and
know something of, the habits of a large number
of the noteworthy men and women of the day,
and at this moment I can only call to mind one
such being who, from choice (doubtless some are
driven to it by necessity), is an early riser, and
of course one must make allowance for the
eccentricities of genius.

Let us take early rising in the country; that
is, early rising at its best.

Overnight it has been agreed, for some cause
or reason unnecessary here to dwell upon, that I
am to get up early. I go to bed with those
dreadful words haunting me, howling in my ears
like Old Dog Tray, casting a gloom over my
spirit that no words can describe, keeping me in
the shrinking condition of a new Damocles,
with the addition to my misery that I know
my fate to be inevitable, that I have no hope
whatever that the hair won't break, that I have
the certainty that the sword, after hanging over
my devoted head all through the black and
ghastly night, will most positively fall on me at
a certain hour in the dreaded morning. I am not,
however, given to make the worst of things, so I
say to myself, " You must make haste and go to
bed, and you must get to sleep in good time,
because you know you have to get up early!"

So I begin to undress with uncomfortable
haste, having given myself only three-quarters of
an hour by the clock on my bedroom mantelpiece
to get to bed in, instead of my usual dear
dawdling hour and a half. And yet, in these
wretched three-quarters, I have much more to do
than usual, for I must put everything in readiness
for the morrow: knowing if I don't, how
additionally hopeless, and helpless, and desperate
I shall be in the morning.

Ah, there you are on the shelf, Keats (I'm sure
the man who wrote the Ode to the Nightingale
couldn't have been an early riser; an early riser
must have been snoring when the Night,

      Cluster'd around by all her starry rays,

inspired him with that divinest song), but I
can't take you down, my Keats; I can't go on
with Hyperion, because, if it be only to read
a page, I shall keep on reading till Heaven
knows what hour, and I have to get up early.
However, I suppose there's no reason why I
should deny myself the pleasure of thinking
of you? I should think early rising even, is
hardly tyrannical enough, hardly engrossing
enough, hardly sufficiently crushing to the
mental energies, to forbid that!

Ha! there's half an hour gone, and I'm not
anything like ready for bed. Beloved Keats, you
must not haunt me so; you see, while thinking
of you, this— no, I mustn't lose my temper—
early rising went clean out of my head. So I'll
think no more of you; I dare not.

      Regal his shape majestic, a vast shade
      In midst of his own brightness.

Where is it that I have come across a line or two
very like those? I know I've seen them
somewhere: the self-same image, expressed much in
the same manner. Is it in Milton? It sounds
sufficiently Miltonic; mightn't it be in some of
the angel passages in Paradise Lost? I'll see.
See, ay— pass an hour— two hours— hunting for
what I may not be able to find after all, when
I've got to get up early!

It's of no use; I tear off what remains of my
day clothing, rush about my room (I have already
been more than an hour "getting to bed"),
complete my preparations for the morrow, plunge in
a mixture of rage and sulks between the sheets,
cover myself up, and resolutely set myself to
the task of going to sleep.

I close my eyes very tight; I try laboriously,
one after another, all the expedients I have ever
heard mentioned, or have ever attempted with
any shadow of success, to produce on the
instant healthy and refreshing sleep. I think
of a flock of sheep leaping one by one over a
hurdle; I think of falling water, of waving corn,
of wind in trees; still somehow or other my
mind won't stick to these ideas continuously,
but will go wandering off to certain remembered