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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sunday under Three Heads, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Sunday under Three Heads
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 4, 2015  [eBook #922]
+[This file was first posted on May 29, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNDAY UNDER THREE HEADS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman & Hall edition (_The Works of Charles
+Dickens_, volume 28) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                         SUNDAY UNDER THREE HEADS
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            By CHARLES DICKENS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
+                    NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+                                   1905
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+                          To The Right Reverend
+                           THE BISHOP OF LONDON
+
+MY LORD,
+
+You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on the vicious
+addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday excursions; and were
+thus instrumental in calling forth occasional demonstrations of those
+extreme opinions on the subject, which are very generally received with
+derision, if not with contempt.
+
+
+
+Your elevated station, my Lord, affords you countless opportunities of
+increasing the comforts and pleasures of the humbler classes of
+society—not by the expenditure of the smallest portion of your princely
+income, but by merely sanctioning with the influence of your example,
+their harmless pastimes, and innocent recreations.
+
+
+
+That your Lordship would ever have contemplated Sunday recreations with
+so much horror, if you had been at all acquainted with the wants and
+necessities of the people who indulged in them, I cannot imagine
+possible.  That a Prelate of your elevated rank has the faintest
+conception of the extent of those wants, and the nature of those
+necessities, I do not believe.
+
+
+
+For these reasons, I venture to address this little Pamphlet to your
+Lordship’s consideration.  I am quite conscious that the outlines I have
+drawn, afford but a very imperfect description of the feelings they are
+intended to illustrate; but I claim for them one merit—their truth and
+freedom from exaggeration.  I may have fallen short of the mark, but I
+have never overshot it: and while I have pointed out what appears to me,
+to be injustice on the part of others, I hope I have carefully abstained
+from committing it myself.
+
+
+
+I am,
+         My Lord,
+
+                      Your Lordship’s most obedient,
+
+                                                           Humble Servant,
+                                                           TIMOTHY SPARKS.
+
+_June_, 1836.
+
+
+
+
+I
+AS IT IS
+
+
+THERE are few things from which I derive greater pleasure, than walking
+through some of the principal streets of London on a fine Sunday, in
+summer, and watching the cheerful faces of the lively groups with which
+they are thronged.  There is something, to my eyes at least, exceedingly
+pleasing in the general desire evinced by the humbler classes of society,
+to appear neat and clean on this their only holiday.  There are many
+grave old persons, I know, who shake their heads with an air of profound
+wisdom, and tell you that poor people dress too well now-a-days; that
+when they were children, folks knew their stations in life better; that
+you may depend upon it, no good will come of this sort of thing in the
+end,—and so forth: but I fancy I can discern in the fine bonnet of the
+working-man’s wife, or the feather-bedizened hat of his child, no
+inconsiderable evidence of good feeling on the part of the man himself,
+and an affectionate desire to expend the few shillings he can spare from
+his week’s wages, in improving the appearance and adding to the happiness
+of those who are nearest and dearest to him.  This may be a very heinous
+and unbecoming degree of vanity, perhaps, and the money might possibly be
+applied to better uses; it must not be forgotten, however, that it might
+very easily be devoted to worse: and if two or three faces can be
+rendered happy and contented, by a trifling improvement of outward
+appearance, I cannot help thinking that the object is very cheaply
+purchased, even at the expense of a smart gown, or a gaudy riband.  There
+is a great deal of very unnecessary cant about the over-dressing of the
+common people.  There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence,
+who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the
+appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen,
+slovenly fellow, who works doggedly on, regardless of his own clothing
+and that of his wife and children, and seeming to take pleasure or pride
+in nothing.
+
+
+
+The pampered aristocrat, whose life is one continued round of licentious
+pleasures and sensual gratifications; or the gloomy enthusiast, who
+detests the cheerful amusements he can never enjoy, and envies the
+healthy feelings he can never know, and who would put down the one and
+suppress the other, until he made the minds of his fellow-beings as
+besotted and distorted as his own;—neither of these men can by
+possibility form an adequate notion of what Sunday really is to those
+whose lives are spent in sedentary or laborious occupations, and who are
+accustomed to look forward to it through their whole existence, as their
+only day of rest from toil, and innocent enjoyment.
+
+
+
+The sun that rises over the quiet streets of London on a bright Sunday
+morning, shines till his setting, on gay and happy faces.  Here and
+there, so early as six o’clock, a young man and woman in their best
+attire, may be seen hurrying along on their way to the house of some
+acquaintance, who is included in their scheme of pleasure for the day;
+from whence, after stopping to take “a bit of breakfast,” they sally
+forth, accompanied by several old people, and a whole crowd of young
+ones, bearing large hand-baskets full of provisions, and Belcher
+handkerchiefs done up in bundles, with the neck of a bottle sticking out
+at the top, and closely-packed apples bulging out at the sides,—and away
+they hurry along the streets leading to the steam-packet wharfs, which
+are already plentifully sprinkled with parties bound for the same
+destination.  Their good humour and delight know no bounds—for it is a
+delightful morning, all blue over head, and nothing like a cloud in the
+whole sky; and even the air of the river at London Bridge is something to
+them, shut up as they have been, all the week, in close streets and
+heated rooms.  There are dozens of steamers to all sorts of
+places—Gravesend, Greenwich, and Richmond; and such numbers of people,
+that when you have once sat down on the deck, it is all but a moral
+impossibility to get up again—to say nothing of walking about, which is
+entirely out of the question.  Away they go, joking and laughing, and
+eating and drinking, and admiring everything they see, and pleased with
+everything they hear, to climb Windmill Hill, and catch a glimpse of the
+rich corn-fields and beautiful orchards of Kent; or to stroll among the
+fine old trees of Greenwich Park, and survey the wonders of Shooter’s
+Hill and Lady James’s Folly; or to glide past the beautiful meadows of
+Twickenham and Richmond, and to gaze with a delight which only people
+like them can know, on every lovely object in the fair prospect around.
+Boat follows boat, and coach succeeds coach, for the next three hours;
+but all are filled, and all with the same kind of people—neat and clean,
+cheerful and contented.
+
+
+
+They reach their places of destination, and the taverns are crowded; but
+there is no drunkenness or brawling, for the class of men who commit the
+enormity of making Sunday excursions, take their families with them: and
+this in itself would be a check upon them, even if they were inclined to
+dissipation, which they really are not.  Boisterous their mirth may be,
+for they have all the excitement of feeling that fresh air and green
+fields can impart to the dwellers in crowded cities, but it is innocent
+and harmless.  The glass is circulated, and the joke goes round; but the
+one is free from excess, and the other from offence; and nothing but good
+humour and hilarity prevail.
+
+
+
+In streets like Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, which form the central
+market of a large neighbourhood, inhabited by a vast number of mechanics
+and poor people, a few shops are open at an early hour of the morning;
+and a very poor man, with a thin and sickly woman by his side, may be
+seen with their little basket in hand, purchasing the scanty quantity of
+necessaries they can afford, which the time at which the man receives his
+wages, or his having a good deal of work to do, or the woman’s having
+been out charing till a late hour, prevented their procuring over-night.
