“Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.”——COLERIDGE. During the Decian persecution, seven inhabitants of Ephesus retired to a cave, six were persons of some consequence, the seventh was their servant; from hence they despatched the attendant occasionally to purchase food for them. Decius, who like most tyrants possessed long ears, hearing of this, ordered the mouth of the cave to be stopped up while the fugitives were sleeping. After a lapse of some hundred years, a part of the masonry at the mouth of the cave falling, the light flowing in awakened them. Thinking, as Rip Van Winkle also thought, that they had enjoyed a good night’s rest, they despatched their servant to buy provisions. All appeared to him strange in Ephesus; and a whimsical dialogue took place, the citizens accusing him of having found hidden treasure, he persisting that he offered the current coin of the realm. At length, the attention of the emperor was excited, and he went, in company with the bishop, to visit them. They related their story, and shortly after expired. Thus much chroniclers narrate of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. All are not agreed as to the place where this extraordinary event occurred. It has been assigned also to the “mountain of the seven sleepers,” near Tersous. It may have been claimed by the citizens of twenty other ancient cities, for aught we can tell: Faith removes mountains. But the number remains intact. Mahomet wrote of seven heavens—no Mahometan takes the trouble to believe in less. The “wise men were but seven;” there were seven poets of the age of Theocritus; seven of the daughters of Pleione elevated to the back of Taurus; and “There were seven pillars of gothic mould, In Chillon’s dungeon, dark and old;” and wherefore not _seven_ sleepers at Ephesus or Tersous; or seven sisters of “Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep?” Although not to be found in Livy, or Hesiod, or Ovid, or any of the fathers of history or fable, there is a legend of the latter _seven_, which may be considered in the light of an abstract of title of certain seven sisters, to be included in the list of immortal sevens who have honoured the earth by making it their abode. It is many thousands of years since Sleep received from her parent, as a dowry of love, an empire, unequalled in extent by any other which the earth ever acknowledged. Her domain embraced “the round world, and they that dwell therein.” From pole to pole, and from ocean to ocean, she swayed her sceptre. And it was assigned her that man should devote one-third of his existence in paying homage at the foot of her throne. All monarchs from Ninus to Napoleon have done her honour. All ladies from Rhodope to Cleopatra, and from Helen to Clothilde, have admitted her claim to ascendency. And all serfs, and all captives, from Epictetus to Abd-el-Kader, have forgotten their bonds and their captivity, and bowed, on an equality with kings, beneath her nod.