his offer, it had not occurred to him to
anticipate any rebuff. Being repelled, however,
he retreated to his chamber, and to bed.
Day after day went by —his friends despaired
of ever seeing him again. At the end of a
fortnight, Tinderides reappeared among living
men in good health and spirits, went about
his affairs as usual, and has never since
mentioned Cloantha's name. All that he had
of her he smothered in bed, and lived at ease
ever thereafter.

A noticeable and necessary circumstance,
connected with true lying in bed, is the
entire giving up of one's self to the
peculiarities —as far as, in such a place, they can be
indulged —of one's own natural character.
Together with the dress and ornaments of
the day, we lay aside what Mr, Carlyle
calls its shams. Bed makes of us unsophisticated
men and women. The Lord Chancellor
might be a costermonger, or a costermonger
a Lord Chancellor, when they are both
upon their backs. Bed brings them to a
level.

The maid that chares —and, for her reward,
as she acknowledges, "enjoys her bed" —is
no freer of limb, or more natural of breathing,
than the most fastidious lady in the land. It
is impossible to tell which of the two may
snore.

Widely different, however, doubtless, are
the dreams of folks so different. Though it
is not at all the fact, that people dream most
at night about things that have occupied
them in the daytime, yet it is true, that the
general complexion of dreams is in harmony
with each person's peculiar character and
habits. The courtier, the lawyer, the parson,
the soldier —all alike under the sceptre of the
same Queen Mab —dream each with a
characteristic difference. Our dreams take their
colour from conscience, as well as from
experience. They are, besides, as much
influenced by natural temperament, as by any
other agency. The melancholy and
contemplative Hamlet had bad dreams; while
many a differently tempered man has had to
complain of the cock —or, if a Londoner, the
sweep who

                                           "Reft away
His fancied bliss, and brought substantial woe"

Perhaps the most marvellous among bed
incidents, is that a sleeping man should quit
his place of refuge; that in dark nights and
while his senses are chained up, a person shall
get up out of his bed to perform a series of
actions, for the performance of which in his
waking hours the carefullest use of the senses
is quite indispensable. For the sleeper to
get out of bed is at least irrational, and it is
very marvellous, for even when we are awake
the act of rising is not easy.

What are we to do at night, if we don't
sleep? We cannot all live the life of the
artificer or field labourer.

                                   "He, all day,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus; and at night
Sleeps in Elysium."

But the man of thought is very often wakeful,
He may need more sleep than others,
but he will not always have it. In periods
of mental anxiety, too, and in sickness and
old age, sleep, which so freely visits the
healthy, the happy, and the young, is apt,
like a false friend, to keep at a distance. It
is hard, sometimes, for the best and wisest
to fill an unquiet night with peaceful ruminations.
The best use of such hours is the
devotional. The author of the Morning and
Evening Hymns, sung by every English child,
likewise composed one, which is less known,
for midnight; it was his custom, at the proper
hour, to accompany this hymn with his lute.
Dr. Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, in
whom we witness the nearest recent approach
in the Church of England to a truly
primitive bishop, was often heard in his sick-
bed, soothing the hours of wakefulness and
pain with midnight orisons. After the death
of another prelate of the like stamp,
Andrewes, the manuscript of whose Book of
Devotion, now equally familiar to the scholar's
desk and to the table of the cottager,
was found in his bed "so soiled by usage,
and stained with tears, that it was scarcely
readable."

Another useful bed employment when one
waits for sleep, is to recal to distinct
remembrance agreeable and innocent passages of
one's past life, to renew virtuous friendships,
to rejoice again over just  successes, to
encourage a just sentiment concerning them.
Bishop Hall (who has a fine passage, somewhere,
in relation to this subject) observes
that he is a miserable student who allows his
waking thoughts at night to run in the same
current as his work by day. Nevertheless, I
have faith in the benefit of concentrated
thought, as a refreshment —an anodyne —to
a brain wearied with the random freaks of
its own wakeful fancy. Some students—
among whom the great thinker, Descartes,
may be quoted —have adopted the practice of
making their bed their study; tempted to
this abuse of a good thing by experience of
the aid to profound meditation afforded by
the easy, recumbent posture, and the silence
of a solitary chamber.

The last lying in bed, what is that like?
One wonders how that person feels, whose
whole world has been turned into a bedstead.
What are the feelings of the man so cribbed
and cabined, when he thinks of the work at
that time being done in the sunlight by the
healthy and the strong? Then, however, is
the time for looking forward.

For, there is another bed to come —the
grave —and it is only a temporary resting-
place. So poetry names it the "narrow bed",
but it is the poetry of simple truth. We
make the grave, too, in a cemetery; and what