who has come up from Birmingham a week before she expected him. The door is opened almost as soon as the face is seen; and now is there love and joy in that house, and consequently a grace in the street; and it looks quite a different place, at least in the eyes of the loving and the wise.

This is our secret for making the dullest street in the metropolis, nay the squalidest and worst, put forth some flower of pleasantness (for the seeds of good find strange corners to grow in, could people but cultivate them): and if our secret is not productive to everybody, it is no fault of ours: nay, for that matter, it is none of theirs; but we pity them, and have reason to think ourselves richer. We happened to be walking through some such forlornlooking street with the late Mr. Hazlitt, when we told him we had a charm against the melancholy of such places; and on his asking what it was, and being informed, he acknowledged, with a look between pleasure and sorrow, that it was a true one. The secret came home to him; but he could have understood, though he had not felt it. Fancy two lovers, living in the same street, either of whom thinks it a delight to exist in the same spot, and is happy for the morning if one look is given through the windowpane. It puts your thoughts in possession of the highest and most celestial pleasure on earth. No "milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale" is necessary to it, though it is a very fitting accompaniment. The dullest street, the dullest room upon earth, is sufficient, and becomes a spot radiant beyond the dreams of princes. Think of George the Fourth in the midst of all the splendour of Windsor Castle, and then of this poor maid-servant, with her health, her youth, and her love, looking in the eyes of the man she is fond of, and hardly able to speak for gratitude and joy. We grant that there is no comparison, in one sense, between the two individuals, the poor old King, with his efforts at being fine and happy, and the poor young girl, with her black worsted stockings and leaping bosom, as happy as her heart can make her. But the contrast may serve to remind us that we may attribute happiness wrongly in fine places, and miss it erroneously in common ones. Windsor Castle is sufficient beauty to itself, and has poetical memories; but in the commonest street we see there may be the richest real joy *.

Love is not peculiar to London on Sundays: they have it even in Edinburgh, notwithstand ing what a fair charmer in Tait's Magazine' tells us, with such a staid countenance, of the beatitudes of self-reflection into which her countrymen retire on that day. Otherwise, out of love alone, we might render our dull

* There is now, thank God, love, as well as splendour, in Windsor Castle. One may fancy the graces of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes," realised there, without the troubles of it.

looking metropolitan Sabbath the brightest day in the week. And so it is, and in Edinburgh too, and all the Sabbath-day world over; for though, seriously speaking, we do not deny the existence of the tranquil and solitary contemplations just alluded to, yet assuredly they are as nothing compared to the thoughts connected with every-day matters; and love, fortunately, is an every-day matter, as well as money. Our Sunday streets look dull enough, Heaven knows, especially in the more trading parts of the metropolis. At the west end of the town, in Marylebone, and the squares, it looks no duller than it does on other days; and taking the spirit of the thing, there is no real Sunday among the rich. Their going to church is a lounge and a show; their meals are the same as at other times; their evenings the same; there is no difference in the look of their houses outside. But in the city, the Strand, &c., the shutting-up of the shops gives an extreme aspect of dulness and melancholy to the streets. Those windows, full of gaiety, and colour, and bustle, being shut, the eyes of the houses seem put out. The clean clothes and comparatively staid demeanour of the passengers make no amends for the loss; for with the exception of special friends and visitors, lovers in particular, it is well understood in London, that Sunday is really a dull day to most people. They have outlived the opinions which gave it an interest of a peculiar sort, and their notions of religion have become either too utilitarian or too cheerful to admire the old fashion of the day any longer. Rest, with insipidity, is its character in the morning, newspaper reading excepted: church is reckoned dull, perhaps attended out of mere habit "and for the sake of example," or avoided from day to day, till non-attendance becomes another habit: dinner under any circumstances is looked to with eagerness as the great relief; the day then brightens up with the help of an extra dish, pudding, or friend; and the visits of friends help to make the evening as lively as it well can be without the charm of business and money-taking. Should there be no visitors, the case is generally helpless. The man and wife yawn, or are quiet, or dispute; a little bit of book is read, till the reader complains of "weak eyes," or says that it is unaccountable how sleepy reading makes him, considering he is so "fond" of it; bibs are pulled up about the gentleman's chin, and gowns admired by their fair wearers; and the patients lounge towards the window, to wonder whether it is fine, or is clearing up, or to look at the raindrops, or see what Mrs. Smith is doing over the way.

