Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a very bad pun connected with the dormitory, and which made Charles Lamb laugh immoderately. Going home together late one night, the latter repeated the well-known proverb, “A home’s a home, however homely.” “Aye,” added Hunt, “and a bed’s a bed however _bedly_.” It is a strange thing, a bed. Somebody has called it a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it reluctantly, and leave it with regret. Once within the downy precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to make our exodus into the wilderness of life. We are as enamoured of our curtained dwelling as if it were the Land of Goshen or the Cave of Circe. And how many fervent vows have those dumb posts heard broken! every fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering fellows, each morning weighing heavier and heavier, on our sluggard eyelids. A caustic proverb says;—we are all “good risers at night;” but woe’s me for our agility in the morning. It is a failing of our species, ever ready to break out in all of us, and in some only vanquished after a struggle painful as the sundering of bone and marrow. The Great Frederic of Prussia found it easier, in after life, to rout the French and Austrians, than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep. After many single-handed attempts at reformation, he had at last to call to his assistance an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every morning at two o’clock. The plan succeeded, as it deserved to succeed. All men of action are impressed with the importance of early rising. “When you begin to turn in bed, its time to turn out,” says the old Duke; and we believe his practice has been in accordance with his precept. Literary men—among whom, as Bulwer says, a certain indolence seems almost constitutional—are not so clear upon this point: they are divided between Night and Morning, though the best authorities seem in favour of the latter. Early rising is the best _elixir vitæ_: it is the only lengthener of life that man has ever devised. By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend half a century—an ordinary lifetime—at his desk; and yet had time to be the most modish of all the philosophers who then graced the gay metropolis of France.