but we were tired, and getting into bed to
discuss the matter we both fell asleep.

My dreams were seething whirlpools of
horrors. Manfred pushed me over icy
crags, or into the blue rifts of glaciers.
Zamiels fired exploding bullets at me as
I knelt imprisoned in a magic circle of
phosphorescent skulls. The wild huntsman
chased me through dark pine forests. I
looked through the windows of woodmen's
huts, and saw mocking ruffians cramming
Fridolins into fiery furnaces. Wallenstein
in black armour ordered me to instant
execution, and I could see the headsman in
the courtyard below trying the edge of
the axe with his thumb. All at once a
shout from my friend roused me. I awoke.
The room was red with the reflection of
flames.

"I told you so," he said, encouragingly;
"I never liked this place from the first.
The inn is set on fire."

But it did not happen to be our house
after all. It was a tailor's at the end of
the street, and presently the firemen came
dashing up under our window, and shouting
for the horses, that our landlord, as is
usual on such occasions in Germany, is
obliged to supply. The fire was eventually
got under, and we left the next morning
in no wise the worse. Our bill was a wonder
in its innocent and moderate charges, but
they made no deduction for those frightful
dreams, which was wrong.

Shelley, begins that beautiful rhapsody
of his, Queen Mab, with the lines:

    How wonderful is Death,
    Death and his brother Sleep.

Allegory is a dangerous edge-tool, and very
apt to snap in the hands of the workman.
An allegorical impersonation should be
shown quickly, then instantly withdrawn.
No inquiry should be made into its
antecedents or its future. It is a beautiful
allegory to call Death the brother of
Sleep, but what would you say if you were
asked who was Sleep's third cousin, or his
aunt, or his grandmother, or his
godfather?

Sleep is the holiday time of life, as death
is the final breaking up. During half man's
life the shop is closed and the shutters are
up. Man needs forgetfulness half his life
to enable him to endure the other half.
Shakespeare, who has written finely about
most things, has written very nobly on
sleep. Witness that grand passage in
Macbeth, so full of all his faults and all his
beauties:

    Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
    The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
    Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
    Chief nourisher in life's feast.

What a prodigality and even confusion of
metaphors! Sleep a darner, a death, a
bath, a balsam, a second course, a chief
dish, and all in four lines! Shakespeare
was fond of contrasting troubled royalty
with contented poverty. The antithesis
often occurs in his writings. Thus, in
Henry the Fourth, the Prince says,

                                Sleep with it now,
    Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
    As he whose brow with homely biggin bound
    Snores out the watch of night.

Almost the same thought he puts into the
mouth of Henry the Sixth:

           ——The shepherd's homely curds,
    His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
    His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
    All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
    Is far beyond a prince's delicates,
    His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
    His body couched in a curious bed,
    When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.

Boerharve tells a story of a cranky German
physician, who maintained that sleep
was the natural state of man, and that to
be awake was to be in a state of disease,
under which belief this Teutonic dormouse
eventually slept himself into an apoplexy.

What is sleep? you ask the doctors and
the physiologists, and as usual they tell you
the symptoms and results of sleep, and
expound its diagnosis, but help you no
further. In fact, all they know about it is
that it is. Blumenbach attributed it to a
diminished flow of arterial blood to the
brain, but Dr. Elliotson, his commentator,
justly remarks that this slower circulation
is a consequence, not a cause of sleep.
Pressure on the brain produces involuntary
sleep, but, nevertheless, there need not
necessarily be pressure in true and natural
sleep. Here, again, we arrive at one of
Nature's closed doors.

The writers on sleep have noted several
of its phenomena. At the battle of the
Nile, some of the ship's boys, worn out
with fatigue, fell asleep at the foot of the
guns that were for a moment ceasing their
remorseless fire. There have been men so
accustomed to the din of forges and the
noise of mills that they could not sleep in
quiet places. During the retreat from
Corunna, the soldiers were often seen
marching fast asleep. Some great men,
like Napoleon, have been able to sleep at
will. Sir Walter Scott always said he
required seven hours' sleep to refresh his
huge brain. Sir Edward Coke used to say