66

or pray

to persuade honest citizens to officiate as My Lords; ing boarding-school misses to carry round the copper begging ladles. No-all those means of enjoyment have faded with another age. A widely different class of amusements would we wish to see provide a fitting" May-day for the people."

Holiday-keeping and locomotion are beginning to be almost inseparable ideas. During Easter-tide we have a partial immigration of the lusty men of the fields into the town, and a partial emigration of the pale faces of the towns into the country. The change does good to either. Rest indeed, properly understood, means change of occupation. When we talk of a "day of rest' we should not attempt to realise it in a day of inaction. Doing nothing is more wearisome than doing anything, and assuredly we would rather pass a day at stone-breaking than one stretched supine upon a sofa, forbidden even to twiddle our thumbs. Rest, we repeat, means change. A tailor rests himself by standing. The upright is not a natural posture of repose, but it becomes so because it is the opposite of that required by a particular labour. By the same rule the day of rest to a population cramped in workshops and crowded chambers ought to be a day of healthful exercise in the open air. Why should the rest-day of the week be the most dismal day of the week? Assuredly it was intended to be the most lively. The Holy Days of our ancestors were amusement days.

The word has come down to us, but little of the thing-or perhaps we separate the one from the other. Our fathers, guided by the consummate policy of the old faith, blended religion with amusement. The same word conveyed both ideas. The day devoted to innocent pleasure they accounted holy, for they believed -and we think they were right-that whatever tends to invigorate man's spirit-refresh his soul-infuse new strength into his limbs, and new healthfulness into his body, had a necessary effect in elevating and, making more pure his whole being, in advancing it a step higher-a step nearer to the great perfection from whence it came. We should like to see this doctrine more received and more acted upon than it is at present. should like-all reverently be it said-to see harmless amusement become part and parcel of religious duty. We would shock no man's conscientious feelings. We have even a sort of respect for honest prejudice when it is not too lightly taken up or too blindly and obstinately adhered to; but we cannot

We

help saying that we believe it would be for the lasting and immense benefit of England were every facility afforded for making Sundays more of holidays in the old sense, but not in the new application of that sense, than they are. We should love to see our noble river and the green haunts round London crowded every seventh day by the dingy denizens of swarming city lanes. Leave the smoke for å few hours a week. Leave the stifling air of fusty, darkened churches for a summer's Sunday in the fields; let your children see the sun without gazing at it through the soot-fog; let them hear other birds sing than the dingy captives of the cage. Do this-look on nature-learn to love her-learn to appreciate her, and the lesson she may convey. The thoughts she may inspire will be those which ought to be taught and learned upon-in the liberal sense of the word—a holiday.

But we are losing sight of May-time-of that period when, obeying the secret impulses of our nature, we would establish a general National Jubilee a great and refreshing Sunday for enervating labour. We have said that locomotion is become inseparable from our ideas of holiday keeping. This we note as a good and promising sign. Intersected as our land is with railways-covered as our seas are with steamers-we should wish to see our May festival become a grand and instructive pilgrimage time. It is good for man to run among his fellows-to see distant spots-to become acquainted with new and untrodden localities. Travel is a glorious pill for purging nonsense. The lion of the country coterie has the conceit taken out of him by London's cold shoulder. The prejudice-stuffed John Bull, who hates the French for eating frogs and wearing wooden shoes, very soon becomes ashamed of his cherished opinions, if he airs them on the other side of the water. The townsman has much to learn from the countryman-the countryman from the townsman. Let them mingle as often as may be. Whisk your agricultural population amid the chimneys of the regions of iron and cotton. Bring the sooty men of the forge, and the pale men of the loom, amid ploughs and harrows. The change will do both good-will inspire both with new ideas-will kill old prejudices will make people think less of themselves and more of their neighbours. We have had too much class warfare lately. The country has been too long and too fiercely set against the town. Now that a peace seems likely to be at hand, we would cement the alliance with personal intercourse. We should like to see the man of Lancashire shake

hands with the man of Somersetshire. We would have the ruddy tenant of 500 arable acres conducting the weaver-freed for a space from the roar of the engine and the clatter of the powerloom-around the rustic homestead; and again, it would as much delight us to see a friendly lex talionis practised by the operative of the north in conducting, in his turn, his country acquaintance from engine to furnace from mill to Mechanics' Institute. Now, this is much more than mere dreaming. It would have been but idle imaginings were it not for steam; but, thank Heaven, we now wield a power which twenty years ago we wot not of-a power which is working a greater revolution than ever was rung in by elang of tocsin, or baptized in the blood of kings.

