and because his life had been passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, the happiness of heaven must have seemed in Hooker's estimation, to consist primarily in Order, as, indeed, in all human societies this is the first thing needful. SWEET SLEEP, AND ITS FORFEITURE. O him that keepeth sound wisdom and instruction is the promise given, not only that he shall walk in his way safely, and his foot shall not stumble,—this for daytime and its activities,—but further, as regards night-time and its contingencies, that when he lies down he shall not be afraid; yea, he shall lie down, and his sleep shall be sweet. So He giveth His beloved sleep, of whom the Psalmist said, “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me." Surely, in order that one may pray with full purpose of heart the prayer, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his one should live the life that may warrant the nightly petition, Let me sleep the sleep of the just, and let mine eyes close quietly in slumber even as his. Macbeth, within this minute a murderer, ipso facto realizes the appalling truth, that between him and placid sleep there is, from henceforth and for evermore, a great gulf fixed, as impassable as abysmal. "Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macb. Still it cried, 'Sleep no more!' to all the house : How sleeps Lady Macbeth after that night? Ask her physician and waiting-woman, and watch with them the sleep-walking scene. "To bed, to bed, to bed." But what avails that to the somnambulist, ever in semblance washing her hands, and complaining of the smell of blood upon them still, and that all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten them? Now and then one meets with a sceptic as to lost sleep being the inevitable sequent upon crime; and no doubt there are exceptions. Mr. G. Wingrove Cooke, in his letters from Chinese waters, thus describes the captive Mandarin, Yeh, whose fellow-passenger to Calcutta he was: "He goes to bed at eight o'clock, and while we are reading or writing or playing chess, he sleeps the sleep of infancy-an unbroken slumber, apparently undisturbed by visions of widowed women and wailing orphans. This mankiller, after slaying his hundred thousand human beings, enjoys sweeter sleep than an innocent London alderman after a turtle dinner." Perhaps that is not saying much,-considering what a turtle dinner comprehends and superinduces. But the next sentence says a good deal; it is to be hoped, a great deal too much: "So false are traditions; so false are the remorseful scenes of Greek and English tragedies." One would be sorry, for the dignity of human nature, to believe that all is fiction the poets tell us of cases in which non avium citharæque cantus, or any other aids and appliances, somnum reducent. "Wherefore to me," asks Clytemnestra,— "is solacing sleep denied? And honourable rest, the right of all? Impressive in history, not romance, as Plutarch tells it, is the story of Pausanius as a haunted man, from the hour that Cleonice fell dead at his feet, pierced by his sword. "From that hour he could rest no more." Her spectre perturbed him every night. Henceforth, nor poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, could ever medicine him to that sweet sleep which he owed yesterday. As a guilty spirit says of guilt, in one of Landor's fragments, "It wakes me many mornings, many nights, And fields of poppies could not quiet it." Modern fiction abounds with examples to the purpose. There is Colonel Whyte Melville's remorseful woman of the world bidding her young friend good night, and meaning it all the more because her own good nights are dead and gone : "What would I give to yawn as honestly as you do, and to sleep sound once again, as I used to sleep when I was a girl!" There is Mr. Trollope's Lady Mason, so wistfully, so vainly longing for rest-to be able to lay aside the terrible fatigue of being ever on the watch. From the burden of that necessity she has never been free since her crime was first committed. "She had never known true rest. She had not once trusted herself to sleep without the feeling that her first waking thought would be one of horror, as the remembrance of her position came upon her." As with the royal lady pictured by the laureate, 66 Many a time for hours In the dead night, grim faces came and went and with a cry she woke. And all this trouble did not pass, but grew." There is Donatello, in Hawthorne's "Transformation," succumbing to a stupor, which he mistakes for such drowsiness as he has known in his innocent past life. There is Albert Maurice, in "Mary of Burgundy," gazing on the Vert Gallant of Hannut as he lay in a deep, sweet sleep-so calm and tranquil, though within the walls of a prison, suffering from injuries, and exposed to constant danger; gazing with a sense of envy and regret, “which few, perhaps, can appreciate fully, who have not felt the sharp tooth of remorse begin its sleepless gnawings on the heart. He would not have disturbed such slumbers for the world; and, withdrawing again with a noiseless step, he retired to his own chamber, and cast himself down upon his bed, to snatch, at least, that heated and disturbed sleep, which was all the repose that he was ever more to know on earth." To such as him can nothing bring back, in the hour and power of darkness, more than an embittered memory of times "When that placid sleep came o'er him Which he ne'er can know again." An innocent comforter in a modern tragedy offers a disquieted spirit the assurance, as regards the object of his disquiet, that "'twill away in sleep." But his answer is,— "No, no! I dare not sleep-for well I know That then the knife will gleam, the blood will gush, The form will stiffen!" From the night of the massacre of Glencoe, Glenlyon, as Macaulay tells us, was never again the man that he had been before that night. The form of his countenance was changed; and "in all places, at all hours, whether he waked or slept, Glencoe was for ever before him." As with a distinguished foreigner of a later generation, Depuis ce moment, point de sommeil, point de repos; il croyait toujours voir un glaive arrêté sur sa tête. In such cases, the sleepers start from broken slumbers, as if starting back from the edge of a precipice; for,— "Their whole tranquillity of heart is gone; The peace wherewith till now they have been blest Fast following thoughts and busy fancies throng; Their sleep itself is feverish, and possest With dreams that to the wakeful mind belong." Something like a stupid sleep oppresses me," writes one of Henry Mackenzie's characters; "last night I could not sleep. Where are now those luxurious slumbers, those wandering dreams of future happiness? Never shall I know them again." Falkland avows to Caleb Williams, the involuntary master of his master's fatal secret, that "from the hour the crime was committed" he has not had an hour's peace: "I became changed from the happiest into the most miserable being that lives; sleep has fled from my eyes." And Caleb Williams himself testifies in an after chapter, "The ease and lightheartedness of my youth were for ever gone. The voice of an irresistible necessity had commanded me to 'sleep no more.' They that do murder, says Roscoe's Violenzia,— "Never sleep more, never more taste of peace, Shaking them like a palsy." The bitter contrast-ah, for the change 'twixt now and then! -is forcibly worded by Bosola in the "Duchess of Malfi" :"O sacred innocence, that sweetly sleeps On turtle's feathers! whilst a guilty conscience Is a perspective that foreshows us hell." L' ONCE DENIED, THRICE DENIED. ST. MATTHEW xxvi, 69, sq. IE engenders lie. Once committed, the liar has to go on in his course of lying. It is the penalty of his transgression, or one of the penalties. To the habitual liar, bronzed and hardened in the custom, till custom becomes second nature, the penalty may seem no very terrible price to pay. To him, on the other hand, who, without deliberate intent, and against his innermost will, is overtaken with such a fault, the generative power of a first lie to beget others, the necessity of supporting the first by a second and a third, is a retribution keenly to be felt, while penitently owned to be most just. Though it was afar off that Peter followed his Master to the high-priest's house, yet he did follow; and, we may be sure, with little thought, and still less intention, of denying Him even once. But as he sat by the fire and warmed himself, the |