hree hours a day. More's Utopians were to rise at very
early hours, and attend scientific lectures before breakfast.

Ambition and cupidity, which, in their way, are no whit less earnest and
self-sacrificing than sanctity, equally look upon sleep as a wasteful
concession to bodily wants, and equally incline to limit such concession
to its mere minimum. Commonplaces accordingly are perpetually
circulating in the newspapers, especially in such as pretend to a
didactic tone, wherein all persons are exhorted to early rising, to
resolute abridgment of the hours of sleep, and the like. That Sir Walter
Raleigh slept but five hours in twenty-four; that John Hunter, Frederick
the Great, and Alexander von Humboldt slept but four; that the Duke of
Wellington made it an invariable rule to "turn out" whenever he felt
inclined to turn over, and John Wesley to arise upon his first awaking:
instances such as these appear on parade with the regularity of militia
troops at muster; and the precept duly follows,--"Whoso would not be
insignificant, let him go and do likewise." "All great men have been
early risers," says my newspaper.

Of late, indeed, a better knowledge of the laws of health, or perhaps
only a keener sense of its value and its instability, begins to
supersede these rash inculcations; and paragraphs due to some discreet
Dr. Hall make the rounds of the press, in which we are reminded that
early rising, in order to prove a benefit, rather than a source of
mischief, must be duly matched with early going to bed. The one, we are
told, will by no means answer without the other. As yet, however, this
is urged upon hygienic grounds alone; it is a mere concession to the
body, a bald necessity that we hampered mortals lie under; which
necessity we are quite at liberty to regret and accuse, though we cannot
with safety resist it. Sleep is still admitted to be a waste of time,
though one with which Nature alone is chargeable. And I own, not without
reluctance, that the great authority of Plato can be pleaded for this
low view of its functions. In the "Laws" he enjoins a due measure
thereof, but for the sake of health alone, and adds, that the sleeper
is, for the time, of no more value than the dead. Clearly, mankind would
sustain some loss of good sense, were all the dullards and fat-wits
taken away; and Sancho Panza, with his hearty, "Blessings on the man
that invented sleep!" here ekes out the scant wisdom of sages. The
talking worl