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.