The young gentlemen or ladies look at the Bible, or the calendar, or the army-list, or the last magazine, or their trinkets, and wonder whether Richard will come; and the little children are told not to sing.

But the lovers!

from the ditch on a Sabbath, refuse to discon

But, stay a moment.

So tender, or rather, according to Mr. Bentham's philosophy, so "extra-regarding prudent," and so "felicity-maximising," is our heart, that we fear we may have been thought a little hard, by those whom we have described as uniting a sleepiness over their books with a profession of astonishment at their tendency, considering they are "so fond of books." But mistake us not, dear nonreaders who happen to be reading us, or who read a newspaper though you read little else. Nothing would we ever willingly say to the useless mortification of anybody, much less of those who love anything whatsoever, especially a newspaper; and all the fault we find with you is, for thinking it necessary to vindicate your reputation for sense and sympathy on one particular score, when you might do it to better advantage by regretting the want of the very fondness you lay claim to. For in claiming to be fond of books, when you are not, you show yourselves unaware of the self-knowledge which books help us to obtain ; whereas, if you boldly and candidly expressed your regret at not being fond of them, you would show that you had an understanding so far superior to the very want of books, and far greater than that of the mechanical scholar, who knows the words in them, and nothing else. You would show that you knew what you wanted, and were aware of the pleasures that you missed and perhaps it would turn out, on inquiry, that you had only been indifferent to books in the gross, because you had not met with the sort of reading suitable to your turn of mind. Now, we are not bound to like books unsuitable to us, any more than a poet is bound to like law-books, or a lawyer the study of Arabic, or a musician any books but his own feelings; nor is any one, more than the musician, bound to like books at all, provided he loves the things which books teach us to love, and is for sowing harmony and advancement around him, in tones of good-humour and encouragement, to the kindly dance of our planet.

One of the pleasantest sights on a Sunday morning in the metropolis-to us, of course, particularly so-but justly also to all welldisposed and thinking Christians is the numerous shops exhibiting weekly papers for sale-the placards of our hebdomadal brethren, blue, yellow, and white, vociferous with large types, and calling the passenger's attention to Parliamentary investigations, monstrous convictions, horrible murders, noble philanthropies, and the humanities of books, theatres, and the fine arts. Justly did the divine heart, who suffered his disciples to pluck the ears of corn, and would have the sheep extricated

sity and mercy; and what so necessary for the poor, the especial objects of his regard, as a knowledge of what can be done for them? what so merciful as to help them to supply their wants both of body and mind? Leaving this more serious part of the subject (which, however, is not inharmoniously mixed up with our lighter matter, for the greatest gravity and the most willing cheerfulness have but one object), we pass by the other open or peeping shops (such as the pastry-cooks' who keep up the supply of indigestion, and the apothecary's who is conveniently ready against the consequences), and stop a moment at our friend the barber's, who provides a newspaper for his waiting customers, as men of his trade formerly provided a lute or a guitar. The solace is not so elegant. There must have been something very peculiar, and superior to the occasion, in the sound of a guitar in a barber's shop-of "Beauty retire," gracefully played into the face of a long-visaged old gentleman under the soap-suds; or,

1

just as the operator's fingers were approaching the patient's nose. The newspaper, however, though not so choice, or furnishing opportunities to the poor polite to show the selectness and segregation of their accomplishments, shows a higher refinement on the part of the poor in general, or the many. But we must be moving onward.