+The coffee-shops too, at which clerks and young men employed in
+counting-houses can procure their breakfasts, are also open.  This class
+comprises, in a place like London, an enormous number of people, whose
+limited means prevent their engaging for their lodgings any other
+apartment than a bedroom, and who have consequently no alternative but to
+take their breakfasts at a coffee-shop, or go without it altogether.  All
+these places, however, are quickly closed; and by the time the church
+bells begin to ring, all appearance of traffic has ceased.  And then,
+what are the signs of immorality that meet the eye?  Churches are well
+filled, and Dissenters’ chapels are crowded to suffocation.  There is no
+preaching to empty benches, while the drunken and dissolute populace run
+riot in the streets.
+
+
+
+Here is a fashionable church, where the service commences at a late hour,
+for the accommodation of such members of the congregation—and they are
+not a few—as may happen to have lingered at the Opera far into the
+morning of the Sabbath; an excellent contrivance for poising the balance
+between God and Mammon, and illustrating the ease with which a man’s
+duties to both, may be accommodated and adjusted.  How the carriages
+rattle up, and deposit their richly-dressed burdens beneath the lofty
+portico!  The powdered footmen glide along the aisle, place the
+richly-bound prayer-books on the pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry
+away, leaving the fashionable members of the congregation to inspect each
+other through their glasses, and to dazzle and glitter in the eyes of the
+few shabby people in the free seats.  The organ peals forth, the hired
+singers commence a short hymn, and the congregation condescendingly rise,
+stare about them, and converse in whispers.  The clergyman enters the
+reading-desk,—a young man of noble family and elegant demeanour,
+notorious at Cambridge for his knowledge of horse-flesh and dancers, and
+celebrated at Eton for his hopeless stupidity.  The service commences.
+Mark the soft voice in which he reads, and the impressive manner in which
+he applies his white hand, studded with brilliants, to his perfumed hair.
+Observe the graceful emphasis with which he offers up the prayers for the
+King, the Royal Family, and all the Nobility; and the nonchalance with
+which he hurries over the more uncomfortable portions of the service, the
+seventh commandment for instance, with a studied regard for the taste and
+feeling of his auditors, only to be equalled by that displayed by the
+sleek divine who succeeds him, who murmurs, in a voice kept down by rich
+feeding, most comfortable doctrines for exactly twelve minutes, and then
+arrives at the anxiously expected ‘Now to God,’ which is the signal for
+the dismissal of the congregation.  The organ is again heard; those who
+have been asleep wake up, and those who have kept awake, smile and seem
+greatly relieved; bows and congratulations are exchanged, the livery
+servants are all bustle and commotion, bang go the steps, up jump the
+footmen, and off rattle the carriages: the inmates discoursing on the
+dresses of the congregation, and congratulating themselves on having set
+so excellent an example to the community in general, and
+Sunday-pleasurers in particular.
+
+
+
+Enter a less orthodox place of religious worship, and observe the
+contrast.  A small close chapel with a white-washed wall, and plain deal
+pews and pulpit, contains a closely-packed congregation, as different in
+dress, as they are opposed in manner, to that we have just quitted.  The
+hymn is sung—not by paid singers, but by the whole assembly at the
+loudest pitch of their voices, unaccompanied by any musical instrument,
+the words being given out, two lines at a time, by the clerk.  There is
+something in the sonorous quavering of the harsh voices, in the lank and
+hollow faces of the men, and the sour solemnity of the women, which
+bespeaks this a strong-hold of intolerant zeal and ignorant enthusiasm.
+The preacher enters the pulpit.  He is a coarse, hard-faced man of
+forbidding aspect, clad in rusty black, and bearing in his hand a small
+plain Bible from which he selects some passage for his text, while the
+hymn is concluding.  The congregation fall upon their knees, and are
+hushed into profound stillness as he delivers an extempore prayer, in
+which he calls upon the Sacred Founder of the Christian faith to bless
+his ministry, in terms of disgusting and impious familiarity not to be
+described.  He begins his oration in a drawling tone, and his hearers
+listen with silent attention.  He grows warmer as he proceeds with his
+subject, and his gesticulation becomes proportionately violent.  He
+clenches his fists, beats the book upon the desk before him, and swings
+his arms wildly about his head.  The congregation murmur their
+acquiescence in his doctrines: and a short groan, occasionally bears
+testimony to the moving nature of his eloquence.  Encouraged by these
+symptoms of approval, and working himself up to a pitch of enthusiasm
+amounting almost to frenzy, he denounces sabbath-breakers with the direst
+vengeance of offended Heaven.  He stretches his body half out of the
+pulpit, thrusts forth his arms with frantic gestures, and blasphemously
+calls upon The Deity to visit with eternal torments, those who turn aside
+from the word, as interpreted and preached by—himself.  A low moaning is
+heard, the women rock their bodies to and fro, and wring their hands; the
+preacher’s fervour increases, the perspiration starts upon his brow, his
+face is flushed, and he clenches his hands convulsively, as he draws a
+hideous and appalling picture of the horrors preparing for the wicked in
+a future state.  A great excitement is visible among his hearers, a
+scream is heard, and some young girl falls senseless on the floor.  There
+is a momentary rustle, but it is only for a moment—all eyes are turned
+towards the preacher.  He pauses, passes his handkerchief across his
+face, and looks complacently round.  His voice resumes its natural tone,
+as with mock humility he offers up a thanksgiving for having been
+successful in his efforts, and having been permitted to rescue one sinner
+from the path of evil.  He sinks back into his seat, exhausted with the
+violence of his ravings; the girl is removed, a hymn is sung, a petition
+for some measure for securing the better observance of the Sabbath, which
+has been prepared by the good man, is read; and his worshipping admirers
+struggle who shall be the first to sign it.
+
+
+
+But the morning service has concluded, and the streets are again crowded
+with people.  Long rows of cleanly-dressed charity children, preceded by
+a portly beadle and a withered schoolmaster, are returning to their
+welcome dinner; and it is evident, from the number of men with beer-trays
+who are running from house to house, that no inconsiderable portion of
+the population are about to take theirs at this early hour.  The bakers’
+shops in the humbler suburbs especially, are filled with men, women, and
+children, each anxiously waiting for the Sunday dinner.  Look at the
+group of children who surround that working man who has just emerged from
+the baker’s shop at the corner of the street, with the reeking dish, in
+which a diminutive joint of mutton simmers above a vast heap of
+half-browned potatoes.  How the young rogues clap their hands, and dance
+round their father, for very joy at the prospect of the feast: and how
+anxiously the youngest and chubbiest of the lot, lingers on tiptoe by his
+side, trying to get a peep into the interior of the dish.  They turn up
+the street, and the chubby-faced boy trots on as fast as his little legs
+will carry him, to herald the approach of the dinner to ‘Mother’ who is
+standing with a baby in her arms on the doorstep, and who seems almost as
+pleased with the whole scene as the children themselves; whereupon ‘baby’
+not precisely understanding the importance of the business in hand, but
+clearly perceiving that it is something unusually lively, kicks and crows
+most lustily, to the unspeakable delight of all the children and both the
+parents: and the dinner is borne into the house amidst a shouting of
+small voices, and jumping of fat legs, which would fill Sir Andrew Agnew
+with astonishment; as well it might, seeing that Baronets, generally
+speaking, eat pretty comfortable dinners all the week through, and cannot
+be expected to understand what people feel, who only have a meat dinner
+on one day out of every seven.