Let May time be celebrated then, not by the monster devices of yore, but by the monster trains of the present day. Our ancestors danced round a pole-let our holiday movements run in a more extended circle. Railway companies can do much in this way; and if employers of labour unite with the rulers of the rails, cheap, very cheap trips might every summer be instituted which would reveal to millions new beauties of creation-open to them fresh fountains of thought-fresh means of enjoyment. We would in particular wish to link, by these holiday bands, great towns with rural and manufacturing districts, and inland counties with the sea. We would go further-we would not stop at the coast. We have just been reading in the morning journals of a new line of steamers to trip it over the Channel waves in an hour and twenty minutes from Dover to Calais, and in a little more than four hours from Dover to Ostend. Why then should we stop our cheap trips at the white cliffs? Tis but a hop, skip, and a jump to the Falaises of France, and the long sea dykes and level cornfields of Flanders. In a year or two the former country will be intersected by railroads-the glorious old towns of the latter are already knit by their iron bands. Well, then, gentlemen Directors of the Great Northern Line of France and its many branches -Directors of the Flemish and the English railways, why not come to some amicable arrangement and concert cheap trips in communication with each other? Easter is a festival in all three countries-why not teach the people of either the sweets and advantages of foreign travel? Why not dispatch the Londoner, and for that matter the men of Lancashire and York, across the water to orchards of La belle Normandie, and thence away by Amiens and Lisle, or Valenciennes, down into the historic "Low

Countries;" while we in our towns should receive equal crowds of our friends the Braves Belges and the blouse-clad men of Normandy and Picardy. There is nothing impracticable in the scheme. Only let such trips be performed-and they could be so performed at the expense of a few, a very few pounds, and hundreds of thousands who now no more think of visiting Dieppe and Rouen, or Ghent and Bruges, than of starting for the antipodes, would be all agog for a week to be passed in some strange land-hitherto dimly known by the vague phrase "abroad." We are certain that the happiest results would flow from such an intermingling of France, Belgium, and England. It would form friendships-dissipate prejudices-convey instruction-bind together by the ties of acquaintanceship and pleasant recollections thousands who, ignorant of each other, and each other's lands, would be the first to cheer on quarrelling statesmen, and throw up their caps for war. Let nations know each other, and acquire the habit of inter-communication, and you will check hostile feelings in their bud. Acquaintances are not so likely to quarrel as strangers. Time was when the inhabitants of England were as much divided for all practical purposes as the inhabitants

of Europe are now. What was the consequence? Civil war

county against county-the strife of the Roses. When Scotland and England fought the battle of Bannockburn, London was nearly as distant from Edinburgh as it is now from Constantinople. Paris will soon be as near us, or nearer, than the Scotch capital, and as surely as that time will come so will an age which will regard the idea of the recurrence of a Waterloo just as wild as we should now look upon the notions of a man who waited in expectation of

another Flodden.

We would then foster these peaceful tendencies by encouraging people to avail themselves of the cheap and ready means of communication opened up by steam. We warrant, the railway and steam-boat people would in the end find it to their advantage to inoculate with a love of somewhat extended travel classes who now seldom think of stirring beyond Gravesend on the one hand and Richmond on the other. Several lines have already, to some extent, carried out the practice here recommended. We would mention, especially, the Brighton Railway Company, who deserve popular gratitude for the liberality of their conduct and the cheapness of their fares.

We have already said that, as a general principle, we should

like to see Easter converted into May time for the people-by sending the denizens of the towns to the country - those of the country to the towns. We would also wish to see every possible means of instructive amusement provided by city authorities for their rural visitants. Why not have theatres opened at reduced prices?-Railways run at reduced fares-or might not the former be thrown open gratuitously, or nearly so? Precedents are not wanting. The same rule ought to apply to all manner of exhibitions— galleries of works of art-museums, and so forth. We should not object to fairs either. We have enough of police to keep down objectionable practices. We would discourage dancing boothsdiscourage drinking booths, and put down gaming booths. Fairs, after all, generate a genial social spirit-they promote good humour and relax the tighter bonds of conventional decorum. Why not add facilities for manly exercises-why not give prizes for rowing -leaping, wrestling, and so forth? Of course, these would be kept very subordinate to higher and more elevating amusements, but lusty arms and nimble legs are, after all, not things to be sneezed at.

We have thus sketched out our idea of what might be an extended "May-day for the People." We would preserve as many of the old customs as appear conducive to the promotion of health and vigour. Cheap travelling would be one of our principal holiday means of attraction and improvement. To every class we would open up a new sphere of observation. Every class we would knit in closer bonds by promoting frequent and kindly intercourse. Every class we would seek to improve by introducing them to works of art and science, or whatever was to them an unknown field of mental pleasure and profit. We have recorded our opinion that the May-day festival of yore was wisely instituted. We have now grown beyond its childish gambols. Let us then improve without destroying. Dancing round a garlanded pole was better than continued toil: but the townsman gaining health in the country, the countryman gaining knowledge in the town-the English operative wandering through the gorgeous towns of Flanders and the picturesque sites of Normandy-all these are surely more ennobling pastimes still than jumping in sacks or chasing pigs with greased tails. ANGUS B. REACH,