life, we cannot but observe it as a tax that must be paid, unless we
could cease to be men; for Alexander declared, that nothing convinced
him that he was not a divinity, but his not being able to live without
sleep.

To live without sleep in our present fluctuating state, however
desirable it might seem to the lady in Clelia, can surely be the wish
only of the young or the ignorant; to every one else, a perpetual vigil
will appear to be a state of wretchedness, second only to that of the
miserable beings, whom Swift has in his travels so elegantly described,
as "supremely cursed with immortality."

Sleep is necessary to the happy to prevent satiety, and to endear life
by a short absence; and to the miserable, to relieve them by intervals
of quiet. Life is to most, such as could not be endured without frequent
intermission of existence: Homer, therefore, has thought it an office
worthy of the goddess of wisdom, to lay Ulysses asleep when landed on
Phaeacia.

It is related of Barretier, whose early advances in literature scarce
any human mind has equalled, that he spent twelve hours of the
four-and-twenty in sleep: yet this appears from the bad state of his
health, and the shortness of his life, to have been too small a respite
for a mind so vigorously and intensely employed: it is to be regretted,
therefore, that he did not exercise his mind less, and his body more:
since by this means, it is highly probable, that though he would not then
have astonished with the blaze of a comet, he would yet have shone with
the permanent radiance of a fixed star.

Nor should it be objected, that there have been many men who daily spend