Sunday Under Three Heads | Page 5

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.