+
+
+
+The bakings being all duly consigned to their respective owners, and the
+beer-man having gone his rounds, the church bells ring for afternoon
+service, the shops are again closed, and the streets are more than ever
+thronged with people; some who have not been to church in the morning,
+going to it now; others who have been to church, going out for a walk;
+and others—let us admit the full measure of their guilt—going for a walk,
+who have not been to church at all.  I am afraid the smart servant of all
+work, who has been loitering at the corner of the square for the last ten
+minutes, is one of the latter class.  She is evidently waiting for
+somebody, and though she may have made up her mind to go to church with
+him one of these mornings, I don’t think they have any such intention on
+this particular afternoon.  Here he is, at last.  The white trousers,
+blue coat, and yellow waistcoat—and more especially that cock of the
+hat—indicate, as surely as inanimate objects can, that Chalk Farm and not
+the parish church, is their destination.  The girl colours up, and puts
+out her hand with a very awkward affectation of indifference.  He gives
+it a gallant squeeze, and away they walk, arm in arm, the girl just
+looking back towards her ‘place’ with an air of conscious
+self-importance, and nodding to her fellow-servant who has gone up to the
+two-pair-of-stairs window, to take a full view of ‘Mary’s young man,’
+which being communicated to William, he takes off his hat to the
+fellow-servant: a proceeding which affords unmitigated satisfaction to
+all parties, and impels the fellow-servant to inform Miss Emily
+confidentially, in the course of the evening, ‘that the young man as Mary
+keeps company with, is one of the most genteelest young men as ever she
+see.’
+
+
+
+The two young people who have just crossed the road, and are following
+this happy couple down the street, are a fair specimen of another class
+of Sunday—pleasurers.  There is a dapper smartness, struggling through
+very limited means, about the young man, which induces one to set him
+down at once as a junior clerk to a tradesman or attorney.  The girl no
+one could possibly mistake.  You may tell a young woman in the employment
+of a large dress-maker, at any time, by a certain neatness of cheap
+finery and humble following of fashion, which pervade her whole attire;
+but unfortunately there are other tokens not to be misunderstood—the pale
+face with its hectic bloom, the slight distortion of form which no
+artifice of dress can wholly conceal, the unhealthy stoop, and the short
+cough—the effects of hard work and close application to a sedentary
+employment, upon a tender frame.  They turn towards the fields.  The
+girl’s countenance brightens, and an unwonted glow rises in her face.
+They are going to Hampstead or Highgate, to spend their holiday afternoon
+in some place where they can see the sky, the fields, and trees, and
+breathe for an hour or two the pure air, which so seldom plays upon that
+poor girl’s form, or exhilarates her spirits.
+
+
+
+I would to God, that the iron-hearted man who would deprive such people
+as these of their only pleasures, could feel the sinking of heart and
+soul, the wasting exhaustion of mind and body, the utter prostration of
+present strength and future hope, attendant upon that incessant toil
+which lasts from day to day, and from month to month; that toil which is
+too often protracted until the silence of midnight, and resumed with the
+first stir of morning.  How marvellously would his ardent zeal for other
+men’s souls, diminish after a short probation, and how enlightened and
+comprehensive would his views of the real object and meaning of the
+institution of the Sabbath become!
+
+
+
+The afternoon is far advanced—the parks and public drives are crowded.
+Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of every description,
+glide smoothly on.  The promenades are filled with loungers on foot, and
+the road is thronged with loungers on horseback.  Persons of every class
+are crowded together, here, in one dense mass.  The plebeian, who takes
+his pleasure on no day but Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his,
+from year’s end to year’s end.  You look in vain for any outward signs of
+profligacy or debauchery.  You see nothing before you but a vast number
+of people, the denizens of a large and crowded city, in the needful and
+rational enjoyment of air and exercise.
+
+
+
+It grows dusk.  The roads leading from the different places of suburban
+resort, are crowded with people on their return home, and the sound of
+merry voices rings through the gradually darkening fields.  The evening
+is hot and sultry.  The rich man throws open the sashes of his spacious
+dining-room, and quaffs his iced wine in splendid luxury.  The poor man,
+who has no room to take his meals in, but the close apartment to which he
+and his family have been confined throughout the week, sits in the
+tea-garden of some famous tavern, and drinks his beer in content and
+comfort.  The fields and roads are gradually deserted, the crowd once
+more pour into the streets, and disperse to their several homes; and by
+midnight all is silent and quiet, save where a few stragglers linger
+beneath the window of some great man’s house, to listen to the strains of
+music from within: or stop to gaze upon the splendid carriages which are
+waiting to convey the guests from the dinner-party of an Earl.
+
+
+
+There is a darker side to this picture, on which, so far from its being
+any part of my purpose to conceal it, I wish to lay particular stress.
+In some parts of London, and in many of the manufacturing towns of
+England, drunkenness and profligacy in their most disgusting forms,
+exhibit in the open streets on Sunday, a sad and a degrading spectacle.
+We need go no farther than St. Giles’s, or Drury Lane, for sights and
+scenes of a most repulsive nature.  Women with scarcely the articles of
+apparel which common decency requires, with forms bloated by disease, and
+faces rendered hideous by habitual drunkenness—men reeling and staggering
+along—children in rags and filth—whole streets of squalid and miserable
+appearance, whose inhabitants are lounging in the public road, fighting,
+screaming, and swearing—these are the common objects which present
+themselves in, these are the well-known characteristics of, that portion
+of London to which I have just referred.
+
+
+
+And why is it, that all well-disposed persons are shocked, and public
+decency scandalised, by such exhibitions?
+
+
+
+These people are poor—that is notorious.  It may be said that they spend
+in liquor, money with which they might purchase necessaries, and there is
+no denying the fact; but let it be remembered that even if they applied
+every farthing of their earnings in the best possible way, they would
+still be very—very poor.  Their dwellings are necessarily uncomfortable,
+and to a certain degree unhealthy.  Cleanliness might do much, but they
+are too crowded together, the streets are too narrow, and the rooms too
+small, to admit of their ever being rendered desirable habitations.  They
+work very hard all the week.  We know that the effect of prolonged and
+arduous labour, is to produce, when a period of rest does arrive, a
+sensation of lassitude which it requires the application of some stimulus
+to overcome.  What stimulus have they?  Sunday comes, and with it a
+cessation of labour.  How are they to employ the day, or what inducement
+have they to employ it, in recruiting their stock of health?  They see
+little parties, on pleasure excursions, passing through the streets; but
+they cannot imitate their example, for they have not the means.  They may
+walk, to be sure, but it is exactly the inducement to walk that they
+require.  If every one of these men knew, that by taking the trouble to
+walk two or three miles he would be enabled to share in a good game of
+cricket, or some athletic sport, I very much question whether any of them
+would remain at home.
