of the man.  During sleep, the valid and serviceable experience of the day is drawn inward, wrought upon by spiritual catalysis, transmitted into conviction, sentiment, character, life, and made part of that which is to attract and assimilate all subsequent experience.  Who, accordingly, has not awaked to find some problem already solved with which he had vainly grappled on the preceding day?  It is not merely that in the morning our invigorated powers work more efficiently, and enable us to reach this solution immediately after awaking.  Often, indeed, this occurs; but there are also numerous instances—­and such alone are in point—­wherein the work is complete before one’s awakening:  not unfrequently it is by the energy itself of the new perception that the soft bonds of slumber are first broken; the soul hails its new dawn with so lusty a cheer, that its clarion reaches even to the ear of the body, and we are unconsciously murmuring the echoes of that joyous salute while yet the iris-hued fragments of our dreams linger about us.  The poet in the morning, if true divine slumber have been vouchsafed him, finds his mind enriched with sweeter imaginations, the thinker with profounder principles and wider categories:  neither begins the new day where he left the old, but each during his rest has silently, wondrously, advanced to fresh positions, commanding the world now from nobler summits, and beholding around him an horizon beyond that over which yesterday’s sun rose and set.  Milton gives us testimony very much in point:—­

  “My celestial patroness, who deigns
  Her nightly visitation unimplored,
  And dictates to me slumb’ring.”

Thus, in one important sense, is day the servant of night, action the minister of rest.  I fancy, accordingly, that Marcus Antoninus may give Heraclitus credit for less than his full meaning in saying that “men asleep are then also laboring”; for he understands him to signify only that through such the universe is still accomplishing its ends.  Perhaps he meant to indicate what has been here affirmed,—­that in sleep one’s personal destiny is still ripening, his true life proceeding.

But if, as the instance which has been under consideration suggests, these two principles are of equal dignity, it will follow that the ability to rest profoundly is of no less estimation than the ability to work powerfully.  Indeed, is it not often the condition upon which great and sustained power of action depends?  The medal must have two sides.  “Danton,” says Carlyle, “was a great nature that could rest.”  Were not the force and terror of his performance the obverse fact?  I do not now mean, however true it would be, to say that without rest physical resources would fail, and action be enfeebled in consequence; I mean that the soul which wants the attitude of repose wants the condition of power.  There is a petulant and meddlesome industry which proceeds from spiritual debility, and causes