departed. Rude hands were profaning the
home of our slumbers!

A sense of security pervades the dormitory.
A healthy man in bed is free from everything
but dreams, and once in a lifetime, or after
adjudging the Cheese Premium at an
Agricultural Show—the nightmare. We once
heard a worthy gentleman, blessed with a
very large family of daughters, declare he had
no peace in his house except in bed. There we
feel as if in a City of Refuge, secure alike from
the brawls of earth and the storms of heaven.
Lightning, say old ladies, won't come through
blankets. Even tigers, says Humboldt, " will
not attack a man in his hammock." Hitting
a man when he's down is stigmatised as
villanous all the world over; and lions will
rather sit with an empty stomach for hours
than touch a man before he awakes. Tricks
upon a sleeper! Oh, villanous! Every
perpetrator of such unutterable treachery should
be put beyond the pale of society. The First
of April should have no place in the calendar
of the dormitory. We would have the maxim
"Let sleeping dogs lie," extended to the
human race. And an angry dog, certainly, is
a man roused needlessly from his slumbers.
What an outcry we Northmen raised against
the introduction of Greenwich time, which
defrauded us of fifteen minutes' sleep in the
morning; and how indiscriminate the
objurgations lavished upon printers' devils!
Of all sinners against the nocturnal comfort
of literary men, these imps are the foremost;
and possibly it was from their malpractices in
such matters that they first acquired their
diabolic cognomen.

The nightcap is not an elegant head-dress,
but its comfort is undeniable. It is a diadem
of night; and what tranquillity follows
our self-coronation! It is priceless as the
invisible cap of Fortunatus; and, viewless
beneath its folds, our cares cannot find us out.
It is graceless. Well; what then? It is
not meant for the garish eye of day, nor for
the quizzing-glass of our fellow-men, or of the
ridiculing race of women; neither does it
outrage any taste for the beautiful in the
happy sleeper himself. We speak as bachelors,
to whom the pleasures of a manifold existence
are unknown. Possibly the aesthetics of
night are not uncared for when a man has
another self to please, and when a pair of
lovely eyes are fixed admiringly on his upper
story; but such is the selfishness of human
nature, that we suspect this abnegation of
comfort will not long survive the honeymoon.
The French, ever enamoured of effect, and
who, we verily believe, even sleep "posé,"
sometimes substitute the many-coloured silken
handkerchief for the graceless " bonnet-de-
nuit." But all such substitutes are less
comfortable and more troublesome; and of all
irritating things, the most irritating is a
complex operation in undressing. Æsthetics
at night, and for the weary! No, no. The
weary man frets at every extra button or
superfluous knot, he counts impatiently every second
that keeps him from his couch, and flies to the
arms of sleep as to those of his mistress.
Nevertheless, French novelette writers make a
great outcry against nightcaps. We remember
an instance. A husband—rather a good-looking;
fellow—suspects that his wife is beginning to
have too tender thoughts towards a glossy-ring-letted
Lothario who is then staying with them.
So, having accidentally discovered that Lothario
slept in a huge peeked nightcowl, and knowing
that ridicule would prove the most effectual
disenchanter, he fastened a string to
his guest's bell, and passed it into his own
room.

At the dead of night, when all were fast
asleep, suddenly Lothario's bell rang furiously.
Upstarted the lady "—their guest must be
ill; "—and accompanied by her husband,
elegantly coiffed in a turbaned silk handkerchief,
she entered the room whence the alarum had
sounded. They find Lothario sitting up in
bed—his cowl rising pyramid-fashion, a fool's
cap all but the bells—bewildered and in
ludicrous consternation at being surprised
thus by the fair Angelica; and, unable to
conceal his chagrin, he completes his discomfiture
by bursting out in wrathful abuse of his
laughing host for so betraying his weakness
for nightcaps.

The Poetry of the Dormitory! It is an
inviting but too delicate a subject for our
rough hands. Do not the very words call
up a vision? By the light of the stars we
see a lovely head resting on a downy pillow;
the bloom of the rose is on that young cheek,
and the half-parted lips murmur as in a
dream: " Edward!" Love is lying like light
at her heart, and its fairy wand is showing
her visions. May her dreams be happy!
"Edward!" Was it a sigh that followed that
gentle invocation? What would the youth give
to hear that murmur,—to gaze like yonder
stars on his slumbering love. Hush! are the
morning-stars singing together—a lullaby to
soothe the dreamer? A low dulcet strain floats
in through the window; and soon, mingling
with the breathings of the lute, the voice of
youth. The harmony penetrates through the
slumbering senses to the dreamer's heart; and
ere the golden curls are lifted from the pillow,
she is conscious of all. The serenade begins
anew. What does she hear?

"Stars of the summer night!
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

Dreams of the summer night!
Tell her her lover keeps
Watch! while in slumbers light
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps! " *

* The first and last stanzas of a Serenade of Longfellow's.