+
+
+
+But you hold out no inducement, you offer no relief from listlessness,
+you provide nothing to amuse his mind, you afford him no means of
+exercising his body.  Unwashed and unshaven, he saunters moodily about,
+weary and dejected.  In lieu of the wholesome stimulus he might derive
+from nature, you drive him to the pernicious excitement to be gained from
+art.  He flies to the gin-shop as his only resource; and when, reduced to
+a worse level than the lowest brute in the scale of creation, he lies
+wallowing in the kennel, your saintly lawgivers lift up their hands to
+heaven, and exclaim for a law which shall convert the day intended for
+rest and cheerfulness, into one of universal gloom, bigotry, and
+persecution.
+
+
+
+
+II
+AS SABBATH BILLS WOULD MAKE IT
+
+
+THE provisions of the bill introduced into the House of Commons by Sir
+Andrew Agnew, and thrown out by that House on the motion for the second
+reading, on the 18th of May in the present year, by a majority of 32, may
+very fairly be taken as a test of the length to which the fanatics, of
+which the honourable Baronet is the distinguished leader, are prepared to
+go.  No test can be fairer; because while on the one hand this measure
+may be supposed to exhibit all that improvement which mature reflection
+and long deliberation may have suggested, so on the other it may very
+reasonably be inferred, that if it be quite as severe in its provisions,
+and to the full as partial in its operation, as those which have preceded
+it and experienced a similar fate, the disease under which the honourable
+Baronet and his friends labour, is perfectly hopeless, and beyond the
+reach of cure.
+
+
+
+The proposed enactments of the bill are briefly these:—All work is
+prohibited on the Lord’s day, under heavy penalties, increasing with
+every repetition of the offence.  There are penalties for keeping shops
+open—penalties for drunkenness—penalties for keeping open houses of
+entertainment—penalties for being present at any public meeting or
+assembly—penalties for letting carriages, and penalties for hiring
+them—penalties for travelling in steam-boats, and penalties for taking
+passengers—penalties on vessels commencing their voyage on
+Sunday—penalties on the owners of cattle who suffer them to be driven on
+the Lord’s day—penalties on constables who refuse to act, and penalties
+for resisting them when they do.  In addition to these trifles, the
+constables are invested with arbitrary, vexatious, and most extensive
+powers; and all this in a bill which sets out with a hypocritical and
+canting declaration that ‘nothing is more acceptable to God than the
+_true and sincere_ worship of Him according to His holy will, and that it
+is the bounden duty of Parliament to promote the observance of the Lord’s
+day, by protecting every class of society against being required to
+sacrifice their comfort, health, religious privileges, and conscience,
+for the convenience, enjoyment, or supposed advantage of any other class
+on the Lord’s day’!  The idea of making a man truly moral through the
+ministry of constables, and sincerely religious under the influence of
+penalties, is worthy of the mind which could form such a mass of
+monstrous absurdity as this bill is composed of.
+
+
+
+The House of Commons threw the measure out certainly, and by so doing
+retrieved the disgrace—so far as it could be retrieved—of placing among
+the printed papers of Parliament, such an egregious specimen of
+legislative folly; but there was a degree of delicacy and forbearance
+about the debate that took place, which I cannot help thinking as
+unnecessary and uncalled for, as it is unusual in Parliamentary
+discussions.  If it had been the first time of Sir Andrew Agnew’s
+attempting to palm such a measure upon the country, we might well
+understand, and duly appreciate, the delicate and compassionate feeling
+due to the supposed weakness and imbecility of the man, which prevented
+his proposition being exposed in its true colours, and induced this Hon.
+Member to bear testimony to his excellent motives, and that Noble Lord to
+regret that he could not—although he had tried to do so—adopt any portion
+of the bill.  But when these attempts have been repeated, again and
+again; when Sir Andrew Agnew has renewed them session after session, and
+when it has become palpably evident to the whole House that
+
+    His impudence of proof in every trial,
+    Kens no polite, and heeds no plain denial—
+
+it really becomes high time to speak of him and his legislation, as they
+appear to deserve, without that gloss of politeness, which is all very
+well in an ordinary case, but rather out of place when the liberties and
+comforts of a whole people are at stake.
+
+
+
+In the first place, it is by no means the worst characteristic of this
+bill, that it is a bill of blunders: it is, from beginning to end, a
+piece of deliberate cruelty, and crafty injustice.  If the rich composed
+the whole population of this country, not a single comfort of one single
+man would be affected by it.  It is directed exclusively, and without the
+exception of a solitary instance, against the amusements and recreations
+of the poor.  This was the bait held out by the Hon. Baronet to a body of
+men, who cannot be supposed to have any very strong sympathies in common
+with the poor, because they cannot understand their sufferings or their
+struggles.  This is the bait, which will in time prevail, unless public
+attention is awakened, and public feeling exerted, to prevent it.
+
+
+
+Take the very first clause, the provision that no man shall be allowed to
+work on Sunday—‘That no person, upon the Lord’s day, shall do, or hire,
+or employ any person to do any manner of labour, or any work of his or
+her ordinary calling.’  What class of persons does this affect?  The rich
+man?  No.  Menial servants, both male and female, are specially exempted
+from the operation of the bill.  ‘Menial servants’ are among the poor
+people.  The bill has no regard for them.  The Baronet’s dinner must be
+cooked on Sunday, the Bishop’s horses must be groomed, and the Peer’s
+carriage must be driven.  So the menial servants are put utterly beyond
+the pale of grace;—unless indeed, they are to go to heaven through the
+sanctity of their masters, and possibly they might think even that,
+rather an uncertain passport.
+
+
+
+There is a penalty for keeping open, houses of entertainment.  Now,
+suppose the bill had passed, and that half-a-dozen adventurous licensed
+victuallers, relying upon the excitement of public feeling on the
+subject, and the consequent difficulty of conviction (this is by no means
+an improbable supposition), had determined to keep their houses and
+gardens open, through the whole Sunday afternoon, in defiance of the law.
+Every act of hiring or working, every act of buying or selling, or
+delivering, or causing anything to be bought or sold, is specifically
+made a separate offence—mark the effect.  A party, a man and his wife and
+children, enter a tea-garden, and the informer stations himself in the
+next box, from whence he can see and hear everything that passes.
+‘Waiter!’ says the father.  ‘Yes.  Sir.’  ‘Pint of the best ale!’  ‘Yes,
+Sir.’  Away runs the waiter to the bar, and gets the ale from the
+landlord.  Out comes the informer’s note-book—penalty on the father for
+hiring, on the waiter for delivering, and on the landlord for selling, on
+the Lord’s day.  But it does not stop here.  The waiter delivers the ale,
+and darts off, little suspecting the penalties in store for him.
