submitting with infinite unwillingness to the law by which they deem themselves, as it were, defrauded of life and activity in so large measure.  In form, to be sure, their accusation lies solely against themselves; they reproach themselves with sleeping beyond need, sleeping for the mere luxury and delight of it; but the venial self-deception is quite obvious,—­nothing plainer than that it is their necessity itself which is repugnant to them, and that their wills are blamed for not sufficiently withstanding and thwarting it.  Pious William Law, for example, is unable to disparage sleep enough for his content.  “The poorest, dullest refreshment of the body,” he calls it,... “such a dull, stupid state of existence, that even among animals we despise them most which are most drowsy.”  You should therefore, so he urges, “begin the day in the spirit of renouncing sleep.”  Baxter, also,—­at that moment a walking catalogue and epitome of all diseases,—­thought himself guilty for all sleep he enjoyed beyond three hours a day.  More’s Utopians were to rise at very early hours, and attend scientific lectures before breakfast.

Ambition and cupidity, which, in their way, are no whit less earnest and self-sacrificing than sanctity, equally look upon sleep as a wasteful concession to bodily wants, and equally incline to limit such concession to its mere minimum.  Commonplaces accordingly are perpetually circulating in the newspapers, especially in such as pretend to a didactic tone, wherein all persons are exhorted to early rising, to resolute abridgment of the hours of sleep, and the like.  That Sir Walter Raleigh slept but five hours in twenty-four; that John Hunter, Frederick the Great, and Alexander von Humboldt slept but four; that the Duke of Wellington made it an invariable rule to “turn out” whenever he felt inclined to turn over, and John Wesley to arise upon his first awaking:  instances such as these appear on parade with the regularity of militia troops at muster; and the precept duly follows,—­“Whoso would not be insignificant, let him go and do likewise.”  “All great men have been early risers,” says my newspaper.

Of late, indeed, a better knowledge of the laws of health, or perhaps only a keener sense of its value and its instability, begins to supersede these rash inculcations; and paragraphs due to some discreet Dr. Hall make the rounds of the press, in which we are reminded that early rising, in order to prove a benefit, rather than a source of mischief, must be duly matched with early going to bed.  The one, we are told, will by no means answer without the other.  As yet, however, this is urged upon hygienic grounds alone; it is a mere concession to the body, a bald necessity that we hampered mortals lie under; which necessity we are quite at liberty to regret and accuse, though we cannot with safety resist it.  Sleep is still admitted to be a waste of time, though one with which Nature alone is chargeable.  And I own,