with the utmost complacency, and with no hint
of a shock to its piety, the high jinks at the
races in the Bois de Boulogne on the Sunday
following Good Friday.  The various denominations
of English dissenters take little note of
Good Friday; the Scotch, who, as regards piety
and orthodoxy of the most severe kind, are the
salt of the earth and the chosen of the land,
disregard it altogether.  There is no doubt a want
of fitness in this particular day being the
supreme occasion for recreation and amusement;
but the people are not responsible for
the arrangement.  The religious observances of
the day clash with their opportunity of enjoyment.
Regularly every year the people are
asked to attend church and chapel when they
have a pressing invitation to dine at the Crystal
Palace.  Is there no way of accommodating
matters?

In Catholic countries the Church is not so
inexorable and unreasonable.  A short attractive
service is held early in the morning, and the
churches are filled because attendance does not
interfere with the harmless enjoyments to follow.
But here a tedious service, beginning at eleven
and not ending till one, consumes the golden
hours of the opening day of summer.  The trains
are all gone out, the sun has begun to decline
in the heavens, and the best part of the day is
gone —the day which will not come again for
twelve long months.  Would the foundations of
the Church and of the celestial faith which was
first divinely taught out in the fields, by hedgerows,
on mountain-sides, in gardens, in the
homely rooms of roadside inns, be shaken and
for ever disturbed, if the commemorative service
were to begin on Good Friday morning at
eight o'clock, to involve few or no repetitions,
and to last half an hour?  Is it as dangerous to
make this request as for an unsophisticated
Caffre to ask innocent questions about Noah's
ark?

The burden of the popular song already
mentioned was the first sound I heard on Good
Friday morning.  It was trolled forth by a
gay-hearted youth in the street, whose spirits
were elevated by anticipations of a very jolly
day.  He was doing the slapping and the
banging alternately with his feet on the pavement,
and with a short stick on the railings, as
he passed along.  I will confess that it was the
joyousness of that youth, aided by the
encouraging smiles of the sun, and a praiseworthy
effort which a certain lilac-tree had made during
the night to appear in the morning in summer
costume, which incited me to the resolve to put
every other feeling and consideration aside, and
go out for a day's enjoyment.  A wide-awake
hat, a leather bag (containing a short pipe and
a flask), and a stout stick, were my special
equipment for the expedition.  I freely declare,
when I closed the gate behind me and stepped
into the street, I felt very much tempted to sing
Slap, bang, and beat the accompaniment, as my
youthful exemplar had done.  The sensation of
going out on a fine day without encumbrance or
impedimenta of any kind, animate or inanimate,
is very delightful —selfish, but vastly pleasant.
You feel yourself for the time agreeably divorced
from all the cares of life.  If you have a horse
which you are accustomed to ride or drive, that
inconvenient convenience is not more glad to be
rid of you for the day than you are to be rid of
him.  The wide-awake donned for the occasion
you feel to be a cap of liberty.  With that
wide-awake on, you are equal to a lightness
and freedom of conduct which the dignified
chimney-pot wholly forbids.  You are not
particular about soiling yourself; you are ready to
vault over stiles instead of genteelly walking
through gates; you don't mind resting yourself
on the flat of your back; you are not above
drinking beer out of a pewter pot —  in fact, rather
prefer it out of that particular measure; and a
tumble into a ditch is regarded rather as a
welcome opportunity for the display of athletic
vigour than as an accident damaging to your
dignity.

Proceeding through the streets to my railway
(which goes everywhere), and seeing the servant-
maids, dressed in all their best, emerging from
the front doors, and tripping gaily upon the
pavement, I have a thought of cage doors opening,
and long imprisoned birds fluttering out
into the free air.  They hop along quietly and
warily at first, as if they were afraid lest some
one might run out and carry them back to
captivity. But when they come to the first
turning, they are round the corner and away like—
like birds!  Poor things! what care they have
taken to plume themselves, and smoothe out
their feathers, in order to appear to the best
advantage in the eyes of that young man, who
is invariably a lout.  I have much sympathy
with Molly the cook-maid down-stairs with her
frying-pan, and think her life of service rather a
hard one, but she has not much to hope for in
that young man.  When she leaves service to
throw herself into the arms of that dreadful
person, I fear she too often leaps from the
frying-pan into the fire!

At the station of my railway which goes
everywhere, I find the escaped birds assembled
in a great flock.  They are chiefly of the feminine
gender, and few of them have been happy
in hitting the convenient dimensions for a
crinoline, as appears by the tendency of those
articles of attire to emulate the restive disposition
of Old Joe for kicking up behind and
before.  I notice that on the down platform
convenient for the trains which run towards
Richmond and Kew, and, by some marvellous
junction arrangement, the Crystal Palace, there
is a much larger flock of birds than on the up
platform, convenient for the trains which run
towards those once popular Easter resorts,
Highbury, Hackney-wick, and Epping Forest.
I am bound for Hackney-wick, having heard
that that was the favourite resort on Good
Friday, and that the wrestling there was as
time-honoured an observance of the day as
the eating of hot-cross buns.  In fact, I had
been given to understand that, as the buns were
the " panis" of the festival, the wrestling