We term sleep a death, writes Sir Thomas Browne, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. “It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death.” And then the golden-tongued physician—in his _Religio Medici_—goes on to say that, in fine, so like death seemed to him sleep, that he dare not trust it without his prayers, and a half adieu to the world; and taking his farewell “in a colloquy with God,” that is set in the key of the Evening Hymn, where we pray to be taught to dread the grave as little as our bed. So, in verses of his own weaving, this consummate master of stately rhetorical prose, beseeches God to make his sleep a holy trance: “Sleep is a death;—O make me try By sleeping, what it is to die! And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed. Howe’er I rest, great God, let me Awake again at last with Thee. And thus assured, behold I lie Securely, or to wake or die. These are my drowsy days; in vain I do now wake to sleep again: O come that hour when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever! “This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep; after which I close my eyes in security, content to take leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.” George Herbert says, that— “When boys go first to bed, They step into their voluntary graves; Sleep binds them fast; only their breath Makes them not dead. Successive nights, like rolling waves, Convey them quickly, who are bound for death.” Ye children, does death ever alarm you? asks the venerable pastor in Tegner’s _Children of the Lord’s Supper_: “Death is the brother of Love, twin-brother is he, and is only more austere to behold.” Shakspeare’s nobleman is gazing with disgust on a sottish sleeper, when he exclaims, “Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!” That image, as embodied in the form of a little child, has often inspired poets to strains of tender admiration. Malaspina, in one of Landor’s unacted (not to say, with almost equal truth, unread) plays thus contemplates, and apostrophizes, such an image:— “And still thou sleepest, my sweet babe! Is death Like sleep? Ah, who then, who would fear to die? How beautiful is all serenity! Sleep, a child’s sleep, oh how far more serene, And oh, how far more beautiful than any! Whether we breathe so gently, or breathe not, Slight is the difference.” More familiar to every one in the least conversant with current literature—not ephemeral in its currency, or running so fast as to be, like that which decayeth and waxeth old, ready to vanish away—is Mrs. Browning’s poem on a sleeping child—tired out with playing, and slumbering on the floor; the latter portion alone of which may here find room:—