"When sleep hath closed our eyes the mind sees well,
For Fate by daylight is invisible."
Things admirable for the admirable hours. The morning for thought,
the afternoon for recreation, the evening for company, the night for
rest. Having drank of immortality all night, the genius enters eagerly
upon the day's task, impatient of any impertinences jogging the full
glass. The best comes when we are at our best; and who so buoyant
as to be always rider of the wave? Sleep, and see; wake, and report
the nocturnal spectacle. Sleep, like travel, enriches, refreshes,
by varying the day's perspective, showing us the night side of the
globe we traverse day by day. We make transits too swift for our
wakeful senses to follow; pass from solar to lunar consciousness in
a twinkling, lapse from forehead and face to occupy our lower parts,
and recover, as far as permitted, the keys of genesis and of the
foreworlds. "All truth," says Porphyry, "is latent; but this the soul
sometimes beholds when she is a little liberated by sleep from the
employments of the body. And sometimes she extends her sight, but never
perfectly reaches the objects of her vision. Hence, when she beholds,
she does not see it with a free and direct light, but through an
intervening veil, which the folds of darkening nature draw over her
eye. This veil, when in sleep it admits the light to extend as far as
truth, is said to be of horn, whose nature is such, from its tenuity,
that it is pervious to the light. But when it dulls the sight and
repels its vision of truth, it is said to be of ivory, which is a body
so naturally dense, that, however thin it may be scraped, it cannot be
penetrated by the visual rays."