frame, lined softly, as with the down of the
eider-duck; and redolent of the soothing
odours of the poppy. The fabled Cave of
Sleep was in the Land of Darkness. No ray
of the sun, or moon, or stars, ever broke upon
that night without a dawn. The breath of
somniferous flowers floated in on the still air
from the grotto's mouth. Black curtains
hung round the ever-sleeping god; the
Dreams stood around his couch; Silence kept
watch at the portals. Take the winged Dreams
from the picture, and what is left? The
sleep of matter.

The dreams that come floating through our
sleep, and fill the dormitory with visions of
love or terror—what are they? Random
freaks of the fancy? Or is sleep but one long
dream, of which we see only fragments, and
remember still less? Who shall explain the
mystery of that loosening of the soul and
body, of which night after night whispers to
us, but which day after day is unthought of?
Reverie, sleep, trance—such are the stages
between the world of man and the world of
spirits. Dreaming but deepens as we advance.
Reverie deepens into the dreams of sleep—
sleep into trance—trance borders on death.
As the soul retires from the outer senses, as
it escapes from the trammels of the flesh, it
lives with increased power within. Spirit
grows more spirit-like as matter slumbers.
We can follow the development up to the last
stage. What is beyond?

"And in that sleep of death, what dreams may come!"

says Hamlet—pausing on the brink of eternity.
and vainly striving to scan the inscrutable,
Trance is an awful counterpart of sleep
and death—mysterious in itself, appalling in
its hazards. Day after day noise has been
hushed in the dormitory—month after mouth
it has seen a human frame grow weaker and
weaker, wanner, more deathlike, till the hues
of the grave coloured the face of the living.
And now he lies, motionless, pulseless, breathless.
It is not sleep—is it death?

Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a
very bad pun connected with the dormitory,
and which made Charles Lamb laugh
immoderately. Going home together late one
night, the latter repeated the well-known
proverb, " A home's a home, however homely."
"Aye," added Hunt, "and a bed's a bed
however bedly." It is a strange thing, a
bed. Somebody has called it a bundle of
paradoxes: we go to it reluctantly, and leave
it with regret. Once within the downy
precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to
make our exodus into the wilderness of life.
We are as enamoured of our curtained
dwelling as if it were the Land of Goshen or the
Cave of Circe. And how many fervent vows
have those dumb posts heard broken! every
fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering
fellows, each morning weighing heavier
and heavier, on our sluggard eyelids. A
caustic proverb says—we are all " good
risers at night;" but woe's me for our agility
in the morning. It is a failing of our species,
ever ready to break out in all of us, and in
some only vanquished after a struggle painful
as the sundering of bone and marrow. The
Great Frederic of Prussia found it easier, in
after life, to rout the French and Austrians,
than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep.
After many single-handed attempts at
reformation, he had at last to call to his assistance
an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain
of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every
morning at two o'clock. The plan succeeded,
as it deserved to succeed. All men of action
are impressed with the importance of early
rising. " When you begin to turn in bed, its
time to turn out," says the old Duke; and
we believe his practice has been in accordance
with his precept. Literary men—among
whom, as Bulwer says, a certain indolence
seems almost constitutional—are not so clear
upon this point: they are divided between
Night and Morning, though the best
authorities seem in favour of the latter. Early
rising is the best elixir vitæ: it is the only
lengthener of life that man has ever devised.
By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend
half a century—an ordinary lifetime—at his
desk; and yet had time to be the most modish
of all the philosophers who then graced the
gay metropolis of France.

Sleep is a treasure and a pleasure; and, as
you love it, guide it warily. Over-indulgence
is ever suicidal, and destroys the pleasure it
means to gratify. The natural times for our
lying down and rising up are plain enough.
Nature teaches us, and unsophisticated mankind
followed her. Singing birds and opening
flowers hail the sunrise, and the hush of
groves and the closed eyelids of the parterre
mark his setting. But "man hath sought
out many inventions." We prolong our days
into the depths of night, and our nights into
the splendour of day. It is a strange result
of civilisation! It is not merely occasioned
by that thirst for varied amusement which
characterises an advanced stage of society—it
is not that theatres, balls, dancing, masquerades,
require an artificial light, for all these
are or have been equally enjoyed elsewhere
beneath the eye of day. What is the cause,
we really are not philosopher enough to say;
but the prevalence of the habit must have
given no little pungency to honest Benjamin
Franklin's joke, when, one summer, he
announced to the Parisians as a great discovery
that the sun rose each morning at four
o'clock; and that, whereas, they burnt no
end of candles by sitting up at night, they
might rise in the morning and have light
for nothing. Franklin's " discovery," we dare
say, produced a laugh at the time, and things
went on as before. Indeed so universal is
this artificial division of day and night, and
so interwoven with it are the social habits,
that we shudder at the very idea of returning
to the natural order of things.  A