There is the bell going for church. Forth come Mrs. and Miss A; then the Mr. B's, in their new brown coats and staid gloves; then Mr. Mrs. and the Miss C's, in a world of new bonnets and ribands. Oh, ho! young Mr. D, from over the way, joins them, and is permitted to walk with Miss C by herself; so the thing is certain. See! she explains to him that she has forgotten her prayer-bookby accident; and he joyfully shows her his own; which means, that he means to read the Collect with her out of the same book; which makes her blush and smile, and attempt to look gratefully indifferent, which is impossible; so she does not much endeavour it, and they are both as happy as if the church were made of tarts and cheesecakes. We are passing the church now, so we see no more of them. But there is the beadle, in his laced hat, taking the apple from the charity boy, and looking very angry, for it is not a good one; and there come the E's quarrelling up to the church-door about which walks the heaviest; and F, making his sisters laugh beforehand,

G

at the way in which the clerk opens his mouth; and G, who hates the parson; and the parson, who hates G; and H, I, J, K, and L, who are indifferent about the matter, and are thinking of their dinner, boots, neck-cloths, and next day; and, not to go through the whole alphabet, here is M, dashing up in his carriage, which the coachman is to keep for him, till he has "walked humbly with his God," and is ready to strut forth again.

In childhood the church bells used to make us melancholy. They have not that effect now. The reason we take to be, that they sounded to us then from the remote regions of the whole world out of doors, and of all the untried hopes and fears and destinies which they contained. We have since known them more familiarly, and our regard is greater and even more serious, though mixed with cheerfulness, and is not at all melancholy, except when the bell tolls for a funeral; which custom by the way is a nuisance, and ought to be abolished, if only out of consideration for the sick and sorrowful. One of the reasons why church bells have become cheerful to us, is the having been accustomed to hear them among the cheerful people of Tuscany. The Catholic countries' bells are ringing at all seasons, not always to the comfort of those who hear them; but the custom has associated them in our minds with sunshine and good-nature. We also like them on account of their frequency in colleges. Finally, they remind us of weddings and other holidays; and there is one particular little jingle in some of them, which brings to our memory the walking to church by the side of a parent, and is very dear to us.

XXXVI. SUNDAY IN LONDON.

No. II.

HARD is it, thou coming kindness, and hard, thou already-existing knowledge, and kindness too, of Christian philanthropists and philosophers, not to feel a wish to take the cane out of the hands of the beadle yonder, who is tyrannising over barrow-women and little boys, and lay it about his own hat. In the name of God, what sort of Christianity would the law have, if it is not to be Christian?-if it is not to prefer "spirit" to "letter?" There are some men, according to whose notions it would appear as if heaven itself ought to shut up shop on Sundays, and afford us no light and sunshine. We verily believe, that they think the angels go to church on that day, and put on clean wings, and that St. Paul preaches a

sermon.

See now-here comes a little fellow whom they would suppress, clean as a pink, far happier than a prince, a sort of little angel himself, making allowance for the pug-nose;

but innocence and happiness are in his face, and before him (not to speak it profanely) is the beatific vision of the piece of hot mutton, which he is carrying home from the baker's, and devouring with his eyes. He is an honest boy, for his mother has trusted him with carrying the meat and the baked potatoes; and it is the only bit of meat which he or she, or his father, can get to eat all the week round; and his little sisters are to have some of it, for they have all been good, and helped to earn it; and so here is a whole, good, hard-working, honest family, whom the religious eaters of hot meat every day would prevent from having their bit on Sundays, because. why? Because it would do the poor souls any harm? No; but because it would do their rich dictators the harm of seeing their own pragmatical will and pleasure opposed,-humours, the very result perhaps of their own stuffing and indiges

tion.

A Sunday evening in London, with its musical and other social meetings, such as cannot take place between men in business during the rest of the week, has parties enough to render it much livelier than it appears. But the lovers-the lovers are the thing. With them we begin, and with them we conclude; for what so good to begin or to end with as love? We loved as early as we can recollect; we love now; and our death will be a loving one, let it be coloured otherwise as it may.

When we speak of lovers on a Sunday evening, we mean, of course, lovers who cannot well visit on any other day in the week; and whose meetings, therefore, are rendered as intense as they can be by the infrequency. What signify the circumstances that may have hindered them? Let them be button-making, breadmaking, or a clerkship, or servitude, or any other chance or condition of life, what care we, provided the love be genuine, and the pleasure truly felt? Burns was a ploughman, Allan Ramsay a hair-dresser, Gay at one time a mercer, Richardson a printer, Dodsley a footman. Do we suppose that the authors of "Sir Charles Grandison," "Black-Eyed Susan," and the finest love-songs in the world, did not make as cordial and exquisite lovers as the best-bred gentlemen about town and that their mistresses and they did not worship each other with a vivacity and a passion infinite?

