THE practice of taking tea or coffee by students, in order to work at night, says Dr. Mattieu Williams, is downright madness, especially when preparing for an examination. More than half of the cases of breakdown, loss of memory, fainting, etc., which occur during severe examinations, and far more frequently than is commonly known, are due to this. I frequently hear of promising students who have thus failed; and, on inquiry, have learned—in almost every instance—that the victim has previously drugged himself with tea or coffee. Sleep is the rest of the brain; to rob the hard-worked brain of its necessary rest is cerebral suicide. My old friend, the late Thomas Wright, was a victim of this terrible folly. He undertook the translation of the "Life of Julius Cæsar," by Napoleon III., and to do it in a cruelly short time. He fulfilled his contract by sitting up several nights successively by the aid of strong tea or coffee (I forget which). I saw him shortly afterward. In a few weeks he had aged alarmingly, and become quite bald; his brain gave way and never recovered. There was but little difference between his age and mine, and but for this dreadful cerebral strain, rendered possible only by the alkaloid (for otherwise he would have fallen to sleep over his work, and thereby saved his life), he might still be amusing and instructing thousands of readers by fresh volumes of popularized archæological research.—Selected.