Some one has said that the best form of government is a monarchy, if the monarch be a perfect one. I had chosen my monarchess, and was not all disinclined to obey her sweet will.
On this privileged day I took a cab, and went from early morning into and out of a number of churches. In one of them I lingered longest, for there was to me a grand tamasha on the boards, so to speak. There were a number of priests dressed as gorgeously as clowns in a circus. They were processioning, genuflecting, beating their breasts, and rolling their eyes, as if in great distress from an inward pain. There were innumerable candles, though it was broad daylight, an indication of their religious darkness, or a reflection on the Almighty that He had not made light enough for them, or else that He was not able to see what they were doing without the aid of their flickering dips. There was incense burning, floating everywhere, in the stifling air, that brought tears, not of contrition, but simply of water, to my eyes. It was a show worth seeing, yet it made me think of the story of the boy, who, when making his first flies for fishing, impatiently asked his mother, if God made everything? “Yes, everything.” “And flies as well?” “Certainly,” she said. “Then God has horrid fiddling work to do,” replied the boy. I thought if the Infinite God could be pleased with such a performance, styled a religious service, then He is interested in horrid fiddling, trifling matters. But, as I am only a heathen, my opinion may not be worth the breath spent in giving it.
The contrast to this was in a place really named a “circus,” where there were a lot of paradings, shoutings and groans accompanied by a band of base drums, base horns, base viols, base voices and a base crowd. The people shouted and tooted as if their god was deaf or asleep, or had gone on a journey. I could not help asking myself, “Is it possible that God can be pleased with all this noise and confusion?”
The other performance had something æsthetic about it, that while I could admire it as quite a decent Sunday show, there was nothing to grate upon my physical senses though much to disturb my religious sense, but the other was so bombastic and horribly discordant that I delayed not in leaving it.
Then to other churches. To be really truthful, and that is what I aim at in all things, even if I tell the truth to mine own hurt, I did not care so much about my own religious welfare as to see how other people took theirs. I think it is a feature of human nature that we all are anxious that everybody else should obey the laws, whether we do or not. Many people though unjust themselves, dislike injustice in others. Probably most people go to church more to see that their neighbors are there, than to repent of their own shortcomings and sins. I think this statement, however, would not be quite true about that Sunday as only a few people were present in any of the churches.
Here I wish to observe that it has always appeared very strange to me, that since Christian people insist so much on the vital importance of religious duties, they should be so indifferent in the performance of them. One would naturally suppose then in a Christian city like London, every mother’s son and daughter would go to church. They perhaps believe that the priests or the church in some vicarious way can get them tickets for heaven, so they need not bother themselves to work out their own salvation. Yet, I cannot help liking to see a man honest, though he be a Christian, and practice what he professes. This may be a stupid idea of mine, still I cannot get rid of it.
I was told that one of the Sunday sights was Vanity Fair in Hyde Park, so after a hasty tiffin I directed my cabby thitherward. He was a jolly good fellow, rotund as a beer barrel, and red in the face as if he had lived on boiled lobsters all his life and their complexion had gone into his. I had liberally tipped him on starting in the morning and remarked to him that there was nothing like food and drink for either horse or man, and he agreed heartily with me.
There is nothing so omnipotent in London as shillings, except it be sovereigns. With them in sight, I think my cab would have driven me to the devil, if not back again. One day I wished to see the houses of Parliament. The six foot guards were shooing the people away as if they were chickens bound to depredate in a garden. I walked up towards one of these stalwarts, putting on all the dignity I could command, with my hand in my pocket making a very significant movement of drawing out my purse, asking, “Do you ever show any one about this place?” He replied, “Come this way, sur,” and we went behind a big pillar where I dropped some shillings into his hand. He then took me anywhere and everywhere, and showed me Lord’s this and that Lord’s gown and wig and told me all I wished to know. He got the money, and I the money’s worth, so we were both agreeable. Nothing like shillings, unless it be sovereigns. A man might as well be without them in London, as to be without rupees when he has a case in court in India.
I cannot refrain from quoting what the greatest poet of the world says:
“Money—This yellow slave