all animated nature may be conceived to require repose, while unceasing vigilance may be regarded as the exclusive attribute of God "who slumbereth not." The quantity of sleep which is sufficient for the purposes of well sustained life varies with the constitution of the individual, and depends on the proportion of fatigue which he endures, and the quantity of nourishment which he receives. It may be protracted indefinitely, and during its continuance the vital flame appears scarcely to waste its supplies; if we may credit some accounts which are furnished to us, and which represent lethargic persons to have been so absorbed in uninterrupted sleep for weeks, and even years, as to require no sustenance, and to suffer so little change or consumption of the animal vigor, that the" eye was not dimmed, nor the natural force abated*. Diogenes Laertius represents Epimenides, a distinguished philosopher of Crete, to have Bacon. slept fifty-one years in a cave, during which time if he had any dreams he could not afterwards recall them, and when he awaked he with difficulty recollected the city of his residence, and could scarcely persuade his younger brother to recognise him*. This account may probably be suspected from his connection with Cretan history, the Abbé Barthelemy represents it to import only that Epimenides passed the first years of his youth in solitude and silent meditation. There, are many other relations, however, which prove that sleep may be continued without injury to the human constitution certainly to a much longer period than the body could subsist without food in a waking state †. Aristotle and Plutarch speak of the nurse of one Timon who slept two months without any indication of life. Marcus Damascenus re * Diogenes Laertius, Epimen, L. i. Plin. Hist. Nat. L. vii. C. 5. p. 284. Introduct. au Voyage de la Grêce. Pausanias, L. i. C. 14. p. 35. Plutarch. Sympos. L. viii. Quest. 9. presents a German rustic to have slept under an hay-rick through a whole autumn and winter, till on the removal of the hay he awoke half dead and utterly distracted *. Crantzius mentions a scholar at Lubeck in the time of Gregory the Eleventh, who slept seven years without any apparent change +. The most memorable account, however, is that of the seven persons of Ephesus, who are reported to have slept providentially in a cave to which they had retired, from the time of the persecution under Decius till the 30th year of Theodosius. The cave, it is said, is still shewn at Ephesus, and the remains of a chapel erected to their memory. These were the seven famous sleepers whose reputation is certainly unrivalled in history. But though the account be sanctioned in some Greek homilies, and in the Koran, many incredulous people have * Zuing. Theat. vol. ii. L. 5. p. 415. † Crantz, Vandal. L. viii. C. 39. and other authorities in Wanley's Wonders. Ricaut's Hist. of the Greek Church. stumbled at the marvellous relation, and consider it as a fiction of the martyrologists. There is however perhaps nothing more inexplicable in men's sleeping 196 years* than in their sleeping six, we know not at what limits to stop, and may remark as was once done on the subject of St. Denys's walking a great way without his head, La distance n'y fait rien, c'est le premier pas qui coute. Upon this subject it may be worth while to notice a very extraordinary account which was drawn up by Mr. Gualtier at the request of the King of Sweden, and which is inserted in the Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin. The case alluded to is that of a woman of the name of Guasser, who was affected by a kind of catalepsy which attacked her twice a day, during which she sunk into a profound sleep, and was deprived of all internal and external sensation, her limbs grew hard and inflexible like stone, a * Niceph. Hist. Eccles. L. xiv. C. 44. Schol. little pulse was discernible, and her respiration continued as free as in her natural sleep: she appeared to have no feeling though her flesh was scarified. The fit came on regularly every morning at a very early hour, and ceased about twelve o'clock by a gradual and convulsive recovery of the use of the limbs, which allowed her just time to take refreshments, when she again relapsed into sleep, which continued till eight o'clock, from which time she remained awake til eight o'clock in the morning. It was remarkable that this disorder sometimes lasted six months, sometimes a year, and at last two years and a half (during the latter part of which time the paroxysm returned but once a day) after which period a correspondent interval of health always intervened. During the continuance of her malady she was married, and brought to bed of two or three children, who were not affected by her complaint; she lived many years after the last attack, and having attained the age of eighty, died in 1746, of a disorder which had no apparent connection with this periodical affection, which is supposed |