We may wonder at Pope's spending money, time, and in-motion was negatived by a majority of only 7, the figures then being 41 genuity on a gloomy hole; but it might still be worth the while of the clever ladies and fine duchesses who threw their soul and fancy into this singular mania; the purposes for which they pursued it were answered.

A man of commanding intellect decides for his daughter that it is not worth while to teach her music, for her ear is not perfect; or drawing, for her eye is not exact; or needle-cussion would have been singularly flat, stale, and unprofitable. There work, for that can be paid for; or housekeeping, for that servants can do; or let her play tennis, for that is waste of time; or read novels, for they are frivolous. In his own case the argument is perfect, and so it would be in hers if she inherited his mind; but in fact it may be worth her

while to do them all.

and 34 respectively. The rebuff which the champions of the Sunday Society have just experienced will indeed probably induce them to shelve the question for some time to come. Tuesday's debate was not remarkable, so far at any rate as the advocates of the measure were concerned, for any new arguments or new forms of old ones. All the familiar and threadbare pleas were again advanced, without any attempt to give them new interest. But for Lord Shaftesbury's Amendment, indeed, the diswas, however, much force and cogency in the arguments which the noble lord urged to show that the time had arrived when effect should be given to the recommendation of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on public institutions in 1860, "That such institutions as the British Museum and the National Gallery should be opened on weekday evenings to the public, between the hours of seven and ten in the evening, at least three days in the week." It is true that an attempt was made to treat this as irregular and irrelevant, but this objection was fully answered by their Lordships accepting the Amendment with a proviso that the safety and welfare of the institutions should not be lost sight of. force of the division upon the main question, on the ground that no Attempts have already been made in certain quarters to minimize the negative amendment was moved, but the real gist of Lord Shaftesbury's

For our part, we hesitate to pronounce against any mania except in the abstract. Bazaars may be worth the while of the people who frequent them and get them up. So may cork models, Berlin wool, and collecting old postage stamps; it all depends upon what people have the oppor-contention seems to have been lost sight of by these zealous critics. The tunities and the native power to do. Certainly, protests in such matters are not worth the while of any but original thinkers.

suggestion that three weekday evenings should be available for the purposes of intelligent recreation will strike most people as a very practical

project for the instruction of the working classes; while the animus with which it is received unmasks the real nature of the agitation, and shows that its advocates are much more desirous of secularizing the Sabbath than of elevating the masses.

The sanctity of the Lord's-day is absolute, and it is once more our duty to insist upon the indissoluble connection between belief in GoD and and blessed privilege in this country to have had this cherished inheritHis revealed truth, and the observance of the Sabbath. It is our great

Divine ordinance.

In the discussion of any question of this sort the end must of course be taken for granted. If a man goes twenty times to a ball, and enjoys himself intensely when there, we own it to be worth while, without entering into the reasonablensss or ethics of dancing. If the people who stood the livelong day at the pit-door to see Mrs. arce handed down to us by our forefathers, and it is our bounden daty Siddons act, cried to their hearts' content over the tragedy | to preserve it inviolate for our children. In other and less favoured lands when it came, we must admit that, from their point of view, it was worth while, without deciding on the uses of the drama. In fact, the "worth while" ought not to enter into the sphere of morals. We do not discuss the argument that "it is never worth while to do a shabby thing," or that "it is always worth while to be civil," for these points should be settled on less selfish grounds. Still the mere speculation is a stretch of thought beyond the practice of many people, who, as they plan nothing beforehand, meditate on nothing that is past. The question is one that must be asked sometimes if we would go right in matters of pleasure, taste, and interest, and get a knowledge of our real preferences; and a judicious habit of asking it may well train the mind to decide wisely on points infinitely more important.

the inhabitants have no "day of rest," and have lost this as well as most
other traces of their relation to GOD. It is impious to tamper with a
originally blessed and hallowed by the Giver of all good things. Whit
"The Sabbath was made for man," but it was
still in the Garden of Eden, ADAM was given a day of rest; and when th
ground was cursed for his sake, and the sentence which entailed sorrow and
toil upon humanity went forth, the Sabbath alone of all the days of the
week remained holy. "The Sabbath," says one of our greatest divines,
that a connection might be maintained between time and eternity, be-
"was appointed, that the soul might have its care, as well as the body;
tween man and GOD, between earth and heaven." The history of the day
throughout Scripture points to the inviolability of the Divine command
to keep it and sanctify it. It is no part of the Ceremonial Law, which
was done away, but it existed before the Decalogue, and it survived after
tion of the Son of Man, who was "Lord also of the Sabbath."
the coming of CHRIST, being again sanctified in memory of the Resurrec

"Let that day be blest

With holiness and consecrated rest,
Pastime and business both it should exclude,
And bar the door the moment they intrude;
Nobly distinguish'd above all the six,

By deeds in which the world must never mix."

