“oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
beloved from pole to pole.”——coleridge.
during the decian persecution, seven inhabitants of ephesus retired to a cave, six were persons of some consequence, the seventh was their servant; from hence they despatched the attendant occasionally to purchase food for them. decius, who like most tyrants possessed long ears, hearing of this, ordered the mouth of the cave to be stopped up while the fugitives were sleeping. after a lapse of some hundred years, a part of the masonry at the mouth of the cave falling, the light flowing in awakened them. thinking, as rip van winkle also thought, that they had enjoyed a good night’s rest, they despatched their servant to buy provisions. all appeared to him strange in ephesus; and a whimsical dialogue took place, the citizens accusing him of having found hidden treasure, he persisting that he offered the current coin of the realm. at length, the attention of the emperor was excited, and he went, in company with the bishop, to visit them. they related their story, and shortly after expired.
thus much chroniclers narrate of the seven sleepers of ephesus. all are not agreed as to the place where this extraordinary event occurred. it2 has been assigned also to the “mountain of the seven sleepers,” near tersous. it may have been claimed by the citizens of twenty other ancient cities, for aught we can tell: faith removes mountains. but the number remains intact. mahomet wrote of seven heavens—no mahometan takes the trouble to believe in less. the “wise men were but seven;” there were seven poets of the age of theocritus; seven of the daughters of pleione elevated to the back of taurus; and
“there were seven pillars of gothic mould,
in chillon’s dungeon, dark and old;”
and wherefore not seven sleepers at ephesus or tersous; or seven sisters of
“nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep?”
although not to be found in livy, or hesiod, or ovid, or any of the fathers of history or fable, there is a legend of the latter seven, which may be considered in the light of an abstract of title of certain seven sisters, to be included in the list of immortal sevens who have honoured the earth by making it their abode.
it is many thousands of years since sleep received from her parent, as a dowry of love, an empire, unequalled in extent by any other which the earth ever acknowledged. her domain embraced “the round world, and they that dwell therein.” from pole to pole, and from ocean to ocean, she swayed her sceptre. and it was assigned her that man should devote one-third of his existence in paying homage at the foot of her throne. all monarchs from ninus to napoleon have done her honour. all ladies from rhodope to cleopatra, and from helen to clothilde, have admitted her claim to ascendency. and all serfs,3 and all captives, from epictetus to abd-el-kader, have forgotten their bonds and their captivity, and bowed, on an equality with kings, beneath her nod.
sleep had seven sisters. envious of her throne, and jealous of her power, they complained bitterly that no heritage, and no government, and no homage was theirs. then they strove to deceive men, and counterfeit the blessings which sleep conferred, and thus to steal the affections of her subjects from the universal monarch, and transfer them to themselves. herein they toiled and invented many strange devices; and though they beguiled many, these all fell back again to the allegiance they had sworn of old.
“o my sisters!” said sleep, “wherefore do you strive to instil discontent into the hearts of my subjects and breed discord in my dominions? know ye not, that all mortals must fain obey me, or die? your enchantments cannot diminish my votaries, and only serve to increase my power. and men, who for a while are cheated of the blessings i confer, woo me at last with increased ardour, and with songs of gratitude fall at my feet.”
morphina first replied—
“we know full well, proud sister, how wide is your empire, and how great your power, but we too must reign, and our kingdoms will soon compare with yours. let us but share with you in ruling the world, or we will rule it for ourselves.”
4
“sisters! let us be at peace with each other. is there not two-thirds of the life of man free from my control? why should you not steal from iron-handed care enough of power to make you queens as potent, or little less than me? my minister of dreams shall aid you by his skill, and visions more gorgeous, and illusions more splendid, than ever visited a mortal beneath my sway, shall attend the ecstacies of your subjects.”
the sisters were reconciled henceforth. and anon thousands and millions of tartar tribes and mongolian hordes welcomed morphina, and blessed her for her soothing charms and benignant rule—blessed her for her theft from the hours of sorrow and care—blessed her for the marvels of dreams the most extravagant, and visions the most gorgeous that ever arose in the brain of dweller in the glowing east.
more extended became the sway of the golden-haired virginia, until four-fifths of the race of mortals burned incense upon her altars, or silently proffered thank-offerings from their hearts. curling ever upwards from the hearth of the briton and the forest of the brazilian—from the palaces of ispahan and the wigwams of the missouri—from the slopes of the eternal hills and the bosom of the mighty deep, arose the fragrant odours of her votaries, mingled with the hum of p?ans in her praise.
beneath the shadow of palms, in the sultry regions of the sun, the dark impetuous gunja held her court. there did the sons of the ganges and the nile, the indus and the niger, own her sovereignty; and there did the swarthy hindoo and the ebon african hold festivals in her honour. and, though the hardy norseman scorned her proffered offices, she established her throne in millions of ardent and affectionate hearts.
not far away, the red-lipped siraboa raised her graceful standard from the summit of a feathery palm; and the islanders of the archipelago, in proa and canoe, hastened to do her homage. the murderous malay stayed his uplifted weapon, to bless her name; and savage races, that ne’er bowed before, fell prostrate at her feet.
honoured by the incas, and flattered by priests—persecuted5 by spanish conquerors, but victorious, erythroxylina established herself in the bolivian andes and the cordilleras of peru. with subjects the most devoted and faithful, she has for ages received the homage of a kingdom of enthusiastic devotees.