+‘Hollo,’ cries the father, ‘waiter!’  ‘Yes, Sir.’  ‘Just get this little
+boy a biscuit, will you?’  ‘Yes, Sir.’  Off runs the waiter again, and
+down goes another case of hiring, another case of delivering, and another
+case of selling; and so it would go on _ad infinitum_, the sum and
+substance of the matter being, that every time a man or woman cried
+‘Waiter!’ on Sunday, he or she would be fined not less than forty
+shillings, nor more than a hundred; and every time a waiter replied,
+‘Yes, Sir,’ he and his master would be fined in the same amount: with the
+addition of a new sort of window duty on the landlord, to wit, a tax of
+twenty shillings an hour for every hour beyond the first one, during
+which he should have his shutters down on the Sabbath.
+
+
+
+With one exception, there are perhaps no clauses in the whole bill, so
+strongly illustrative of its partial operation, and the intention of its
+framer, as those which relate to travelling on Sunday.  Penalties of ten,
+twenty, and thirty pounds, are mercilessly imposed upon coach proprietors
+who shall run their coaches on the Sabbath; one, two, and ten pounds upon
+those who hire, or let to hire, horses and carriages upon the Lord’s day,
+but not one syllable about those who have no necessity to hire, because
+they have carriages and horses of their own; not one word of a penalty on
+liveried coachmen and footmen.  The whole of the saintly venom is
+directed against the hired cabriolet, the humble fly, or the rumbling
+hackney-coach, which enables a man of the poorer class to escape for a
+few hours from the smoke and dirt, in the midst of which he has been
+confined throughout the week: while the escutcheoned carriage and the
+dashing cab, may whirl their wealthy owners to Sunday feasts and private
+oratorios, setting constables, informers, and penalties, at defiance.
+Again, in the description of the places of public resort which it is
+rendered criminal to attend on Sunday, there are no words comprising a
+very fashionable promenade.  Public discussions, public debates, public
+lectures and speeches, are cautiously guarded against; for it is by their
+means that the people become enlightened enough to deride the last
+efforts of bigotry and superstition.  There is a stringent provision for
+punishing the poor man who spends an hour in a news-room, but there is
+nothing to prevent the rich one from lounging away the day in the
+Zoological Gardens.
+
+
+
+There is, in four words, a mock proviso, which affects to forbid
+travelling ‘with any animal’ on the Lord’s day.  This, however, is
+revoked, as relates to the rich man, by a subsequent provision.  We have
+then a penalty of not less than fifty, nor more than one hundred pounds,
+upon any person participating in the control, or having the command of
+any vessel which shall commence her voyage on the Lord’s day, should the
+wind prove favourable.  The next time this bill is brought forward (which
+will no doubt be at an early period of the next session of Parliament)
+perhaps it will be better to amend this clause by declaring, that from
+and after the passing of the act, it shall be deemed unlawful for the
+wind to blow at all upon the Sabbath.  It would remove a great deal of
+temptation from the owners and captains of vessels.
+
+
+
+The reader is now in possession of the principal enacting clauses of Sir
+Andrew Agnew’s bill, with the exception of one, for preventing the
+killing or taking of ‘_fish_, _or other wild animals_,’ and the ordinary
+provisions which are inserted for form’s sake in all acts of Parliament.
+I now beg his attention to the clauses of exemption.
+
+
+
+They are two in number.  The first exempts menial servants from any rest,
+and all poor men from any recreation: outlaws a milkman after nine
+o’clock in the morning, and makes eating-houses lawful for only two hours
+in the afternoon; permits a medical man to use his carriage on Sunday,
+and declares that a clergyman may either use his own, or hire one.
+
+
+
+The second is artful, cunning, and designing; shielding the rich man from
+the possibility of being entrapped, and affecting at the same time, to
+have a tender and scrupulous regard, for the interests of the whole
+community.  It declares, ‘that nothing in this act contained, shall
+extend to works of piety, charity, or necessity.’
+
+
+
+What is meant by the word ‘necessity’ in this clause?  Simply this—that
+the rich man shall be at liberty to make use of all the splendid luxuries
+he has collected around him, on any day in the week, because habit and
+custom have rendered them ‘necessary’ to his easy existence; but that the
+poor man who saves his money to provide some little pleasure for himself
+and family at lengthened intervals, shall not be permitted to enjoy it.
+It is not ‘necessary’ to him:—Heaven knows, he very often goes long
+enough without it.  This is the plain English of the clause.  The
+carriage and pair of horses, the coachman, the footman, the helper, and
+the groom, are ‘necessary’ on Sundays, as on other days, to the bishop
+and the nobleman; but the hackney-coach, the hired gig, or the taxed
+cart, cannot possibly be ‘necessary’ to the working-man on Sunday, for he
+has it not at other times.  The sumptuous dinner and the rich wines, are
+‘necessaries’ to a great man in his own mansion: but the pint of beer and
+the plate of meat, degrade the national character in an eating-house.
+
+
+
+Such is the bill for promoting the true and sincere worship of God
+according to his Holy Will, and for protecting every class of society
+against being required to sacrifice their health and comfort on the
+Sabbath.  Instances in which its operation would be as unjust as it would
+be absurd, might be multiplied to an endless amount; but it is sufficient
+to place its leading provisions before the reader.  In doing so, I have
+purposely abstained from drawing upon the imagination for possible cases;
+the provisions to which I have referred, stand in so many words upon the
+bill as printed by order of the House of Commons; and they can neither be
+disowned, nor explained away.
+
+
+
+Let us suppose such a bill as this, to have actually passed both branches
+of the legislature; to have received the royal assent; and to have come
+into operation.  Imagine its effect in a great city like London.
+
+
+
+Sunday comes, and brings with it a day of general gloom and austerity.
+The man who has been toiling hard all the week, has been looking towards
+the Sabbath, not as to a day of rest from labour, and healthy recreation,
+but as one of grievous tyranny and grinding oppression.  The day which
+his Maker intended as a blessing, man has converted into a curse.
+Instead of being hailed by him as his period of relaxation, he finds it
+remarkable only as depriving him of every comfort and enjoyment.  He has
+many children about him, all sent into the world at an early age, to
+struggle for a livelihood; one is kept in a warehouse all day, with an
+interval of rest too short to enable him to reach home, another walks
+four or five miles to his employment at the docks, a third earns a few
+shillings weekly, as an errand boy, or office messenger; and the
+employment of the man himself, detains him at some distance from his home
+from morning till night.  Sunday is the only day on which they could all
+meet together, and enjoy a homely meal in social comfort; and now they
+sit down to a cold and cheerless dinner: the pious guardians of the man’s
+salvation having, in their regard for the welfare of his precious soul,
+shut up the bakers’ shops.  The fire blazes high in the kitchen chimney
+of these well-fed hypocrites, and the rich steams of the savoury dinner
+scent the air.  What care they to be told that this class of men have
+neither a place to cook in—nor means to bear the expense, if they had?