The working classes of this country rightly appreciate the value of this so-called philanthropic movement, which threatens to destroy the institution most cherished by those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. The evidence that those in whose name the movement is kept alive are far from grateful to their would-be benefactors is pretty conclusive. It is, however, not a little remarkable that working men should be foremost in the opposition to the measure. It is seldom that they take any active steps in legislative matters, and when every necessary allowance is made for possible inaccuracies, the figures cited by Lord Cairns on Tuesday show how deeply the masses are interested in the preservation in its integrity of their day of rest. Quoting from statistics published by the Working Men's Lord's-day Rest Association, Lord Cairns informed the House that 480,725 members of trades unions and other trade organizations were in favour of the proposal made by Mr.

when, as is already done to some extent openly, and as is done to a very great extent covertly, the museum and the gallery and the lecture-room are proffered, not to recreate those who have performed religious duties, not to supply at least harmless occupation to those who neglect religious duties, but to wile them away from those duties altogether, to supplant the church, not to supplement it, then the affair takes a different complexion. It becomes part of the general attempt, not merely to un-Church, but to atheize, the State. A pretty strong expression of the national sentiment as to that attempt has been given lately, and if Lord Cairns's warning is not taken, the Sunday Society may perhaps some day elicit another.-Saturday Review.

"E

We

faced, will only be caricatured into hypochondriac affectation, or positive hypocrisy, if it is to give the whole colouring to one day in seven, and to make of the contemplation of the highest life an occasion for putting on the air of unmanly dejection. We cannot understand the timidity which leaves it to men of the world to plead for the genial cheerfulness of Sunday. Surely no one knows so well as the Bishops that genial Sundays have done a great deal more to win the irreligious to true religion than sanctimonious Sundays,-that it is not by pulling long faces that men are ever best persuaded to face the deadly weakness and insincerities of their own hearts, much less to rise to the Source of all strength and all sincerity. We must say frankly that the abstention of the Bishops from such a debate as that of Tuesday night, under the dread of losing in. fluence with good but narrow people of Evangelical views, only shows that spiritual avocations do not strengthen the spiritual nerve, and that no set of men live more in dread of that gelatinous compost called they are so often forced to contemplate how public opinion has been "Public Opinion" than the men who should most despise it because changed by one breath of divine inspiration.

It seems to us all the stranger, and all the less creditable to the Bishops, that they showed this extreme fear of what is called the public opinion of the religious world, that the religious world itself, as represented by Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Cairns, showed an equal fear of the world of common-sense. Neither of them ventured to base his opposition on principle; both of them took refuge under the rather ignominious shelter of those working-men who fear that any further infringement of the Sunday may result in depriving the working classes of their day of rest. In other words, while the friends of sober recreation are frightened out of their wits lest the religious world should pronounce world of common-sense should condemn its sanctimonious gloom. Such them unholy, that religious world itself is just as frightened lest the is that Public Opinion which is held in ignominious reverence,-a confused conglomerate of timidities, playing a game of hide-and-seek with each other, and of ignoble timidities which not even our spiritual leaders dare to unmask, to reprove, or to uproot.-The Spectator.

FUNERAL REFORM.

LA conference on the subject of funeral reform was held in Manchester last week, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, and the Rev. F. Lawrence attending as the representative of the Church of England Funeral as Mourning Reform Association, of which he is the hon. secretary.]

