156 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



no more find rest and unconsciousness at night, Shake- 

 speare makes him say 



" How many thousand of my poorest subjects 

 Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gentle sleep, 

 Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, 

 That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 

 And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 

 Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 

 Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 

 And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, 

 Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, 

 Under the canopies of costly state, 

 And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody ? " 



Poets have as a rule been too ready to make much 

 of the likeness of sleep and death, whereas there is an 

 absolute difference in their mere appearance. Sleep 

 makes even those who are ill-favoured and coarse look 

 beautiful, imparts to its subjects a graciousness of 

 expression and of colour, and a gentle rhythmic move- 

 ment, whilst suffusing them as it were with an " aura " 

 of contented trustfulness. These things are far from 

 the cold stillness of pallid death. And this depends 

 upon the fact that in sleep, though many of the 

 activities of the body and mind are checked, and even 

 arrested, there are yet still present the never-ceasing 

 pulse of the heart, the flow of the blood, the intake and 

 output of the breath, and a certain subdued but still 

 active tension of muscles, so that though the body and 

 limbs are relaxed they never assume the aspect of com- 

 plete mechanical collapse which we see in death. The 

 pupils of the eyes are strongly contracted during sleep, 

 not relaxed and expanded as are those of wide-awake 

 people in the dark. There are some well-known works 

 of art both painting and sculpture in which the dead 

 are not truly represented, but are made to retain the 



