LYING AWAKE.

"MY uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and
his nightcap drawn almost down to his nose.
His fancy was already wandering, and began
to mingle up the present scene with the
crater of Vesuvius, the French Opera, the
Coliseum at Rome, Dolly's Chop-house in
London, and all the farrago of noted places
with which the brain of a traveller is
crammed; in a word, he was just falling
asleep."

Thus, that delightful writer, WASHINGTON
IRVING, in his Tales of a Traveller. But, it
happened to me the other night to be lying:
not with my eyes half closed, but with my
eyes wide open; not with my nightcap drawn
almost down to my nose, for on sanitary
principles I never wear a nightcap: but with
my hair pitchforked and touzled all over the
pillow; not just falling asleep by any means,
but glaringly, persistently, and obstinately,
broad awake. Perhaps, with no scientific
intention or invention, I was illustrating the
theory of the Duality of the Brain; perhaps
one part of my brain, being wakeful, sat up to
watch the other part which was sleepy. Be
that as it may, something in me was as desirous
to go to sleep as it possibly could be,
but something else in me would not go to sleep,
and was as obstinate as George the Third.

Thinking of George the Third—for I devote
this paper to my train of thoughts as I lay
awake: most people lying awake sometimes,
and having some interest in the subject—put
me in mind of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, and so
Benjamin Franklin's paper on the art of
procuring pleasant dreams, which would seem
necessarily to include the art of going to sleep,
came into my head. Now, as I often used
to read that paper when I was a very small
boy, and as I recollect everything I read
then, as perfectly as I forget everything I
read now, I quoted "Get out of bed, beat
up and turn your pillow, shake the
bedclothes well with at least twenty shakes, then
throw the bed open and leave it to cool; in
the meanwhile, continuing undrest, walk
about your chamber. When you begin to
feel the cold air unpleasant, then return to
your bed, and you will soon fall asleep, and
your sleep will be sweet and pleasant."  Not
a bit of it!  I performed the whole ceremony,
and if it were possible for me to be more
saucer-eyed than I was before, that was the
only result that came of it.

Except Niagara. The two quotations from
Washington Irving and Benjamin Franklin
may have put it in my head by an American
association of ideas; but there I was, and the
Horse-shoe Fall was thundering and tumbling
in my eyes and ears, and the very rainbows
that I left upon the spray when I really did
last look upon it, were beautiful to see. The
night-light being quite as plain, however, and
sleep seeming to be many thousand miles further
off than Niagara, I made up my mind to think
a little about Sleep; which I no sooner did than
I whirled off in spite of myself to Drury Lane
Theatre, and there saw a great actor and dear
friend of mine (whom I had been thinking of
in the day) playing Macbeth, and heard him
apostrophising "the death of each day's life,"
as I have heard him many a time, in the days
that are gone.

But, Sleep. I will think about Sleep. I
am determined to think (this is the way I
went on) about Sleep. I must hold the word
Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a
tangent in half a second.  I feel myself
unaccountably straying, already, into Clare
Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as
illustrating the equality of sleep, to inquire
how many of its phenomena are common to
all classes, to all degrees of wealth and
poverty, to every grade of education and
ignorance. Here, for example, is Her Majesty
Queen Victoria in her palace this present
blessed night, and here is Winking Charley,
a sturdy vagrant, in one of Her Majesty's
jails. Her Majesty has fallen, many thousands
of times, from that same Tower, which I claim
a right to tumble off now and then. So has
Winking Charley. Her Majesty in her sleep
has opened or prorogued Parliament, or has
held a Drawing Room, attired in some very
scanty dress, the deficiencies and improprieties
of which have caused her great uneasiness.
I, in my degree, have suffered unspeakable
agitation of mind from taking the chair at a
public dinner at the London Tavern in my
night-clothes, which not all the courtesy of
my kind friend and host MR. BATHE could
persuade me were quite adapted to the occasion.
Winking Charley has been repeatedly tried
in a worse condition. Her Majesty is no