end to induce sleep of a better
quality than the noise and activity of day. It is unquestionably
desirable that children should be able to sleep, at least occasionally,
without absolute quiet. And yet such sleep cannot be sufficiently sound
to answer the purposes of health, if frequently repeated.

Hence it is, perhaps--at least in part--that the maxim has obtained
currency, that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two afterward.
The comparison has probably been made between the quiet and darksome
hours of evening and those which followed daybreak, when light, and
music, and bustle conspire, as they should, to make us wakeful. No
person can sleep as soundly and as effectually, when light reaches his
closed eyes, and sounds strike his ears, as in darkness and silence. He
may sleep, indeed, under almost any circumstances, when fatigue and
exhaustion demand it; but never so profoundly as when in absolute
abstraction of light, and complete quiet.

SEC. 10. _Quantity._

On this point much might be said, without exhausting the subject. But I
have already observed that infants, when first born, require to sleep
nearly their whole time. As they advance in years, the necessity for
sleep; however, diminishes, until they come to maturity, when it remains
for many years nearly stationary. In advanced age, the necessity for
sleep again increases, till we reach the extremest old age, or what is
usually called second childhood, when we again sometimes sleep nearly
the whole time.

I have already remarked that much might be said on this subject; but I
do not think that the present occasion requires it. If the suggestions
which are made in the chapter on "Early Rising" should receive the
attention I flatter myself they merit, I do not believe children would
often sleep too long. If, on the contrary, they are suffered to lie late
in the morning, and then sit up late in the evening, all healthful
habits and tendencies will he so deranged or broken up, that nature, in
her indications, will by no means prove the unerring guide which she is
wont to do in other circumstances.

A few thoughts here, on the quantity of sleep required by the young
after they approach maturity, may not be misplaced.

Jeremy Taylor thought that for a healthy adult, three hours in
twenty-four were enough for all the purposes of sleep. Baxter thought
four hours about a reasonable time; Wesley, six; Lord Coke and Sir Wm.
Jones, seven; and Sir John Sinc