ary and fleeting taps?

[2] The Temple must have had many eminent inmates. Among them,
it is believed, was Chaucer, who is also said, upon the strength
of an old record, to have been fined two shillings for beating a
Franciscan Friar in Fleet-street.

"Before we rest our wings, however, we must take another dart over the
city, as far as Stratford at Bow, where, with all due tenderness for
boarding-school French, a joke of Chaucer has existed as a piece of
local humour for nearly four hundred and fifty years. Speaking of the
Prioress, who makes such a delicate figure among his Canterbury
Pilgrims, he tells us, among her other accomplishments, that--

'French she spake full faire and featously;'

adding with great gravity,

'After the school of Stratford atte Bowe;
For French of Paris was to her unknowe.'

* * * * *

CURIOUS FACTS RELATING TO SLEEP.

_(For the Mirror.)_

"Next to those nourishments that sustain the body (says Dr. Venner)
moderate and seasonable sleep is most profitable and necessary. It helps
digestion, recreates the mind, repairs the spirits, and comforts and
refreshes the whole body." It is also observed by Dr. Hufeland, that
"sleep is one of the wisest regulations of nature, to check and moderate
at fixed periods, the incessant and impetuous stream of vital
consumption. It forms as it were, stations for our physical and moral
existence, and we thereby obtain the happiness of being daily reborn,
and of passing every morning through a state of annihilation, into a new
and refreshed life."

The writer of the article "Sleep." in Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, says, "the
proportion of time passed in sleep differs in different persons, and at
different ages. From six to nine hours may be reckoned about the average
proportion. Men of active minds whose attention is engaged in a series
of interesting enjoyments, sleep much less than the listless and
indolent, and the same individual will spend fewer hours in this way,
when strongly interested in any pursuits, than when the stream of life
is gentle and undisturbed. The Great Frederic of Prussia, and John
Hunter, who devoted every moment of their time to the most active
employments of body and mind, generally took only four or five hours'
sleep. A rich and lazy citizen, whose life is merely a chronicle of
breakfast, dinners, suppers, and sleep, will slumber away ten or twelve
hours daily. When any subj