disquietude shattering the human frame, while like Rufinus they might see

"Dire shades illusive fleet before the mind
Of men by him to cruel death consigned *."

The passions which are ruffled cannot be instantly calmed, and these agitations which impress the mind continue long to fluctuate with an impulse which resembles the dead waves that succeed a storm, subsiding only by slow and imperceptible degrees.

repose,

As the tide of our reflections is only changed by a gradual recess after we sink into so the influence of dreams is often felt beyond. the period of their continuance; we wake with chearfulness if we have been exhilarated in slumber, and the joy which cometh in the morning requires time to disperse the clouds of solicitude. Sleep, however, though it sometimes admits images to harass the mind, yet

* Claud. in Rufin. L. ii.

in general serves to renew an impaired strength, and to recruit our exhausted spirits; and even when it is most interrupted and disturbed by visionary disquietudes, it still administers to the support of the human constitution. Nature cannot long subsist unless invigorated by its relief, it must collapse or be fretted to an irritation which will drive the sympathetic mind to insanity, if it experience not occasionally its solace and recruiting aid.

The necessity of sleep results from the deficiency of the quantity and mobility of the spirits occasioned by the compressure of the nerves, and by the collapsing of the nervous parts which convey the spirits from their fountain in the common sensory to circulate to all parts of the body *. As this necessity becomes more urgent in proportion to the fatigue of the body, we find that often while. it refuses to weigh down the eyelids of royalty

In the perfumed chambers of the great,

And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody;"

* Haller's Physiolog.

It will

"

Upon the high and giddy mast

Seal up the ship boy's eyes, and rock his brains,
In cradle of the rude imperious surge."

Sleep also is justly considered as the world's best medicine, repairing the waste and lulling the disquietudes of nature, carrying off the gross humours of the body by perspiration, and refreshing its debilitated powers. It is so favourable and restorative to nature, that some animals which sleep in the winter, as bears are supposed to do under the snow, grow fat though they are deprived of food; and swallows, bats, and many sorts of insects which enjoy a kind of alternation of sleep extended to a long period, are preserved in that state under circumstances in which they could not exist when awake.

Some writers represent sleep to be subservient to the sustenance of vegetable life, conceiving that the plants which close with the night, and open in the morning, derive benefit from a state of rest analogous to slumber; and

all animated nature may be conceived to require repose, while unceasing vigilance may be regarded as the exclusive attribute of God "who slumbereth not." The quantity of sleep which is sufficient for the purposes of well sustained life varies with the constitution of the individual, and depends on the proportion of fatigue which he endures, and the quantity of nourishment which he receives. It may be protracted indefinitely, and during its continuance the vital flame appears scarcely to waste its supplies; if we may credit some accounts which are furnished to us, and which represent lethargic persons to have been so absorbed in uninterrupted sleep for weeks, and even years, as to require no sustenance, and to suffer so little change or consumption of the animal vigor, that the " eye was not dimmed, nor the natural force abated*."

Diogenes Laertius represents Epimenides, a distinguished philosopher of Crete, to have

* Bacon.

slept fifty-one years in a cave, during which time if he had any dreams he could not after'wards recall them, and when he awaked he with difficulty recollected the city of his residence, and could scarcely persuade his younger brother to recognise him*. This account may probably be suspected from his connection with Cretan history, the Abbé Barthelemy represents it to import only that Epimenides passed the first years of his youth in solitude and silent meditation. There are many other relations, however, which prove that sleep may be continued without injury to the human constitution certainly to a much longer period than the body could subsist without food in a waking state t. Aristotle and Plutarch speak of the nurse of one Timon who slept two months without any indication of life. Marcus Damascenus re

Diogenes Laertius,. Epimen, L. i. Plin. Hist. Nat. L. vii. C. 5. p. 284.

+ Introduct. au Voyage de la Grêce. Pausanias, L. i. C. 14. p. 35.

Plutarch. Sympos. E. viii. Quæst. 9.