+
+
+
+Look into your churches—diminished congregations, and scanty attendance.
+People have grown sullen and obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with
+the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in every seven.
+And as you cannot make people religious by Act of Parliament, or force
+them to church by constables, they display their feeling by staying away.
+
+
+
+Turn into the streets, and mark the rigid gloom that reigns over
+everything around.  The roads are empty, the fields are deserted, the
+houses of entertainment are closed.  Groups of filthy and
+discontented-looking men, are idling about at the street corners, or
+sleeping in the sun; but there are no decently-dressed people of the
+poorer class, passing to and fro.  Where should they walk to?  It would
+take them an hour, at least, to get into the fields, and when they
+reached them, they could procure neither bite nor sup, without the
+informer and the penalty.  Now and then, a carriage rolls smoothly on, or
+a well-mounted horseman, followed by a liveried attendant, canters by;
+but with these exceptions, all is as melancholy and quiet as if a
+pestilence had fallen on the city.
+
+
+
+Bend your steps through the narrow and thickly-inhabited streets, and
+observe the sallow faces of the men and women who are lounging at the
+doors, or lolling from the windows.  Regard well the closeness of these
+crowded rooms, and the noisome exhalations that rise from the drains and
+kennels; and then laud the triumph of religion and morality, which
+condemns people to drag their lives out in such stews as these, and makes
+it criminal for them to eat or drink in the fresh air, or under the clear
+sky.  Here and there, from some half-opened window, the loud shout of
+drunken revelry strikes upon the ear, and the noise of oaths and
+quarrelling—the effect of the close and heated atmosphere—is heard on all
+sides.  See how the men all rush to join the crowd that are making their
+way down the street, and how loud the execrations of the mob become as
+they draw nearer.  They have assembled round a little knot of constables,
+who have seized the stock-in-trade, heinously exposed on Sunday, of some
+miserable walking-stick seller, who follows clamouring for his property.
+The dispute grows warmer and fiercer, until at last some of the more
+furious among the crowd, rush forward to restore the goods to their
+owner.  A general conflict takes place; the sticks of the constables are
+exercised in all directions; fresh assistance is procured; and half a
+dozen of the assailants are conveyed to the station-house, struggling,
+bleeding, and cursing.  The case is taken to the police-office on the
+following morning; and after a frightful amount of perjury on both sides,
+the men are sent to prison for resisting the officers, their families to
+the workhouse to keep them from starving: and there they both remain for
+a month afterwards, glorious trophies of the sanctified enforcement of
+the Christian Sabbath.  Add to such scenes as these, the profligacy,
+idleness, drunkenness, and vice, that will be committed to an extent
+which no man can foresee, on Monday, as an atonement for the restraint of
+the preceding day; and you have a very faint and imperfect picture of the
+religious effects of this Sunday legislation, supposing it could ever be
+forced upon the people.
+
+
+
+But let those who advocate the cause of fanaticism, reflect well upon the
+probable issue of their endeavours.  They may by perseverance, succeed
+with Parliament.  Let them ponder on the probability of succeeding with
+the people.  You may deny the concession of a political question for a
+time, and a nation will bear it patiently.  Strike home to the comforts
+of every man’s fireside—tamper with every man’s freedom and liberty—and
+one month, one week, may rouse a feeling abroad, which a king would
+gladly yield his crown to quell, and a peer would resign his coronet to
+allay.
+
+
+
+It is the custom to affect a deference for the motives of those who
+advocate these measures, and a respect for the feelings by which they are
+actuated.  They do not deserve it.  If they legislate in ignorance, they
+are criminal and dishonest; if they do so with their eyes open, they
+commit wilful injustice; in either case, they bring religion into
+contempt.  But they do NOT legislate in ignorance.  Public prints, and
+public men, have pointed out to them again and again, the consequences of
+their proceedings.  If they persist in thrusting themselves forward, let
+those consequences rest upon their own heads, and let them be content to
+stand upon their own merits.
+
+
+
+It may be asked, what motives can actuate a man who has so little regard
+for the comfort of his fellow-beings, so little respect for their wants
+and necessities, and so distorted a notion of the beneficence of his
+Creator.  I reply, an envious, heartless, ill-conditioned dislike to
+seeing those whom fortune has placed below him, cheerful and happy—an
+intolerant confidence in his own high worthiness before God, and a lofty
+impression of the demerits of others—pride, selfish pride, as
+inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity itself, as opposed to the
+example of its Founder upon earth.
+
+
+
+To these may be added another class of men—the stern and gloomy
+enthusiasts, who would make earth a hell, and religion a torment: men
+who, having wasted the earlier part of their lives in dissipation and
+depravity, find themselves when scarcely past its meridian, steeped to
+the neck in vice, and shunned like a loathsome disease.  Abandoned by the
+world, having nothing to fall back upon, nothing to remember but time
+mis-spent, and energies misdirected, they turn their eyes and not their
+thoughts to Heaven, and delude themselves into the impious belief, that
+in denouncing the lightness of heart of which they cannot partake, and
+the rational pleasures from which they never derived enjoyment, they are
+more than remedying the sins of their old career, and—like the founders
+of monasteries and builders of churches, in ruder days—establishing a
+good set claim upon their Maker.
+
+
+
+
+III
+AS IT MIGHT BE MADE
+
+
+THE supporters of Sabbath Bills, and more especially the extreme class of
+Dissenters, lay great stress upon the declarations occasionally made by
+criminals from the condemned cell or the scaffold, that to
+Sabbath-breaking they attribute their first deviation from the path of
+rectitude; and they point to these statements, as an incontestable proof
+of the evil consequences which await a departure from that strict and
+rigid observance of the Sabbath, which they uphold.  I cannot help
+thinking that in this, as in almost every other respect connected with
+the subject, there is a considerable degree of cant, and a very great
+deal of wilful blindness.  If a man be viciously disposed—and with very
+few exceptions, not a man dies by the executioner’s hands, who has not
+been in one way or other a most abandoned and profligate character for
+many years—if a man be viciously disposed, there is no doubt that he will
+turn his Sunday to bad account, that he will take advantage of it, to
+dissipate with other bad characters as vile as himself; and that in this
+way, he may trace his first yielding to temptation, possibly his first
+commission of crime, to an infringement of the Sabbath.  But this would
+be an argument against any holiday at all.  If his holiday had been
+Wednesday instead of Sunday, and he had devoted it to the same improper
+uses, it would have been productive of the same results.  It is too much
+to judge of the character of a whole people, by the confessions of the
+very worst members of society.  It is not fair, to cry down things which
+are harmless in themselves, because evil-disposed men may turn them to
+bad account.  Who ever thought of deprecating the teaching poor people to
+write, because some porter in a warehouse had committed forgery?  Or into
+what man’s head did it ever enter, to prevent the crowding of churches,
+because it afforded a temptation for the picking of pockets?
