cause an uproar in this imperial city, which I doubt not but I have effected.

"The other is a much harder task: to set my countrymen on even terms with the French as to the English ladies' affections. If I should bring this about, I should esteem myself to have contributed much to the good of this kingdom.

"One remedy there is which, possibly, may conduce something towards it.

"I have heard that there is a new invention of transfusing the blood of one animal into another, and that it has been experimented by putting the blood of a sheep into an Englishman. I am against that way of experiments, for, should we make all Englishmen sheep, we should soon be a prey to the loure.

"I think I can propose the making that experiment a more advantageous way. I would have all gentlemen who have been a full year, or more, out of France, be let blood weekly, or oftener, if they can bear it. Mark how much they bleed ; transfuse so much French lacquey's blood into them; replenish these last out of the English footmen, for it is no matter what becomes of them. Repeat this operation toties quoties, and, in process of time, you will find this event: Either the English gentlemen will be as much beloved as the French lacqueys, or the French lacqueys as little esteemed as the English gentlemen."

Butler has left an ode, sprinkled with his usual wit, "To the Happy Memory of the Most Renowned Du Val," who

"Like a pious man, some years before

The arrival of his fatal hour,

Made every day he had to live

To his last minute a preparative;

Taught the wild Arabs on the road

To act in a more gentle mode;

Take prizes more obligingly than those

Who never had been bred filous;

And how to hang in a more graceful fashion

Than e'er was known before to the dull English nation."

As it may be thought proper that we should end this lawless

article with a good moral, we will give it two or three sentences from Shakspeare worth a whole volume of sermons against thieving. The boy, who belongs to Falstaff's companions, and who begins to see through the shallowness of their cunning and way of life, says that Bardolph stole a lute-case, carried it twelve miles, and sold it for three-halfpence.

TH

A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP.

66

HIS is an article for the reader to think of when he or she is warm in bed, a little before he goes to sleep, the clothes at his ear, and the wind moaning in some distant crevice. Blessings," exclaimed Sancho, on him that first invented sleep! It wraps a man all round like a cloak." It is a delicious moment certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come-not past the limbs have been just tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labour of the day is done. A gentle failure of the perceptions comes creeping over one: the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more and more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of her sleeping child; the mind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye. 'Tis closing-'tis more closing-'tis closed. The mysterious spirit has gone to take its airy rounds.

It is said that sleep is best before midnight; and Nature herself, with her darkness and chilling dews, informs us so. There is another reason for going to bed betimes; for it is universally acknowledged that lying late in the morning is a great shortener of life—at least, it is never found in company with longevity. It also tends to make people corpulent. But these matters belong rather to the subject of early rising than of sleep.

Sleep at a late hour in the morning is not half so pleasant as the more timely one. It is sometimes, however, excusable, espe

cially to a watchful or over-worked head; neither can we deny the seducing merits of "t' other dose"-the pleasing wilfulness of nestling in a new posture, when you know you ought to be up, like the rest of the house. But then you cut up the day, and your sleep the next night.

In the course of the day, few people think of sleeping, except after dinner; and then it is often rather a hovering and nodding on the borders of sleep than a sleep itself. This is a privilege allowable, we think, to none but the old, or the sickly, or the very tired and care-worn; and it should be well understood before it is exercised in company. To escape into slumber from an argument, or to take it as an affair of course, only between you and your biliary duct, or to assent with involuntary nods to all that you have just been disputing, is not so well; much less to sit nodding and tottering beside a lady, or to be in danger of dropping your head into the fruit-plate or your host's face, or of waking up, and saying, “Just so,” to the bark of a dog, or “Yes, madam," to the black at your elbow.

Care-worn people, however, might refresh themselves oftener with day-sleep than they do, if their bodily state is such as to dispose them to it. It is a mistake to suppose that all care is wakeful. People sometimes sleep, as well as wake, by reason of their sorrow. The difference seems to depend upon the nature of their temperament, though, in the most excessive cases, sleep is perhaps Nature's never-failing relief, as swooning is upon the rack. A person with jaundice in his blood shall lie down and go to sleep at noonday, when another of a different complexion shall find his eyes as uncloseable as a statue's, though he has had no sleep for nights together. Without meaning to lessen the dignity of suffering, which has quite enough to do with its waking hours, it is this that may often account for the profound sleeps enjoyed the night before hazardous battles, executions, and other demands upon an over-excited spirit.

The most complete and healthy sleep that can be taken in the day is in summer-time, out in a field. There is perhaps no

solitary sensation so exquisite as that of slumbering on the grass or hay, shaded from the hot sun by a tree, with the consciousness of a fresh but light air running through the wide atmosphere, and the sky stretching far overhead upon all sides. Earth, and heaven, and a placid humanity, seem to have the creation to themselves. There is nothing between the slumberer and the naked and glad innocence of nature.

Next to this, but at a long interval, the most relishing snatch of slumber out of bed is the one which a tired person takes before he retires for the night, while lingering in his sitting-room. The consciousness of being very sleepy, and of having the power to go to bed immediately, gives great zest to the unwillingness to move. Sometimes he sits nodding in his chair; but the sudden and leaden jerks of the head, to which a state of great sleepiness renders him liable, are generally too painful for so luxurious a moment; and he gets into a more legitimate posture, sitting sideways with his head on the chair-back, or throwing his legs up at once on another chair, and half reclining. It is curious, however, to find how long an inconvenient posture will be borne for the sake of this foretaste of repose. The worst of it is, that on going to bed the charm sometimes vanishes-perhaps from the colder temperature of the chamber, for a fireside is a great opiate.

Speaking of the painful positions into which a sleepy lounger will get himself, it is amusing to think of the more fantastic attitudes that so often take place in bed. If we could add anything to the numberless things that have been said about sleep by the poets, it would be upon this point. Sleep never shows himself a greater leveller. A man in his waking moments may look as proud and self-possessed as he pleases. He may walk proudly, he may sit proudly, he may eat his dinner proudly, he may shave himself with an air of infinite superiority ; in a word, he may show himself grand and absurd upon the most trifling occasions. But sleep plays the petrifying magician. He arrests the proudest lord as well as the humblest clown in the most ridiculous postures; so that if you could draw a grandee from