Life and Literature Part 128

He will always be a slave, who does not know how to live upon a little.

--_Horace._

1780

Slaves cannot breathe in Britain; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

--_Cowper._

1781

SLAVERY.

O execrable son! so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself a.s.suming Authority usurp'd, from G.o.d not given.

He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By His donation; but man over men He made not lord; such t.i.tle to Himself Reserving, human left from human--free.

--_Milton._

1782

_Sleep._--I never take a nap after dinner, but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me.

--_Sam'l Johnson._

1783

We are all equals when we are asleep.

--_Spanish._

1784

If you want the night to seem a moment to you, sleep all night.

1785

O sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.

--_Coleridge._

1786

_Sleep._--Even sleep is characteristic. How charming are children in their lovely innocence! How angel-like their blooming hue! How painful and anxious is the sleep and expression in the countenance of the guilty.

--_W. Von Humboldt._

1787

When I go to sleep, I let fall the windows of mine eyes.

--_Shakespeare._

1788

The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.

--_Eccles. v, 12v._

1789

Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.

--_Alcott._

1790

Sleep! to the homeless, thou art home, The friendless find in thee a friend; And well is, wheresoe'r he roams, Who meets thee at his journey's end.

--_Ebenezer Elliott._

1791

A RESTFUL PREACHER.

Dean Ramsey relates that the Earl of Lauderdale was alarmingly ill, one distressing symptom being a total absence of sleep, without which the medical men declared he could not recover. His son, who was somewhat simple, was seated under the table, and cried out, "Sen' for that preaching man frae Livingstone, for fayther aye sleeps in the kirk." One of the doctors thought the hint worth attending to, and the experiment of "getting a minister till him" succeeded, for sleep came on and the earl recovered.

1792

Come sleep, O sleep! the certain knot of peace, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low!

--_Sir P. Sidney._

1793