+
+
+
+When the Book of Sports, for allowing the peasantry of England to divert
+themselves with certain games in the open air, on Sundays, after evening
+service, was published by Charles the First, it is needless to say the
+English people were comparatively rude and uncivilised.  And yet it is
+extraordinary to how few excesses it gave rise, even in that day, when
+men’s minds were not enlightened, or their passions moderated, by the
+influence of education and refinement.  That some excesses were committed
+through its means, in the remoter parts of the country, and that it was
+discontinued in those places, in consequence, cannot be denied: but
+generally speaking, there is no proof whatever on record, of its having
+had any tendency to increase crime, or to lower the character of the
+people.
+
+
+
+The Puritans of that time, were as much opposed to harmless recreations
+and healthful amusements as those of the present day, and it is amusing
+to observe that each in their generation, advance precisely the same
+description of arguments.  In the British Museum, there is a curious
+pamphlet got up by the Agnews of Charles’s time, entitled ‘A Divine
+Tragedie lately acted, or a Collection of sundry memorable examples of
+God’s Judgements upon Sabbath Breakers, and other like Libertines in
+their unlawful Sports, happening within the realme of England, in the
+compass only of two yeares last past, since the Booke (of Sports) was
+published, worthy to be knowne and considered of all men, especially such
+who are guilty of the sinne, or archpatrons thereof.’  This amusing
+document, contains some fifty or sixty veritable accounts of balls of
+fire that fell into churchyards and upset the sporters, and sporters that
+quarrelled, and upset one another, and so forth: and among them is one
+anecdote containing an example of a rather different kind, which I cannot
+resist the temptation of quoting, as strongly illustrative of the fact,
+that this blinking of the question has not even the recommendation of
+novelty.
+
+
+
+‘A woman about Northampton, the same day that she heard the booke for
+sports read, went immediately, and having 3. pence in her purse, hired a
+fellow to goe to the next towne to fetch a Minstrell, who coming, she
+with others fell a dauncing, which continued within night; at which time
+shee was got with child, which at the birth shee murthering, was detected
+and apprehended, and being converted before the justice, shee confessed
+it, and withal told the occasion of it, saying it was her falling to
+sport on the Sabbath, upon the reading of the Booke, so as for this
+treble sinfull act, her presumptuous profaning of the Sabbath, wh.
+brought her adultory and that murther.  Shee was according to the Law
+both of God and man, put to death.  Much sinne and misery followeth upon
+Sabbath-breaking.’
+
+
+
+It is needless to say, that if the young lady near Northampton had
+‘fallen to sport’ of such a dangerous description, on any other day but
+Sunday, the first result would probably have been the same: it never
+having been distinctly shown that Sunday is more favourable to the
+propagation of the human race than any other day in the week.  The second
+result—the murder of the child—does not speak very highly for the
+amiability of her natural disposition; and the whole story, supposing it
+to have had any foundation at all, is about as much chargeable upon the
+Book of Sports, as upon the Book of Kings.  Such ‘sports’ have taken
+place in Dissenting Chapels before now; but religion has never been
+blamed in consequence; nor has it been proposed to shut up the chapels on
+that account.
+
+
+
+The question, then, very fairly arises, whether we have any reason to
+suppose that allowing games in the open air on Sundays, or even providing
+the means of amusement for the humbler classes of society on that day,
+would be hurtful and injurious to the character and morals of the people.
+
+
+
+I was travelling in the west of England a summer or two back, and was
+induced by the beauty of the scenery, and the seclusion of the spot, to
+remain for the night in a small village, distant about seventy miles from
+London.  The next morning was Sunday; and I walked out, towards the
+church.  Groups of people—the whole population of the little hamlet
+apparently—were hastening in the same direction.  Cheerful and
+good-humoured congratulations were heard on all sides, as neighbours
+overtook each other, and walked on in company.  Occasionally I passed an
+aged couple, whose married daughter and her husband were loitering by the
+side of the old people, accommodating their rate of walking to their
+feeble pace, while a little knot of children hurried on before; stout
+young labourers in clean round frocks; and buxom girls with healthy,
+laughing faces, were plentifully sprinkled about in couples, and the
+whole scene was one of quiet and tranquil contentment, irresistibly
+captivating.  The morning was bright and pleasant, the hedges were green
+and blooming, and a thousand delicious scents were wafted on the air,
+from the wild flowers which blossomed on either side of the footpath.
+The little church was one of those venerable simple buildings which
+abound in the English counties; half overgrown with moss and ivy, and
+standing in the centre of a little plot of ground, which, but for the
+green mounds with which it was studded, might have passed for a lovely
+meadow.  I fancied that the old clanking bell which was now summoning the
+congregation together, would seem less terrible when it rung out the
+knell of a departed soul, than I had ever deemed possible before—that the
+sound would tell only of a welcome to calmness and rest, amidst the most
+peaceful and tranquil scene in nature.
+
+
+
+I followed into the church—a low-roofed building with small arched
+windows, through which the sun’s rays streamed upon a plain tablet on the
+opposite wall, which had once recorded names, now as undistinguishable on
+its worn surface, as were the bones beneath, from the dust into which
+they had resolved.  The impressive service of the Church of England was
+spoken—not merely _read_—by a grey-headed minister, and the responses
+delivered by his auditors, with an air of sincere devotion as far removed
+from affectation or display, as from coldness or indifference.  The
+psalms were accompanied by a few instrumental performers, who were
+stationed in a small gallery extending across the church at the lower
+end, over the door: and the voices were led by the clerk, who, it was
+evident, derived no slight pride and gratification from this portion of
+the service.  The discourse was plain, unpretending, and well adapted to
+the comprehension of the hearers.  At the conclusion of the service, the
+villagers waited in the churchyard, to salute the clergyman as he passed;
+and two or three, I observed, stepped aside, as if communicating some
+little difficulty, and asking his advice.  This, to guess from the homely
+bows, and other rustic expressions of gratitude, the old gentleman
+readily conceded.  He seemed intimately acquainted with the circumstances
+of all his parishioners; for I heard him inquire after one man’s youngest
+child, another man’s wife, and so forth; and that he was fond of his
+joke, I discovered from overhearing him ask a stout, fresh-coloured young
+fellow, with a very pretty bashful-looking girl on his arm, ‘when those
+banns were to be put up?’—an inquiry which made the young fellow more
+fresh-coloured, and the girl more bashful, and which, strange to say,
+caused a great many other girls who were standing round, to colour up
+also, and look anywhere but in the faces of their male companions.
