lessens. In extreme age the tendency to longer sleep returns, and part of the day is passed in somnolency, the more necessary, that the rest at night is frequently broken.

The celebrated De Moivre slept twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and Thomas Parr latterly slept away by far the greater part of his existence.

Dr. Rush observes of the wakefulness of old people, "Such is the excitability of the system in the first stages of old age, that there is no pain so light, no anxiety so trifling, and no sound so small, as not to produce wakefulness in old people. It is owing to their imperfect sleep that they are sometimes as unconscious of the moment of their passing from a sleeping to a waking state, as young and middle-aged people are of the moment in which they pass from a waking to a sleeping state. Hence we so often hear them complain of passing sleepless nights. This, no doubt, frequently is the case; but I am satisfied, from the result of an inquiry made upon this subject, that they often sleep without knowing it, and that their complaints in the morning, of the want of sleep, arise from ignorance, without the least intention to deceive."

Dreaming is universal among old people. The recollection of their dreams has to do with their imperfect sleep.

Period for Sleep.-It is unnecessary seriously to argue that the night is the proper time for repose in temperate climates, for no one will deny that we must exist alternately in waking and sleeping, or will doubt

Our eyes

that day is the proper time for the former. are formed to use by day; Nature, in her brilliancy of colouring, can be seen then only; and the direct action upon the skin, of the light and heat of the sun, is necessary to perfect health. But we have still a choice to make. For in the winter there is more darkness, in the summer less, than the necessary period of repose demands. Are we to borrow hours of waking from the evening or the morning of the long winter's night? The common sense of the world has decided that the latter is preferable.

Those who are engaged in business are, through this habit, beforehand with the day: nothing need then be hurried; the offices of the day may be well thought over, and every necessary arrangement planned. Nor is there any better time, if one has superfluous leisure, for literary pursuits, than the early morning hours. It is indeed too much the custom, and sometimes hardly avoidable, to throw one's studies late into the night, when there is no interruption, and there happens to be spare time. This practice, however, forms a most injurious combination with a life of business, as it destroys sleep, that is so needed. The mind, instead of wholesomely tiring towards eleven, is wakened up, stimulated afresh by its own exertions, and hour after hour glides by; and when at length one's couch is sought, the busy thoughts cannot detach themselves from our pursuits, the mind cannot be put out of gear. One whose time is his

own, may, if he pleases it, convert night into day, day into night; and if during some part of the day he takes wholesome exercise in the open air, and his diet is moderate, one cannot say that his health will necessarily suffer by this substitution of an artificial for the natural period: but the probability is that the habits of life, which would co-exist with such indulgence, would be irregular, and that therefore it would be indirectly more injurious. One who combines with late hours of study, habits of active business in the day, will, certainly, whatever his original strength, find both his health and mental powers early impaired.

The period of the twenty-four hours, to one who has been watching, when repose is most imperiously called for, (suadentque cadentia sidera somnum,) is the early morning before daybreak, or from three to five. The same period is likewise the coldest in the night, or feels so, to the traveller on the mail, who can hardly resist the pressure on his wearied eyelids, and wakes perpetually, when his head nodding forward warns him of his danger.

In this climate, under common circumstances, there is no occasion for sleep during the day; when, however, great exertion and exhaustion render it necessary, it should not immediately follow a meal; such second sleep is best, perhaps, when taken one hour after dinner, or two, according as that repast has been more or less light. The sleep should likewise be short, and not exceed a quarter to half an hour. A short nap at

this period is much more refreshing than a protracted one; it is a kind of Morphic luncheon, which should not be too heavy.

In tropical climates, in which the mid-day temperature at the hottest season precludes exertion and disposes to sleep, the practice of sleeping in the afternoon is at all events natural; but though tranquillity is then necessary, sleep is not so, and as a constant practice, the habit had better not be indulged.

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CHAPTER IV.

OF BATHING.

"IN the fable of restoring Pelias to youth again, Medea, when she feigned to do it, propounded this way of accomplishing the same; that the old man's body should be cut into small pieces, and then boiled in a caldron with other medicaments." Lord Bacon, whose words these are, adds, "There may, perhaps, some boiling be required to this matter, but the cutting to pieces is not needful."

Personal cleanliness is at once so conducive to health, so essential to social comfort, and so naturally allied to purity of mind, that it deserves to be esteemed a physical virtue. The English are eminent for its practice, which has been, of late years, and is still becoming, diffused through humbler and larger circles. A late amiable and excellent man, and useful member of society, and amusing humourist, seems, indeed, to have doubted its absolute necessity, and to have believed in the existence in the human body, not only of a capability of becoming soiled, but of an internal counter-acting self-purifying principle. The means, by which Mr. Walker supposes that this principle may be brought into activity, is the observance of abstemiousness in diet, the cleansing effects of which in his own person are thus described by the author of "The Original."