Not even at church is there room for them; for I maintain that the man or woman whose clothes were not what is called here decent, would be turned away from the door; what the pastors want are sheep who will take a pew by the year, and put silver pieces on the plate.
And people marvel, or rather lament, that the workman, who has worked all the week, and has no home fit to spend his Sunday in, spends it at the public house.
But where is he to go? The English, who are generally so sensible, are curiously inconsistent in this matter.
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I have seen, in English illustrated papers, pictures of Sunday in London and Sunday in Paris. The first represented a dirty mob of men and women, drinking, quarreling, and fighting; the second, groups of workmen, accompanied by their wives, their children, and their old parents, in contemplation before the pictures in the Louvre Museum.
This was doing us justice for once.
Intelligent and liberal England is moving heaven and earth to get the museums thrown open to the people on Sundays. The Prince of Wales, and the leaders of all the aristocracies of the country, are at the head of the movement; but all the little narrow-minded and bigoted world is leagued against them, and it is not probable that they will succeed. Meanwhile, the London taverns remain open, which proves that the English bigots consider gin and beer more powerful moral stimulants than the masterpieces of great artists; such appears also to be the decided opinion of the bishops, who never fail to attend at the House of Lords in full force when the subject is coming on for discussion.
England erects her statues to the nobility and to finance. You see, England's great literary men were so numerous, that they had to be relegated to a corner of Westminster Abbey, for fear they should hinder circulation in the streets. With the aid of a guidebook, you may succeed in discovering the tablets erected to their memory by a not too grateful country.
Thackeray, the immortal author of "Vanity Fair," is rewarded with a tablet about a foot square. But, then, if you will take a walk around the Stock Exchange, you will see the third statue of the Duke of Wellington, and one of Peabody, the millionaire. In a little narrow City street, a bust of Milton, in an obscure niche, reminds the passer-by that the author of "Paradise Lost" was born in that place. It is comparatively unnoticed. In the wild, headlong, guinea chase, there is no time for trifling! Paris has a Rue Milton to make up for it.
Yet this thirst for gold has been the greatest civilizing power of modern times. It is this which has opened up new markets for commerce in the remotest corners of the world. This British Empire, which has been called a brazen colossus with feet of clay, is the greatest empire it was ever given to man to found.