Letters from home were always delivered
to us at this Sunday tea-time—open: after
having undergone an ocular quarantine at the
hands and eyes of Doctor Tweep to secure,
I imagine, their not containing unlawful play-
things, fire-works, notions on education
unsuited for our years, or " cribs " for our Latin
exercises. If they conveyed serious intelligence,
such as births, or deaths, or marriages,
we got them without delay; but, in ordinary
cases we had to wait the Sunday morning
delivery; till which time, though we knew of
their arrival, on the previous Monday, even,
we were compelled to wait. Agonising
suspense for those who were anxious to know
how the poney was, or what Bob Burns had
done with the last batch of puppies; when
the next plum-cake and silver crown were
coming, and whether Mr. Park's stock
contained any more " Red Rovers of the Ocean,"
for tinselling!

Greek Testament also came on Sunday
mornings, between breakfast and church times.
Of all the gallons of tears I must have shed
over the Hellenic language, the fewest, I think,
the sparsest drops were poured forth over
Testament. Digging up Greek roots as we
did at other times, like pigs hunting for
truffles, and scratching at the horny bark of
the appalling tree of Greek verbs till we felt
inclined to hang ourselves on the branches,
we went smilingly and joyfully to Testament.
The master was an Oxford man, too poor to
keep the necessary amount of terms, but
hoping manfully to save a few pounds yet,
and go back, and come out a Fellow. He had
such a winning way, and easy power of
explanation and illustration, and such a deep, rich,
bass voice, that we used to sit with rapt ears
and eager faces listening to him. And Tommy
Brooks, from Smyrna, whose father was
supposed to be a " dragon," an impossible
profession, but was really, I opine, a "dragoman;"
Tommy Brooks—who used to stumble over en
arche en o logos, as if the words were made of
wood with rusty nails in them— grew so excellent
a Greek scholar that at the half-yearly
examination, being entrusted with the recitation
of the ode of Anacreon, beginning "Thelo
legein atreidas," he broke into such a flux of
Attic, Ionic, and Doric intermingled, that
they were obliged to stop him, thinking that
he was in a fit. Moreover, it was in a
comfortable little slice of a study in winter, and
in the garden, a shady place, under laurel
bushes in summer, where our class met. I
would I were there again with Mr. Bidloe
(drowned going out to the Cape) listening,
"under the laurels," to the magnificent gospel
of St. John.

Sunday morning in London streets. The
pavement seems to have its Sunday coat on,
as the pavement treaders have. The
omnibusses, though working, poor vehicles! look
spruce and " Sundayfied." The horses have
bunches of ribbons in their ears, and the
coachmen carry pinks or dog-roses in their
button-holes, or in their mouths. The drivers
and conductors have some degree of smartness
in their attire, not always, I am afraid to
say, displaying clean linen; but, always
mounting—on the part of the driver—a pair of
fresh gloves, and on that of the conductor
an extra polish to his boots. The cab-
men, unused to frequent fares on Sunday
mornings, snore peacefully on their boxes, or
improve their minds with the perusal of cheap
periodicals; or, seated on the iron door-step
of their vehicles and puffing the calumet of
peace, hold mystic converse with other cab-
men, and with the waterman on the stand.

Town-made little boys, with caps between
Lancers' shakoes and accordions, pick out the
cleanest spots on the road to cross, lest they
should soil their bright highlows. Policemen
lounge easily past, whistling softly, as if
to say that, with the exception of orange
baskets, they war against no human thing
today. Cooks and housemaids peep slyly over
area railings and out of second-floor windows;
for it is their " day out," and they are anxious
to ascertain what the weather looks like, and
whether it is within the limits of reason to
risk and throw on the clemency of the skies
that gorgeous thing I know of in the back-
kitchen and a band-box—that boomerang,
which is to strike terror and dismay into the
heart of " Missus," and then, recoiling, seat
itself triumphantly on the head of Jane or
Ann Elizabeth—the Sunday bonnet. But
see, the door of this genteel residence opens,
and forth from it comes Missus herself in her
Sunday bonnet (with not half such splendid
colours or so many ribbons as Jane's in the
bandbox), and Master, and young Master, and
Missey, and the children, all bound for
church. Master has a broad-brimmed hat,
and such a shirt-collar, neckcloth, and frill, as
only the father of a family conscious of his
moral responsibility can boast. His boots
are the boots of a man with five hundred a
year, who owes his baker nothing, or, if
anything, can pay it, sir, at Michaelmas
when he sends his bill in. His double eye-
glass has respectability, paternity, morality
in it. He is a Church man, I can see, by
the complete Church Service in a small port-
manteau of blue leather, which young Master
(bound in a cut-away coat, turned up with
check trowsers, and gilt lettered) is carrying.

Ring out, ye bells, from the great spire of
Paul's; from the twin towers of St. Peter's
Westminster; from lowly St. Margaret's,
with its great stained window nestling close
by. Ring out from St. Pogis-under-pump,
where the rector is non-resident, and the
mild young curate has a hankering after
candlesticks on the communion-table. Ring
out from the dozy chapel-of-ease, where the
very crimson cushions seem to slumber; from
the bran-new Puseyite bazaar—I beg pardon,
church—where a wax-chandler's shop seems
to have broken into the main avenue of
Covent Garden market, and, having stormed