ungs, or of both these organs. Lying on the back, when
we first go to sleep, is very apt to produce nightmare.

But distressing dreams often follow an evening of anxious cares,
especially if those cares preyed upon us for the last half hour; and
also after late suppers, even if they are light--and late reading. Hence
the injunctions of the last section. Hence, too, the importance of
taking our last meal two or three hours before sleep, and of engaging,
during these hours, in cheerful conversation, and in the social and
private duties of religion. Family and private worship, in the evening,
are enjoined no less by philosophy than they are by christianity; and
every young mother will do well to understand this matter, and train her
offspring accordingly.

"That sleep from which we are easily roused, is the healthiest," says
Macnish. "Very profound slumber partakes of the nature of apoplexy." I
should say, rather, that a medium between the two extremes is
healthiest. Profound apoplectic sleep, I am sure, is injurious; but
that from which we are too easily roused cannot, it seems to me,
be less so. Thus, I have often gone to sleep with a resolution
to wake at a certain hour, or at the striking of the clock;
and have found myself able to wake at the proposed time, almost
without one failure in twenty instances where I have made the trial. But
my sleep was obviously unsound, and certainly unsatisfying. The desire
to awake at a certain moment or period, seemed to buoy me above the
usual state of healthy sleep, and render me liable to awake at the
slightest disturbance. Were it not for sacrificing the ease of others,
it would be far better, in such cases, to rely upon some person to wake
us, instead of charging our own minds with it.

The quality of our sleep will be greatly affected by the quantity. But
this thought, if extended, would anticipate the subject of our next
section; so easily does one thing, especially in physical education, run
into or involve another. I will therefore, for the present, only say
that if we confine ourselves to a smaller number of hours than is really
required, our sleep becomes too sound to be quite healthy, as if nature
endeavored to make up in quality, for want of due quantity. On the
contrary, if we attempt to sleep longer than is really necessary to
restore us, the quality of our sleep is not what it ought to be; for we
do not sleep soundly enough.

The silence and darkness of the night t