two, less favoured, less beautiful, and less successful of the sisters, pouting and repining at the good fortune that had attended the others, secluded themselves from the rest of the world, and rushed into voluntary exile. datura, ruddy as bellona, fled to the northern andes; and in those mountainous solitudes collected a devoted few of frantic followers, and established a miniature court. the pale and dwarfish amanita, turning her back on sunny lands and glowing skies, sought and found a home and a refuge, a kingdom and a court, in the frozen wastes of siberia.
and now in peace the sisters reign, and the world is divided between them. when care, or woe, or wan disease, steals for a time the mortal from his allegiance to the calm and blue-eyed sleep, then do the sisters ply their magic arts to win him back again, and, by their soothing influence, lull him to rest once more, and again unlock the portals of the palace of dreams; then issues from the trembling lips the half-heard murmur of a whispered blessing on the
seven sisters of sleep.1
in all times sleep has been a fertile theme with poets—one on which the best and worst has been6 written. all forms in heaven and in earth have submitted themselves to become similes; and columns of adjectives have done duty in the service since edmund spenser raised his house of sleep, where
“careless quiet lyes,
wrapt in eternal silence, farre from enimyes.”
no monarch has numbered so many odes in his praise, or had so many poet laureates “all for love.” these, though not so long, are quite as worthy as the one we heard when george iii. was no longer king. perhaps that same little tyrant, love, has come in for even a larger share of what some would call “twaddle.” in the sunny morn of youth, these hung upon our lips, and dwelt in our hearts, with less of doubt than disturbs their present repose. old age makes us sleepy, and we sing—
“o magic sleep! o comfortable bird,
that broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind
till it is hushed and smooth! o unconfined
restraint, imprisoned liberty, great key
to golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves
and moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world
of silvery enchantments!”——endymion.
“god gave sleep to the bad,” said sadi, “in order that the good might be undisturbed.” yet to good and bad sleep is alike necessary. during the hours of wakefulness the active brain exerts its powers without cessation or rest, and during sleep the expenditure of power is balanced again by repose. the physical energies are exhausted by labour, as by wakefulness are those of the mind; and if sleep comes not to reinvigorate the mental powers, the overtaxed brain gives way, and lapses into melancholy and madness. men deprived of rest, as a sentence of death, have gone from the world raving maniacs; and violent emotions of the7 mind, without repose, have so acted upon the body, that, as in the case of marie antoinette, ludovico sforza, and others, their hair has grown white in a single night—
“as men’s have grown from sudden fears.”2
mind and body alike suffer from the want of sleep, the spirit is broken, and the fire of the ardent imagination quenched. who can wonder that when disease or pain has racked and tortured the frame, and prevented a subsidence into a state so natural and necessary to man, he should have resorted to the aid of drugs and potions, whereby to lull his pains, and dispel the care which has banished repose, and woo back again—
“the certain knot of peace,
the baiting place of wit, the balm of woe;
the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.”
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leigh hunt has well said, “it is a delicious moment that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. the good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render this remaining in one posture delightful; the labour of the day is gone—a gentle failure of the perceptions creeps over you—the spirit of consciousness disengages itself once more, and with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of a sleeping child, the mind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye—it is closed—the mysterious spirit has gone to take its airy rounds.”
it is this universal sense of the blessing of sleep which takes hold of the mind with such a religious feeling, that the appearance of a sleeping form, whether of childhood or age, checks our step, and causes us to breathe softly lest we disturb their repose. we can scarce forbear whispering, while standing before the well-known picture of the “last sleep of argyle,” lest by louder or more distinct articulation, we should rob the poor old man of a moment of that absence of sorrow which sleep has brought to him for the last time.
shakespeare has made the murder of duncan to seem the more revolting in that it was committed while he slept. macbeth himself must have felt this while exclaiming—
“methought i heard a voice cry, ‘sleep no more!
macbeth does murther sleep, the innocent sleep;
sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
the death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
chief nourisher in life’s feast.’”
had desdemona been sent to her last account at once, when her lord entered the room and kissed her as she slept, we feel that all our pity for the jealous moor would have been turned to hate, and9 our detestation of him been so great that no room had been left for execration of the villanous iago, who now seems to be the mephistopheles, the evil genius, of the work.
“a blessing,” says sancho panza, “on him who first invented sleep; it wraps a man all round like a cloak.” but neither sancho nor any one else will give us a blessing if we suffer ourselves to go to sleep in thinking over it, at the very threshold of our enterprise, and before indulging in communion with the seven sisters of whom we have spoken. it was a trite remark of a divine that “where drowsiness begins, devotion ends,” and needs application as much to book writers as to sermon preachers. although we may not have the power to check an occasional yawn, in which there may be as much temporal relief as in a good sneeze, let us avoid the premonitory sinking of the upper eyelids, by calling in the aid of francesco berni to release us from the spell of sleep, and introduce us to “the sisters” of the olden time.
“quella diceva ch’era la piu bella
arte, il piu bel mestier che si facesse;
il letto er’ una veste, una gonella
ad ognun buona che se la mettesse.”
orland. innamor, lib. iii. cant. vii.
