and the wretched exile return to the tend of fair affection.

In general, however, our reflections in sleep are regulated by certain laws of association, and the predominant complection which distinguishes the mind when awake, continues to spread its influence over our waking thoughts.

"Whatever love of burnished arsis obtains, Of chariots whirling o'er the dusty plains, Whatever care to feed the glossy steeds By day prevails, again by night succeeds*."

Or as the idea is expressed by Garth:

" The slumb'ring chiefs of painted triumphs dream, While groves and streams are the soft virgin's theme .†"

The " memory retains the colouring of the day‡," which fades only by insensible transitions. In times of prosperity

* Virgil. B. vi. Quae gratia currum, etc.

† See Dispensary.

‡ Walpole's Mysterious Mother..

"Glorious dreams stand ready to restore The pleasing shapes of all we saw before *."

In scenes of sorrow, as Job pathetically complaine, the afflictions end not with the day; "when I say my bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint, then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions †;" and Plutarch has expressed a similar sentiment, saying, " when grief takes me sleeping I am disturbed by dreams ‡."

To the coward conscience and guilty reflections, of that murderer of innocent sleep, and of Richard, "the dreadful minister of hell," the night, could bring but perturbation and shadowy terrors, rendering that by which wearied nature was to revive a rude state of 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 *."

* Dryden.

† Job vii. 14. 15. So Cicero, Cura oppressi animi vel corporis sive fortune, qualis vigilantem fatigaverit talent se ingerit dormienti. De Divin. Lib. i. Q.15.

‡ Plutarch.

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.

As the tide of our reflections is only changed by a gradual recess after we sink into repose, 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 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.

*Claud. in Rufin. L. ii.

The necessity of sleep results from the de-ficiency 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 bey's eyes, and rock hit 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 animals vigor, that the "eye was not dimmed, nor the natural force abated*."

Diogenes Laertius represents Epimenides, a distinguished philosopher of Crete, to have slept fifty-one years in a cave, during which time if he had any dreams he could not afterwards 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 Abbe 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 †. Aristotle and Plutarch ‡ speak of the nurse of one Timon who slept two months without any indication of life. Marcus Damascenus represents a German rustic to have slept under an hay-rick through a whole autumn and winter, till on the removal of the hay be awoke half dead and utterly distracted *• Crantzius mentions a scholar at Lubeck in the time of Gregory the Eleventh, who slept seven years without any apparent change †. The most memorable account, however, is that of the seven persons of Ephesus, who are reported to have slept providentially in a cave to which they had retired, from the time of the persecution under Decius till the 30th year of Theo-dosius. The cave, it is said, is still shewn at Ephesus, and the remains of a chapel erected to their memory‡ . These were the seven famous sleepers whose reputation is certainly unrivalled in history. But though the account be sanctioned in some Greek homilies, and in the Koran, many incredulous people have stumbled at the marvellous relation, and consider it as a fiction of the martyrologists. There is however perhaps nothing more inexplicable in men's sleeping 196 years* than in their sleeping six, we know not at what limits to stop, and may remark as was once done on the subject of St. Denys's walking a great way without his head, La distance a'y fait rien, c'est le premier pas qui conte.