you. You may visit tawdry shows, and
inspect badly painted scenery; you may
let otf fireworks; gamble to your ruin;
smoke the eyes out of your head, and
dance the head off your shoulders; but you
shall not look upon works of art, or the
results of science in museums and picture-
galleries. Let it be said, however, that the
general opportunities for acquiring correct
and elevated taste are, on the whole, greater
in Germany than in England; and that in
many cities there is a profusion of exterior
ornament, more especially in Munich, in the
shape of the fresco-paintings of the Palace
Garden, on Isar Thar, in the Basilica and
churches generally, so that the eye is better
educated in artistic combinations; and the
same necessity does not exist for especial art
instruction with them as with us. Then, let
us never forget that their public and other
gardens are as free to them as the air
they breathe, and that music is almost as
universal.

The remembrances I have of Paris
Sundays decidedly possess a character of
rest and recreation; of waking in the
morning to a grateful sense of repose; of
clean shirts and trimmed beards; and of
delicious breakfasts at our Café aux Quatres
Mendiants, of coffee and white bread,
instead of the bouillon and confiture of
the atelier. Did we not work, then?
Assuredly we did sometimes, when hard
pressed; but the recollection of those few
occasions is drowned in that of a flood
of happy, tranquil Sundays. When we
did work it was from eight till twelve,
which made half a day, and this was the
rate at which all overtime was reckoned.
One hard taskmaster I remember, who,
instead of paying us our dues, as is the
custon on Saturday night, at the end of
quinze jours, cajoled us to come and
work under the promise of their payment on
the Sunday morning. He failed us like a
rogue; and we drudged on for another
quinzaine, Sunday mornings included, in
hopeful anticipation of the receipt of our
wages. When we found that he slunk out
of the way, without paying us a sou, we
rebelled, sang the Marseillaise, demanded our
wages, and never worked another Sunday.

I am lost in my endeavours to define the
mingled recollections of Sunday tranquillity,
enjoyment, and frivolity during a stay of
eighteen months in Paris. My thoughts run
from the Madelaine to Minu-montant; from
Versailles to the Funambule; from Diogenes'
lantern at St. Cloud to the blind man's concert
in the Palais Royal. Sometimes I wander
over the plains of Anteuil and Passy;
then suddenly find myself examining a paper-
making machine in the Museum of Arts and
Trades. Or I look over the vine fields from
the heights of Montmorency at one moment,
and the next am pacing the long galleries of
the Louvre, or the classic chambers of the
Palais des Beaux Arts. I have passed a
Whitsunday morning at Versailles among
the paintings; the afternoon at Sèvres among
glass and porcelain; have won a game at
dominoes after dinner in Paris; and have heard
the last polka at the Salle Vivienne in the evening.
Paris is a city of extremes; the young
Théophile who works by my side, and is an
ingenious fellow and a clever workman, you
will meet next Sunday in the Louvre discoursing
energetically on the comparative
merits of the French and Italian schools of
painting; yet this sameThéophile shall be the
Tite of the gallery of the Porte St. Martin
in the evening who yells slang at his friend
on the opposite side; and the Pierrot or
Débardeur of the next opera masquerade.

With the vivid impressions of many
Sundays abroad upon my mind, I have been
wondering whether, after all, the practices of
the continental Sunday have anything to do
with the opening of a museum or picture-
gallery in London; and, after profound study,
in the laborious course of which I have several
times fallen asleep, I have come to the
deliberate conclusion that there is connection
between the two things. In the first case, as
regards Germany, seeing that they there
sedulously close all that relates to art or
science, and give full licence only to beer and
tobacco, to music and dancing on the Sunday
—where is the parallel? In the second, as
regards France or Paris, although it must be
admitted that there is unfortunately no cornparison
between the Louvre and the National
Gallery, it can at least be claimed that there
is no resemblance between the British
Museum and the Bal des Chiens in the Rue St.
Honoré. I take it that to preserve the English
Sunday as a day of greater rest than French
or German Sundays everywhere, and to add
to it such rational and instructive recreation
as a Museum or a Picture Gallery, or a place
of innocent recreation could supply, might be
a good thing in the eyes of religious men; and
I have not yet heard of any society or
association in any part of the United Kingdom,
which proposes to open a Sunday evening
ball at the Pig and Tinder-box, or to grant
licences to the theatrical performances at the
Penny Gaff in the New Cut.

MR ROWLANDS.

IT is now some six or seven years since I
first made acquaintance with the village of
Hurstfield. I don't know that it has any
particular beauty of site or neighbourhood to
distinguish it from other places in
Hampshire. It has the same pure air, the same
rich country all round—for it lies far away
from the pastoral and romantic part of the
county,—but it has no fine views, no show
houses, nothing, in short, but what every
English hamlet can boast of in an equal
degree,—and yet I like it better than the
most picturesque situation in the world;