all of us, in our own personal experience, have known men of study and labor who, in the ardor of their pursuit, have foregone what is thought the ordinary sleep, being late to bed and early to rise, reducing the night to a narrow isthmus of time. Others there are with a vivacity of industry which acts with intensity and rapidity, requiring long periods of repose. I cannot forget that Judge Story, the person who has accomplished more than any one within the circle of my individual observation, whose life--now, alas! closed by death--was thickly studded with various labors as judge, professor, and author, is a high example of what may be wrought by wakeful diligence, without denying the body any refreshment of repose. His habit, during the years of his greatest intellectual activity, was to retire always at ten o'clock and to rise at seven,--allowing nine hours for sleep. The tradesman of George the Third might have sought shelter with him from the royal raillery. Pursuing these inquiries as to the arrangement of the day, we find the precept, if not the example, uniform with regard to early rising as propitious to health and intellectual exertion. The old saw, "Early to bed and early to rise," imprints the lesson upon the mind of childhood. The magnificent period of Milton sounds in our ears: "My morning haunts are where they should be, at home,--not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring,--in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labor or to devotion,--in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary or memory have its full fraught,--then with useful and generous labors preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion, and our country's liberty."[138] Sir Walter Scott is less stately in his tribute to the morning, but he agrees with Milton: "The half-hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention. When I got over any knotty difficulty in a story, or have had in former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case, that I am in the habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself, when I am at a loss, 'Never mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' If I have forgot a circumstance, or a name, or a copy of verses, it is the same thing."[139] In this equal dedication to the morning Milton and Scott are alike, but how unlike in all else! Milton's testimony is like an anthem; Scott's like an affidavit. [138] Apology for Smectymnuus: Prose Works, Vol. I. p. 220. [139] Diary: Lockhart's Life of Scott, Chap. VII. Vol. VI. p. 227.