Not far away, the red-lipped Siraboa raised her graceful standard from the summit of a feathery palm; and the islanders of the Archipelago, in proa and canoe, hastened to do her homage. The murderous Malay stayed his uplifted weapon, to bless her name; and savage races, that ne’er bowed before, fell prostrate at her feet. Honoured by the Incas, and flattered by priests—persecuted by Spanish conquerors, but victorious, Erythroxylina established herself in the Bolivian Andes and the Cordilleras of Peru. With subjects the most devoted and faithful, she has for ages received the homage of a kingdom of enthusiastic devotees. Two, less favoured, less beautiful, and less successful of the sisters, pouting and repining at the good fortune that had attended the others, secluded themselves from the rest of the world, and rushed into voluntary exile. Datura, ruddy as Bellona, fled to the Northern Andes; and in those mountainous solitudes collected a devoted few of frantic followers, and established a miniature court. The pale and dwarfish Amanita, turning her back on sunny lands and glowing skies, sought and found a home and a refuge, a kingdom and a court, in the frozen wastes of Siberia. And now in peace the sisters reign, and the world is divided between them. When care, or woe, or wan disease, steals for a time the mortal from his allegiance to the calm and blue-eyed Sleep, then do the sisters ply their magic arts to win him back again, and, by their soothing influence, lull him to rest once more, and again unlock the portals of the palace of dreams; then issues from the trembling lips the half-heard murmur of a whispered blessing on the SEVEN SISTERS OF SLEEP.[1] In all times Sleep has been a fertile theme with poets—one on which the best and worst has been written. All forms in heaven and in earth have submitted themselves to become similes; and columns of adjectives have done duty in the service since Edmund Spenser raised his House of Sleep, where “careless Quiet lyes, Wrapt in eternal silence, farre from enimyes.” No monarch has numbered so many odes in his praise, or had so many poet laureates “all for love.” These, though not so long, are quite as worthy as the one we heard when George III. was no longer king. Perhaps that same little tyrant, LOVE, has come in for even a larger share of what some would call “twaddle.” In the sunny morn of youth, these hung upon our lips, and dwelt in our hearts, with less of doubt than disturbs their present repose. Old age makes us sleepy, and we sing— “O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hushed and smooth! O unconfined Restraint, imprisoned liberty, great key To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world Of silvery enchantments!”——_Endymion._