which had been attached by ancient usage and custom to peculiar days the dancing round the maypole on the festival of St. Philip and St. James-the bonfires on the feast of the Baptistand the like—it is unnecessary to speak; but the main feature, anterior to the Reformation, was the cessation from work and labour upon such festivals. The people had a time provided to rejoice before the Lord; and the exceptions in the Act show that such was still the spirit of the age: those who chose to work are merely permitted to labour.

The Puritans abolished the Church fasts and festivals; and by their ordinance, 8th June, 1647 (Scobell's Acts and Ordinances,' p. 81), the feast of the Nativity of Christ, Easter, Whitsuntide and all other holidays, were utterly suppressed. But they were not so blind as not to see how this abolition might have an injurious effect upon the comfort and well being of the people. If, on the one hand, they discarded the festivals of the Church, they felt that, on the other, some substitute must be provided. To the end, therefore, that there might be a convenient time allotted to scholars, apprentices, and other servants for their recreation,' it was by the same ordinance enacted that they should have such convenient, reasonable recreation and relaxation from their constant and ordinary labour, on every second Tuesday in the month throughout the year, as formerly they had used to have on the festivals commonly called holydays.' And in case of any difference arising between master and servant concerning the liberty thus granted, the next justice of the peace was to have power to reconcile the same. Yet the foregoing ordinance was not thought sufficient to secure the comfort of the people; and by another, passed on the 28th of the same month of June, 1647, it was ordained that all windows of shops, warehouses, and other places where wares or commodities are usually sold, shall be kept shut on the said day of recreation, from eight in the morning till eight in the evening; and that no master shall wilfully retain his apprentice or other servant within-doors, or from his recreation, unless on account of market-days, fair-days, or other extraordinary occasion;' and in such case the master was to allow unto such apprentice, or other servant, one other day of recreation in place of that one thus taken away.

The Puritans—we do not use the word in reproach, but as a term of description-were wise in their generation. In 1644 they had enacted, by the ordinance for the restraint of several evils on the Lord's-day' (Scobell, p. 37), what they considered, and not without truth, as a great moral reform. Maypoles, a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness,' fell at one stroke. The recreations hitherto practised on

the

the Sunday were to cease. The arrow ceased to fly at the butt; the bowl rolled no more; down fell all the skittles; and the lewd dancers' on the green were to be indulged with three hours' rest in the stocks, for their own comfort and the edification of the neighbours.

Let us be careful how we carp at these men. With whatever sourness, whatever asperity, whatever anti-prelatical' feeling this enactment was made, it was founded upon a true and holy principle; and the general neglect of the Sabbath-nay, the encouragement given to its desecration by the Book of Sports-so entirely contrary to the principles and practice of the early Christians can be viewed only as amongst the national sins which drew down upon the Church of England that tribulation and punishment which she then experienced. Why should we be ashamed to confess the fact? we make no claim to infallibility.

All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy.' Even the ass cannot be always kept in the mill; and the Puritan legislation points out one great practical object to be attained by the due observance of the Church of England Festivals-practical, because what may be termed the machinery of the Church all works to one end,--and if you maim one portion, it is like damaging a wheel in a clock, the whole goes wrong. The Saints'-days and other Festivals were intended by the Church to become outworks, defences protecting mankind in the solemn enjoyment of the Lord's-day. The Puritans, by their recreation ordinance,' scanty as their allowance was, showed that they understood the question in its practical bearings. Observe these holy-days according to their true intent; let the morning be spent in the house of God; let the remainder of the day be given to cheerfulness, and you afford to the labouring population-and we take the word labouring' in its widest sense the means of reasonable and healthful recreation equally needed for body and mind; and you remove at once the temptations which lead the masses' to encroach on the sanctity of the Sabbath. Penal laws defeat their own object in such cases. Sorrowful as the desecration of the Lord's-day may be, in or around any great town, or still more in our tremendous metropolis, it is far more sorrowful to feel that we urge and scourge the labouring classes to this great sin, by the intense worry and drive of morbid activity which pervades the entire frame of society. Enter the squalid wildernesses of Spitalfields or St. Giles. Even

your progress through the quarters inhabited by the bettermost sort of operatives and working traders, the hives of courts and narrow streets where the brightest blaze of summer never affords more than an adust and sickly ray-where the sweetest shower of spring falls polluted to the ground. Go farther

breathe

breathe the stifling vapour of the Arcade or the Bazaar, and look at the pallid countenance of the pining maiden, and you will be convinced that the absolute animal want of mere fresh air, at least for one day in the weary week, must become irresistible.

Perhaps, however, there are no localities where we could so successfully begin to permit the poor, the needy, and the humble to enjoy again the liberty which the Church so joyfully wishes to bestow, as in the manufacturing districts. How many of the plans about which we now dream and talk for the benefit of the operatives, were really effected by the Church long ago, long before there were steam-engines or power-looms? Daily service secured the remission from labour sought by Lord Ashley's bill; and the Festival would now give the means of healthful relaxation and mental improvement, without trespassing upon that seventh of our existence in which we are not to seek our own pleasure, nor speak our own words.

'What!' exclaims the mill-owner, 'stop the works for forty days in the year?' Certainly. Do not you lose ten times more by strikes, and turn-outs, and Chartist-meetings, than by all the superstitions of preceding centuries?

