“Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth does murther sleep, the innocent sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.’” Had Desdemona been sent to her last account at once, when her lord entered the room and kissed her as she slept, we feel that all our pity for the jealous Moor would have been turned to hate, and our detestation of him been so great that no room had been left for execration of the villanous Iago, who _now_ seems to be the Mephistopheles, the evil genius, of the work. “A blessing,” says Sancho Panza, “on him who first invented sleep; it wraps a man all round like a cloak.” But neither Sancho nor any one else will give us a blessing if we suffer ourselves to go to sleep in thinking over it, at the very threshold of our enterprise, and before indulging in communion with the seven sisters of whom we have spoken. It was a trite remark of a divine that “where drowsiness begins, devotion ends,” and needs application as much to book writers as to sermon preachers. Although we may not have the power to check an occasional yawn, in which there may be as much temporal relief as in a good sneeze, let us avoid the premonitory sinking of the upper eyelids, by calling in the aid of Francesco Berni to release us from the spell of sleep, and introduce us to “the sisters” of the olden time. “Quella diceva ch’era la piu bella Arte, il piu bel mestier che si facesse; Il letto er’ una veste, una gonella Ad ognun buona che se la mettesse.” ORLAND. INNAMOR, lib. iii. cant. vii. CHAPTER II. +THE SISTERS OF OLD+. “What are these, So withered, and so wild in their attire; That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth, And yet are on’t?”——MACBETH. There is no reason to doubt that the ancients were, in a manner, acquainted with some of the narcotics known to us, although they did not indulge in them as stimulants or luxuries. The antiquarian, it is true, has failed to unearth the tobacco-box of Claudius, or the pipe of Nero—however much the latter may have been given to smoke. And no one has as yet discovered a snuff-box bearing the initials of Marc Antony, whence the taper fingers of Egypt’s queen drew a pinch of Princess’ Mixture or Taddy’s Violet, gazing with loving eyes on Antony the while. In those remote times the hemp and the poppy were not unknown; and there is reason for believing that in Egypt the former was used as a potion for soothing and dispelling care.