Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent in half a
second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, already, into Clare
Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as illustrating the equality
of sleep, to inquire how many of its phenomena are common to all
classes, to all degrees of wealth and poverty, to every grade of
education and ignorance. Here, for example, is her Majesty Queen
Victoria in her palace, this present blessed night, and here is
Winking Charley, a sturdy vagrant, in one of her Majesty's jails.
Her Majesty has fallen, many thousands of times, from that same
Tower, which I claim a right to tumble off now and then. So has
Winking Charley. Her Majesty in her sleep has opened or prorogued
Parliament, or has held a Drawing Room, attired in some very scanty
dress, the deficiencies and improprieties of which have caused her
great uneasiness. I, in my degree, have suffered unspeakable
agitation of mind from taking the chair at a public dinner at the
London Tavern in my night-clothes, which not all the courtesy of my
kind friend and host MR. BATHE could persuade me were quite adapted
to the occasion. Winking Charley has been repeatedly tried in a
worse condition. Her Majesty is no stranger to a vault or
firmament, of a sort of floorcloth, with an indistinct pattern
distantly resembling eyes, which occasionally obtrudes itself on
her repose. Neither am I. Neither is Winking Charley. It is
quite common to all three of us to skim along with airy strides a
little above the ground; also to hold, with the deepest interest,
dialogues with various people, all represented by ourselves; and to
be at our wit's end to know what they are going to tell us; and to
be indescribably astonished by the secrets they disclose. It is
probable that we have all three committed murders and hidden
bodies. It is pretty certain that we have all desperately wanted
to cry out, and have had no voice; that we have all gone to the