Never can the Lord's-day be duly and strictly observed, and yet in a kindly and affectionate spirit, until the whole system of the Church service is restored. Those who seek to propitiate the 'masses' by throwing open museums, and galleries, and libraries on the Sunday, give nothing of their own; they take away that which belongs to the Lord. Those who duly observe the commandment equally give nothing of their own; they give to the Lord what is his, and which costs them nothing. And, so long as they who profess to honour the Sabbath continue, during the remainder of the week, to exact that crushing and continuous labour from those classes who are either directly or indirectly under their control, which drives the objects of their rule to worldly amusements and recreations, or intellectual pursuits,' on the day which should be the day of holy rest-so long are they co-operating in the most efficient manner with the advocates of indifferentism and infidelity. You may give the most 'exemplary attendance'— alas! what a root of self-deception and bitterness is there in that word exemplary,' so applied-at church, or chapel, or Exeter Hall; always appear at the proper time in your pew or on the 'platform;' be an active member of The Lord's-Day Observance Society; distribute tracts from the Repository, No. 56, Paternoster Row;' or Bibles and Prayer-Books from the Christian Knowledge Society's House, No. 67, Lincoln's Inn Fields;' hunt all the donkeys off Hampstead Heath; bowl and roll the oranges down Primrose Hill; kick the cake-baskets off the kirb

stone;

stone; wheel all the old apple-women to the workhouse; trundle the barrows to the 'green yard;' explode all the ginger-beer; swallow all the annual reports;' never read the Sunday newspaper

pro

except in the Monday's edition ;'-and yet with all these fessions and exertions, if you so chain your clerk to the desk, your shopman to the counter, in short, all your slaves to the oar, as to destroy the comfort of week-day life, and only release them from their bondage when you are compelled to strike off the fetters, you merely goad them to violate the word of God, and mock the spirit of Christianity. What are termed the ordinances of the Church are only applications of the Divine Law. You must take all or none. Difficulties unquestionably there are in the way; but as is most truly and powerfully remarked by Archdeacon Manning, with whose words we shall conclude,

"The habits of life are not so absolute but that a little firmness would soon throw them into a better order. Let us only resolve to "seek first the kingdom of God," to take the cycle and the seasons of the Church as our governing rule, and to make our lives bend to its appointments. When once the Church has restored the solemn days of fast and festival, and the stated hours of daily prayer, there will be an order marked out for all men of good will to follow; and, at the last, we shall once more see this fretful, busy world checked, and for a while cast out by the presence of the world unseen. Its burthen will be sensibly lessened, and the hearts of men will have some shelter and rest to turn to in the dry and glaring turmoil of life. Then among us, as of old, men may go up in secret to the house of prayer, to make their sin-offerings, and their peace-offerings, and their offerings of thanks. No sun should then go down on sins unconfessed, or blessings unacknowledged; and if any be truly hindered, still in their own home, or by the wayside, or in crowded marts, or in busy cities, or in the fields-when the bell is heard afar off, or the known hour of prayer is come-they may say with us the Confession and the Lord's Prayer, and though far from us on earth, may meet us in the court of heaven.'-Sermons, pp. 206, 207.

NOTE. Since this article was paged for working off, Lord John Manners has published a Plea for National Holidays,' in which he has taken much the same view of the question which we have attempted to advocate. Regretting that under these circumstances we cannot at this moment enter into an examination of his production, we do most earnestly recommend it to all who are interested in the welfare of the community. It is written with ability, and, what is of far more importance than ability, in an excellent spirit. May the young author he strengthened and guided in the good course which he has begun, and may others of his rank and station follow his example; for it is amongst such men as he promises to be, that the Crown will find its best defenders, the poor and needy their most sincere and steady friends.

ART.

ART. V.-Handley Cross; or, the Spa-Hunt. London. 1843. 3 vols. 12mo.

FROM the days of John Gilpin down to those of John Jorrocks

the doings of our citizens have had interest for country as well as for town. The furthest removed, whether in station or in location, like to know how the Londoners proper live-how and where they ride, fish, shoot-above all, whereabouts, and after what fashion, they hunt. Still there has always been an unworthy leaning to disparage and ridicule the prowess of the East; as if it were not hard enough in all conscience for people to be cooped up in bricks and mortar all the year, without having the slow-pointing finger of scorn proclaiming them cockneys whenever they venture forth for a breath of fresh air. "The unkindest cut of all' is, that city sportsmen are mainly indebted to city pencils and city pens for this unenviable notoriety.

The late Mr. Seymour, for instance (a thorough-bred cockney), published as many sketches as filled half-a-dozen volumes, of which the field-sports of Londoners formed the staple, and which will outlive his more elaborate productions. Nobody can resist the fun of some of these delineations-especially in the fishing and shooting departments. At one page we have a country practitioner (a jolly-looking clown in a smock-frock) about 'to serve an ejectment;' that is to say, shove a smart fisherman into a river in which he is poaching; and hard by we have a City swell, with shot-belt and gun, pointing to a dead sparrow across a piece of water, and exclaiming to a plethoric pugdog-Fetch it, Prim; fetch it: vy, vot a perverse dog you are! We have two urchins with one gun, tugging along a poodle pup by a great heavy chain; the puller observing to the shooter-Vot vith buying powder and shot, and keeping that 'ere sporting dog, shooting 's werry expensive!' A few Numbers further on, we have a sportsman taking a deliberate aim at a Billy-goat on a bank by a cottage; while his companion, as he opens a sack, exclaims- Make sure of him, Bob; I'm told it 's as good as wenison.' Then comes a tattered ruffian seizing a common-councilman just about to fire— Vot the divil are you shooting at through the hedge?' ''Ares!' Them 'ere brown things arn't hares-them's gipsy babbies!!' Strype enumerates respectfully among the recreations of the Londoners in his own day (the reign of George I.) riding on horseback and hunting with my Lord Mayor's hounds when the common hunt goes out.' We need hardly say, indeed, that the maintenance of a pack of hounds formed a part of the expenses of many of the corporations in former times, just as the donation of purses or pieces of plate to the race meetings does at present.

But