Some persons always retire to bed when they wish to think; and it is well known that Pope was often wont to ring for pens, ink, and paper, in the night, at Lord Bolingbroke’s, that he might record, ere it was lost, that most sublime or fanciful poesy which flashed through his brain as he lay in bed. Such, also, was the propensity of Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who (according to Cibber, or rather Sheil, the _real_ author of the “Lives of the Poets”) “kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her grace lay, and were ready, at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night to write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory.” Henricus ab Heeres (in his “Obs. Med.”) says, that when he was a professor, he used to rise in the night, open his desk, compose much, shut his desk, and again to bed. On his waking he was conscious of nothing but the happy result of his compositions. The engineer, Brindley, even retired to bed for a _day or two_, when he was reflecting on a grand or scientific project. I deny not that the darkness or stillness of night may have had some influence during this inspiration. I may also allow that some few individuals compose best while they are walking; but this _peripatetic_ exertion is calculated, itself, to produce what we term determination of blood to the head. I have heard of a most remarkable instance of the power of position in influencing mental energy, in a German student, who was accustomed to study and compose with his head on the ground and his feet elevated, and resting against the wall. And this is the fragment of a passage from Tissot, on the subject of monomania: ——“Nous avons vu étudier dans cette académie il n’y a pas long-temps, un jeune homme de mérite, qui _s’étant mis dans la tête_, de découvrir la quadrature du circle, est mort, fou, à l’hôtel Dieu, à Paris.” You will smile when I tell you that the tints of the landscape are brighter to our eyes if we _reverse the position of the head_. And now, with your leave, gentle ladies, I will bring phrenology to my aid.