TH

| PISCOPI Anglicani semper pavidi !" a Bishop was heard to mutter, as he took up the Times on Wednesday morning, and found that not a single one of the rulers of the Church had opened his lips on a subject on which, as one would have supposed, they were especially called upon to guide the opinion of the nation, the subject of Sunday recreation. In the presence of Lord Shaftesbury, it seemed, they dare not approve of extending the range of Sunday recreations; but how, as rational beings, and without taking refuge behind the rather ignominous shelter of the imaginary labour difficulty-which is encountered and somehow surmounted in various cases of outdoor, and one of partially indoor, amusement already-were they seriously to oppose it? So they neither approved nor opposed it, except so far as their votes were concerned, all of which were given for opposition. can hardly imagine a more striking illustration of what we ventured to say last week as to the absolute inefficiency of the Bishops as Life-Peers. We only remarked then that they are almost useless as Life-Peers, because they will not attend at all to any questions except those which specially interest them either as Conservatives or as Ecclesiastics. But here was a question which should have interested some of them as Conservatives, and all of them as Ecclesiastics, and yet not one opened his lips. We do not pretend to be seriously at fault as to the reason. The reason is very simple, that there are no really sound arguments of principle against the extension of sober Sunday recreations,-recreations of a kind not inconsistent with the more spiritual life to which the various religious services of the day are intended to lead the mind, and that the more thoughtful of the Bishops see this plainly, but fear to lose the influence they exert, or suppose themselves to exert, over religious people by saying plainly what they think. Certainly nothing could better illus-HE return to moderation and simplicity in the conduct of funerals trate the criticism so long ago passed on English Bishops, that they are always timid. And in this case we sincerely believe them to have been timid without excuse. We are well aware of the extraordinarily superstitious character of the old Paritanical feeling about Sunday occupations, a feeling which, in Scotland at least, as everybody knows, is not seriously offended by the day being spent in private drinking, while it is most seriously offended by anything which partakes of the character of innocent cheerfulness publicly displayed. But surely the time has come for a deliberate attack on that superstitious feeling. Surely, if there were any leading power in our spiritual leaders, that conception of public cheerfulness as a sin against the God of the Sabbath, is in the last stages of senile decay, and might well have received its death-blow from a great master of oratory,- such as the Bishop of Peterborough, for instance, whose name we looked for eagerly, and missed with surprise from the debate,—and might then be left amongst the utterly dead superstitions of the past to which it would never again be possible to return. What opportunity could have been nobler for a delineation of the true day of rest, a day in which no mind should be strained except towards the Source of all power, and not over-strained even towards that, a day in which there should be no other excitement of a nature to unfit the spirit for the high and serious excitement which it needs so much, but in which that high and serious excitement should be alternated with every mild and lively pleasure which comes most naturally after the passionate business and competitive labour of the week? It strikes us with something like amazement that the Prelates of the Church should leave it to men of the world to plead for something like "sweet reasonableon this subject. It ought not to be men of the world who should best understand the danger of making the day of religion a day of unrelieved gloom,—or who should most clearly see that even that necessary and universal element in all true religion which, because it involves true contrition, is not, and cannot, be free from pain that must be steadily

ness

is so much in accord with the general tendencies of the time that at first sight an organisation to promote so natural a reform seems almost superfluous. But a glance at the speeches delivered yesterday in the Old Town Hall shows that a special effort in this direction is felt to be needed by those whose experience brings them most into contact with the bereaved among the poor. The desire to mark by solemn observances the passing away of those who are near and dear is a fundamental impulse of mankind, rising above the limits of ages, races, and religions. The princely ANTIGONE, who would lay down her life to sprinkle a handful of earth over her fallen brother, and the early Christians, mining out a city underground where the bodies of their dead might await an eternal hope, were stirred by feelings which are the common heritage of our humanity. But the very sacredness of the cause is apt to be a snare to the unthinking portion of the community, and to bring about pomp_and formalism where genuineness and simplicity are most of all in place. When a great man dies, whose loss is felt by a whole nation to be irreparable, is is fitting that some sign of the general grief should manifest that beneath all the differences and separations of our every-day life there is yet a oneness of sympathy and affection. But it is a mistake to suppose that there is any real connection between deep feeling and gorgeous pageant. The simplest ceremonies are the most impressive. A soldier's grave, a funeral at sea, leave a mark on the memory very different from the empty show of hearses and mourning cars. The Bishop and the Dean struck the right note in recalling the village burial, where the last token of regard is given by carrying to the grave the remains of a departed friend. But if the poor are to give up the most pardonable of healthy than that which will not seem mean to those who have just been all extravagances, the example must be given them. No pride is more parted from us, and the only way by which this can be avoided is for simplicity to become the custom. The wealthy classes must set the fashion. The change is coming about by degrees, and it is well that is should be by degrees. A sudden reversal of habits in these ceremonial matters would injure the class whose living depends upon them, while to a gradual modification they can without difficulty adapt themselves. And no doubt the transition will be made easier by the existence of a society such as that which has been formed to encourage burial reform among the members of the English Church.-Manchester Courier.

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