“Blessed,” says the simple squire of Don Quixote, “is the man who first invented sleep.” What would the spirit-worn—the persecuted—the heart-stricken—and the desolate do without sleep? Oh, if there be one heavenly seal set upon the pure and innocent heart, it is that dear impressive slumber—deep and dreamless as infants, which, like a soft south wind in dreariest winter, lays for a time the wearied senses, in a blessed repose. Then is the imagination freed from earthly dross, and clinging cares, carried far, far away to happier times. The poor prisoner then escapes from his dungeon—his fetters drop from his benumbed limbs, and he lives again in the glorious sunshine, with the blue heavens alone looking down upon him, and the green earth in all its wondrous beauty stretching far before him. The wave-tossed mariner, “Absent so long from his heart’s home,” will, in the dreamy watches of the night, revisit the loved ones that are far away. The freezing winds of the “blustrous north” will lack their power to chill his blood—the lashing surges will, by “Some strange magic,” be converted into sweet gentle sounds, such as perchance surround his young home; a home to which his affections still cling, the more distant he may happen to be from it. It was a beautiful idea of the Italian poet, who likened the yearning for home of the Swiss exiles to the tightening of the invisible strings that bound their hearts to their native lands as they increased in distance from it. The tired soldier too, “When the night cloud has lowered, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;” on his pallet of straw, he dreams of his home and all his dear associations. He dreams of his native vale far away and in imagination he looks for the familiar objects of childhood, each associated with some dear reminiscence that makes perchance a wild flower to his heart a dearer object than the richest gem! What is cold, hunger, wounds, and pains then to him? He returns “weary and wan,” yet, oh so happy to those he loves. “He hears his own mountain goats bleating aloft, He knows the sweet strain which the corn-reapers sing.” He sees his home—the cottage embowered amongst crawling honey-suckles. Every sight and sound is to his ears delightful. The wild flowers breathe delicious perfume. Then he reaches the well-known door. There is a cry of welcome! “His little ones kiss him a thousand times o’er And his wife sobs aloud in her fulness of heart.” Oh, what a magic is in that scene conjured up by the fairy power of imagination! The visions may fly at the first faint blush of the coming morn. The sleeper may awaken with a sigh and a tear; but he has been home again; he has kissed his children; oh, he has been happy, although ’twas but a dream. Soldier, may such dear visions ever haunt thy pillow! May sleep—gentle sleep— “Nature’s soft nurse,”