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inferences as to the rules of sleep: 1st, Those who think most, who do most brain work, require most sleep. 2d, That time saved' from necessary sleep is infallibly destructive to mind, body, and estate. Give yourself, your children, your servants-give all that are under you—the fullest amount of sleep they will take, by compelling them to go to bed at some regular, early hour, and to rise in the morning the moment they awake; and within a fortnight, nature, with almost the regularity of the rising sun, will unloose the bonds of sleep the moment enough repose has been secured for the wants of the system. This is the only safe and sufficient rule; and as to the question how much sleep any one requires, each must be a rule for himself.

Dr. Millingen, in his Curiosities of Medical Experience, states that Cabanis, in his investigations on the mind, has endeavoured to fix the order in which the different parts of our organization go to sleep, viz. first the legs and arms, then the muscles that support the head and back. The first sense that slumbers is that of sight, followed in regular succession by the senses of taste, smell, hearing, and feeling. The viscera, he says, fall asleep one after the other, but with different degrees of soundness.

HOUSE AND HOME-THE FIRE.

2N all that relates to the comfort of a house, the artisan of the present day may be said to enjoy luxuries which were three centuries ago beyond the reach of the crowned head. Heavy tables formed of planks laid upon tressels, massive oak benches or stools for seats, and floors strewed with straw, formed the accommodation which satisfied the princes and prelates of our early history. Before the luxury of carpets was introduced into England, it was common to strew green rushes on the floor, even in the parlours of royalty, where straw was used with the rushes, and sometimes mixed with sweet herbs. In the Household Roll of Edward II. is an entry of money paid for sending from York to Newcastle to procure straw for the king's chamber. At the coronation of Henry V., when the procession is coming, the grooms cry: 'More rushes, more rushes!' Thus also at a wedding:

'Full many maids, clad in their best array,

In honour of the bride, come with their flaskets
Fill'd with flowers; others in wicker baskets

Bring from the marsh rushes to o'erspread

The ground whereon to church the lovers tread.'

Hentzner, too, describes Queen Elizabeth's presencechamber at Greenwich, with the floor, after the English

fashion, strewed with hay,' meaning rushes. Chambers, and indeed all apartments usually inhabited, were formerly strewed in this manner. The stage in our early theatres was similarly strewed, as were our churches in London as well as in the country; and in churches, to this day, the floors are covered with plaited rushes.

Here we may note an odd incident of the period. When Henry III. of France demanded of his ambassador what ' especiall things' he had noted in England during the time of his negotiation there, he replied that he had seen but three things remarkable, which were, that the people drank in boots (blackjacks), ate raw fish (oysters), and strewed all their rooms with hay-meaning rushes.

In these days carpets were costly luxuries; but Lady Gresham, the sister-in-law of Sir John Gresham, taking advantage of the early traffic of her family with the Levant, had her house provided with 'Turkey carpets,' of which she makes particular mention in her will. The cost of these carpets must have been great; for in 1602 a Turkey carpet sixteen feet long cost £27, equivalent to nearly £200 at the present day.

Harrison, writing in the time of Elizabeth, thus describes the furniture in use immediately before his time: 'Our fathers (yea, we ourselves also) have been full oft upon straw pallets, or rough mats, covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dogswain, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or the good man of the house, had, within seven years after his marriage, purchased a mattress or flockbed, and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town, that, peradventure, seldom lay in a bed of down, or whole feathers. As for servants, if they had any sheet above

them, it was well; for seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and razed their hardened hides.'

The regulations of the King's household in the previous reign (Henry VIII.) have been preserved in manuscript, and present a curious picture of manners. The first injunction shows that more than three centuries ago an adulteration of food was punishable, though it is generally practised in the present day. [Dr. Hassall, in his Adulterations Detected, 1857, says: Alum is almost always used by bakers in bread, and is particularly injurious.'] It was enacted that 'his Highness' baker shall not put alum in the bread, or mix rye, oaten, or bean flour with the same; and if detected, he shall be put in the stocks.' Then follow miscellaneous matters : 'His Highness' attendants are not to steal any lock or keys, tables, forms, cupboards, or other furniture, out of noblemen's or gentlemen's houses, where they go to visit. Master cooks shall not employ such scullions as are not clothed properly, or lie all night on the ground before the kitchen fire. No dogs to be kept in the court, but only a few spaniels for the ladies. Dinner to be at ten, supper at four. The officers of his privy chamber shall be friendly together; no grudging nor grumbling, nor talking of the King's pastime. There shall be no romping with the maids on the staircase, by which dishes and other things are often broken. Care shall be taken of the pewter spoons; and that the wooden ones used in the kitchen be not broken or stolen. The prayer shall not interrupt the kitchen-maids. Coal to be only allowed to the King's, Queen's, and Lady Mary's chambers. The brewers are not to put any brimstone in the ale.'

It is an error to suppose that the old English gentry were

lodged in stately, or even in well-aired houses. With the manor-house we usually associate ideas of superior rank and condition, and style of living. The ordinary manorhouse of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries usually consisted of an entrance-passage running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices. Nor were these houses, or even castles, over-provided with furniture. Skipton Castle, a famous old place, had not more than seven or eight beds; nor had any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets. In a merchant's house of about the same period, we find the parlour had wainscot, a table, and a few chairs; the chambers above had two best beds, and there was one servant's bed; but the inferior servants had only mattresses on the floor. Yet this merchant is supposed to have been better supplied than the neighbouring gentry. His plate, however, consisted only of sixteen spoons, and a few goblets and ale-pots.

With objects of antiquity we are too apt to associate notions of comfort and enjoyment, which scarcely belong to their periods. There is unquestionably more poetry in the past than the present. A houseful of old furniture, its

'Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household,'

is very suggestive of enjoyment, in the pleasure of retrospection of the periods to which the furniture belongs. A Glastonbury chair, an Elizabethan table, or a Charles the Second cabinet, may conjure up reveries of that kind, which is well conveyed in the oft-quoted line:

"Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.'

But the balance of comfort is infinitely in favour of modern upholstery, and in the planning of the interior of a house so