importance of time, and your responsibility for its right
improvement, I leave it to your consciences whether any part of it should
be uselessly squandered in your beds. The moral culpability of late rising
is when it interferes with the necessary duties of the day; and though, my
fair readers, you may in a great measure claim exemption from these, I
would still, simply in reference to your health and complexions, advise you
not to exceed seven o'clock. But, to effect this, a sine qua non is,
retiring early, say at eleven--(though really I am too liberal.)--When
people were compelled to retire at the sound of the curfew, when

"The curfew toll'd the parting knell of day,"

early rising was a necessary consequence, as they were earlier tired of
their beds; and this may account for the singular difference between
ancient and modern times in this respect; so that late rising, though a
modern refinement, is by no means exclusively attributable to modern luxury
and indolence, but partly to a change of political enactments, (you see,
ladies, I am giving you every chance.)

In the man of business, late rising is perfectly detestable; but to him,
instead of the arguments of health and moral responsibility for time, (or
rather in addition to these arguments,) I would urge the argumentum ad
crumenam; which is so pithily, however homelily, expressed in these two
proverbs, which he cannot be reminded of once too often:

"Early to bed, and early to rise,
Will make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

"There are no gains without pains;
Then plough deep, while sluggards sleep."

And a third proverb is a compendium of my advice to both classes of
readers:

"He who will thrive must rise at five;
He who has thriven may sleep till seven."

So then we have defined what early rising is; seven, to those who have
nothing to do,--as soon as ever business calls, to those who have. Was ever
bed of sloth more eloquently reprobated than in the following lines from
the _Seasons_?

"Falsely luxurious will not man awake,
And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour,
To meditation due and sacred song?
For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half
The fleeting moments of too short a life,
Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul!
Or else, to feverish vanity alive,
Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams?
Who would