is kinder; but what words can set forth the fastness of a going-to-sleep after hardy exercise, which is like the descent of a diving-bell, slow, weird, darkening, "deeper than did ever plummet sound"? when the journey inconceivable, conscious only for a half-second at its outset, permeates one's being with a sense of absolute delight? when the emergent mind, after long hours, comes, as with a baptismal freshness, to put its naked foot upon the threshold of an unfamiliar world, its revenges outworn, its vexations washed away? and when no philter nor laurel-leaves of pagan credence laid under the pillows shall spare it enough of energy to dream, or, dreaming, shall bid it remember so far as the garish dawn again? Somnus and his servant Morpheus throw open the gates of ivory and of translucent horn, through which wander visions false and true; and Artemidorus, and such as he, may chronicle those confidences of the immortals,—not we: we do but sleep, and take the glory and awe of the sequence, not to prate of them nor cry to outsiders of the feast which our host spreads for us in the central hall of his palace.
We have started suddenly at times into half-wakefulness from the thraldom of sleep, utterly numb to the sensual universe, but alert within, and luxuriating on the singularity of that change. And it is borne into our cloudy brain how the silver keel of our little lonely boat has just grazed the sands of the shallows, blown thither from the channels solemn and vast, and how, ere we recognize it, we shall be sailing, under pilotage, fathoms deep and ever deepening, into the outer seas again. So must it seem to be born, if a child might carry that dim consciousness of the bygone voyage, and of the return, speedy as the swallow's wing or the decay of a rose, to the eternal waters.
Gratuitous persons, moralists and physicians, or gentlemen like Samuel Johnson, who lay abed all his days until noon, and yet preached that no creature could accomplish anything who was not an early riser, have fixed the public prejudice that sleep should be curtailed—that whole, wise, radiant gift of the gods!—to a matter of six or eight hours at most. Tradition sets up San Vito to be invoked against somnolency, with his impudent cock a-crowing as soon as the crazy day breaks,—ay, and often before the sun bestirs himself. Far more virtuous is it to take the report on faith that at some blinking hour or other the fiery celestial annoys the comfortable continent with his importunate rays; for ourselves, we are not at home to him. We know that the later we cling to bed the less mischief we shall wreak on the twelve accusatory hours, and the younger we shall be when our time comes to reckoning fourscore. We would always roll in empery and felicity a little longer, and compose our godly eyelids once again to the
