not wholly from inferiority of power, but from
complications appertaining to our position.

The problem of our time is, How to digest and assimilate the Newspaper?
To complain of it, to desire its abolition, is an anachronism of the
will: it is to complain that time proceeds, and that events follow each
other in due sequence. It is hardly too bold to say that the newspaper
_is_ the modern world, as distinct from the antique and the mediaeval.
It represents, by its advent, that epoch in human history wherein
each man must begin, in proportion to his capability of sympathy and
consideration, to collate his private thoughts, fortunes, interests with
those of the human race at large. We are now in the crude openings of
this epoch, fevered by its incidents and demands; and one of its tokens
is a general exhaustion of the nervous system and failure of health,
both here and in Europe,--those of most sensitive spirit, and least
retired and sheltered from the impressions of the time, suffering most.
All this will end, _must_ end, victoriously. In the mean time can we not
somewhat adjust ourselves to this new condition?

One thing we can and must not fail to do: we can learn to understand and
appreciate Rest. In particular, we should build up and reinforce the
powers of the night to offset this new intensity of the day. Such,
indeed, as the day now is has it ever been, though in a less degree:
always it has cast upon men impressions significant, insignificant, and
of an ill significance, promiscuously and in excess; and always sleep
has been the filter of memory, the purifier of experience, providing a
season that follows closely upon the impressions of the day, ere yet
they are too deeply imbedded, in which our deeper life may pluck away
the adhering burrs from its garments, and arise disburdened, clean, and
free. I make no doubt that Death also performs, though in an ampler and
more thorough way, the same functions. It opposes the tyranny of memory.
For were our experience to go on forever accumulating, unwinnowed,
undiminished, every man would sooner or later break down beneath it;
every man would be crushed by his own traditions, becoming a grave to
himself, and drawing the clods over his own head. To relieve us of these
accidental accretions, to give us back to ourselves, is the use,
in part, of that sleep which rounds each day, and of that other
sleep--brief, but how deep!--which rounds each human life.

Accordingly, he w