+
+
+
+As I approached this spot in the evening about half an hour before
+sunset, I was surprised to hear the hum of voices, and occasionally a
+shout of merriment from the meadow beyond the churchyard; which I found,
+when I reached the stile, to be occasioned by a very animated game of
+cricket, in which the boys and young men of the place were engaged, while
+the females and old people were scattered about: some seated on the grass
+watching the progress of the game, and others sauntering about in groups
+of two or three, gathering little nosegays of wild roses and hedge
+flowers.  I could not but take notice of one old man in particular, with
+a bright-eyed grand-daughter by his side, who was giving a sunburnt young
+fellow some instructions in the game, which he received with an air of
+profound deference, but with an occasional glance at the girl, which
+induced me to think that his attention was rather distracted from the old
+gentleman’s narration of the fruits of his experience.  When it was his
+turn at the wicket, too, there was a glance towards the pair every now
+and then, which the old grandfather very complacently considered as an
+appeal to his judgment of a particular hit, but which a certain blush in
+the girl’s face, and a downcast look of the bright eye, led me to believe
+was intended for somebody else than the old man,—and understood by
+somebody else, too, or I am much mistaken.
+
+
+
+I was in the very height of the pleasure which the contemplation of this
+scene afforded me, when I saw the old clergyman making his way towards
+us.  I trembled for an angry interruption to the sport, and was almost on
+the point of crying out, to warn the cricketers of his approach; he was
+so close upon me, however, that I could do nothing but remain still, and
+anticipate the reproof that was preparing.  What was my agreeable
+surprise to see the old gentleman standing at the stile, with his hands
+in his pockets, surveying the whole scene with evident satisfaction!  And
+how dull I must have been, not to have known till my friend the
+grandfather (who, by-the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in
+his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established
+the whole thing: that it was his field they played in; and that it was he
+who had purchased stumps, bats, ball, and all!
+
+
+
+It is such scenes as this, I would see near London, on a Sunday evening.
+It is such men as this, who would do more in one year to make people
+properly religious, cheerful, and contented, than all the legislation of
+a century could ever accomplish.
+
+
+
+It will be said—it has been very often—that it would be matter of perfect
+impossibility to make amusements and exercises succeed in large towns,
+which may be very well adapted to a country population.  Here, again, we
+are called upon to yield to bare assertions on matters of belief and
+opinion, as if they were established and undoubted facts.  That there is
+a wide difference between the two cases, no one will be prepared to
+dispute; that the difference is such as to prevent the application of the
+same principle to both, no reasonable man, I think, will be disposed to
+maintain.  The great majority of the people who make holiday on Sunday
+now, are industrious, orderly, and well-behaved persons.  It is not
+unreasonable to suppose that they would be no more inclined to an abuse
+of pleasures provided for them, than they are to an abuse of the
+pleasures they provide for themselves; and if any people, for want of
+something better to do, resort to criminal practices on the Sabbath as at
+present observed, no better remedy for the evil can be imagined, than
+giving them the opportunity of doing something which will amuse them, and
+hurt nobody else.
+
+
+
+The propriety of opening the British Museum to respectable people on
+Sunday, has lately been the subject of some discussion.  I think it would
+puzzle the most austere of the Sunday legislators to assign any valid
+reason for opposing so sensible a proposition.  The Museum contains rich
+specimens from all the vast museums and repositories of Nature, and rare
+and curious fragments of the mighty works of art, in bygone ages: all
+calculated to awaken contemplation and inquiry, and to tend to the
+enlightenment and improvement of the people.  But attendants would be
+necessary, and a few men would be employed upon the Sabbath.  They
+certainly would; but how many?  Why, if the British Museum, and the
+National Gallery, and the Gallery of Practical Science, and every other
+exhibition in London, from which knowledge is to be derived and
+information gained, were to be thrown open on a Sunday afternoon, not
+fifty people would be required to preside over the whole: and it would
+take treble the number to enforce a Sabbath bill in any three populous
+parishes.
+
+
+
+I should like to see some large field, or open piece of ground, in every
+outskirt of London, exhibiting each Sunday evening on a larger scale, the
+scene of the little country meadow.  I should like to see the time
+arrive, when a man’s attendance to his religious duties might be left to
+that religious feeling which most men possess in a greater or less
+degree, but which was never forced into the breast of any man by menace
+or restraint.  I should like to see the time when Sunday might be looked
+forward to, as a recognised day of relaxation and enjoyment, and when
+every man might feel, what few men do now, that religion is not
+incompatible with rational pleasure and needful recreation.
+
+
+
+How different a picture would the streets and public places then present!
+The museums, and repositories of scientific and useful inventions, would
+be crowded with ingenious mechanics and industrious artisans, all anxious
+for information, and all unable to procure it at any other time.  The
+spacious saloons would be swarming with practical men: humble in
+appearance, but destined, perhaps, to become the greatest inventors and
+philosophers of their age.  The labourers who now lounge away the day in
+idleness and intoxication, would be seen hurrying along, with cheerful
+faces and clean attire, not to the close and smoky atmosphere of the
+public-house but to the fresh and airy fields.  Fancy the pleasant scene.
+Throngs of people, pouring out from the lanes and alleys of the
+metropolis, to various places of common resort at some short distance
+from the town, to join in the refreshing sports and exercises of the
+day—the children gambolling in crowds upon the grass, the mothers looking
+on, and enjoying themselves the little game they seem only to direct;
+other parties strolling along some pleasant walks, or reposing in the
+shade of the stately trees; others again intent upon their different
+amusements.  Nothing should be heard on all sides, but the sharp stroke
+of the bat as it sent the ball skimming along the ground, the clear ring
+of the quoit, as it struck upon the iron peg: the noisy murmur of many
+voices, and the loud shout of mirth and delight, which would awaken the
+echoes far and wide, till the fields rung with it.  The day would pass
+away, in a series of enjoyments which would awaken no painful reflections
+when night arrived; for they would be calculated to bring with them, only
+health and contentment.  The young would lose that dread of religion,
+which the sour austerity of its professors too often inculcates in
+youthful bosoms; and the old would find less difficulty in persuading
+them to respect its observances.  The drunken and dissipated, deprived of
+any excuse for their misconduct, would no longer excite pity but disgust.
+Above all, the more ignorant and humble class of men, who now partake of
+many of the bitters of life, and taste but few of its sweets, would
+naturally feel attachment and respect for that code of morality, which,
+regarding the many hardships of their station, strove to alleviate its
+rigours, and endeavoured to soften its asperity.
+
+
+
+This is what Sunday might be made, and what it might be made without
+impiety or profanation.  The wise and beneficent Creator who places men
+upon earth, requires that they shall perform the duties of that station
+of life to which they are called, and He can never intend that the more a
+man strives to discharge those duties, the more he shall be debarred from
+happiness and enjoyment.  Let those who have six days in the week for all
+the world’s pleasures, appropriate the seventh to fasting and gloom,
+either for their own sins or those of other people, if they like to
+bewail them; but let those who employ their six days in a worthier
+manner, devote their seventh to a different purpose.  Let divines set the
+example of true morality: preach it to their flocks in the morning, and
+dismiss them to enjoy true rest in the afternoon; and let them select for
+their text, and let Sunday legislators take for their motto, the words
+which fell from the lips of that Master, whose precepts they misconstrue,
+and whose lessons they pervert—‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man
+to serve the Sabbath.’
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNDAY UNDER THREE HEADS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 922-0.txt or 922-0.zip *******
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