Our Sunday lover, then, is an apprentice or a clerk, and his mistress is a tradesman's daughter, and they meet only on Sundays and Sunday evenings, counting every minute till the time arrives, listening to every knock, trying to look calm when the other joins the family party; for they seldom see one another alone, even then. But now they are at least in the same room, and happiness is with them. They see and hear each other; they see the

little manœuvres to get a nearer seat; at length they sit close together. The parents are not displeased, and let things take their course. This is, perhaps, the happiest time of courtship-when lovers feel secure of one another's affections, and only have just sufficient doubt of other security to make everything seem dependent on themselves and the result of their own will and choice. By degrees, as the family divide in their talk, they are suffered to talk exclusively together. Every word is precious; every question the most indifferent has a meaning: it is sufficient for one to say "I like this," or "I like that," and the other thinks it a charming observation -a proof of fine sense, or feeling, or taste, or above all, of love; for the eyes or the quivering lips, or the panting bosom, speak with it; and the whole intercourse, whether speaking or silent, is one of intense acquiescence and delight. A gentleman comes up and gallantly addresses some smiling remark to the lady; the lover, if he is not quite sure of her mind, begins to be jealous. The gentleman moves off, and a remark at his expense prostrates the lover's soul with gratitude. The lady leaves the room to put a child to bed, or speak to a sister, or look after the supper, and darkness falls upon the place. She returns, and her footsteps, her face, her frock, her sweet countenance, is thrice blessed, and brings happiness back again. She resumes her chair, with a soft "thank ye" as he elaborately, and for no need whatsoever, puts it in its best position for being resumed; and never, he thinks, did soul, breath, and bosom, go so sweetly together as in the utterance of that simple phrase. For her part, she has, secretly, hardly any bounds to her gratitude; and it is lucky that they are both excellent good people, otherwise the very virtues of one or other of them might be their destruction. (Ah! they will think of this in aftertimes, and not look with severe countenances on the victims of the less honourable.) At length they sit looking over some pictures together, or a book, which they are as far from reading as if they did not see it. They turn over the leaves, however, with a charming hypocrisy, and even carry their eyes along the lines; their cheeks touch-his hand meets hers, by favour of the table-cloth or the handkerchief; its pressure is returned; you might hear their hearts beat, if you could listen.

unworthiness. And once to have loved truly, is to know how to continue to love everything which unlovingness has not had a hand in altering-all beauties of nature and of mind, all truth of heart, all trees, flowers, skies, hopes, and good beliefs, all dear decays of person, fading towards a two-fold grave, all trusts in heaven, all faiths in the capabilities of loving man. Love is a perpetual proof that something good and earnest and eternal is meant us, such a bribe and foretaste of bliss being given us to keep us in the lists of time and progression : and when the world has realised what love urges it to obtain, perhaps death will cease; and all the souls which love has created, crowd back at its summons to inhabit their perfected world.

Truly we have finished our Sunday evening with a rapt and organ-like note. Let the reader fancy he has heard an organ indeed. Its voice is not unapt for the production of such thoughts, in those who can rightly listen to its consummate majesty and warbling modulations.

[Something yet remains to be said of "Sunday in the Suburbs."]

XXXVII.

SUNDAY IN THE SUBURBS. BEING MORE LAST WORDS ON 'SUNDAY IN LONDON :' WITH A DIGRESSION ON THE NAME OF SMITH.

IN writing our articles on this subject, we have been so taken up, first with the dull look of the Sunday streets, and afterwards with the lovers who make their walls lively on the hidden side, that we fairly overlooked a feature in our Metropolitan Sabbath, eminently sabbatical; to wit, the suburbs and their holidaymakers. What a thing to forget! What a thing to forget, even if it concerned only Smith in his new hat and boots! Why, he has been thinking of them all the week; and how could we, who sympathise with all the Smith-ism and boots in existence, forget them? The hatter did not bring home his hat till last night, the boot-maker his boots till this morning. How did not Smith (and he is a shrewd fellow too, and reads us) pounce upon the hatbox, undo its clinging pasteboard lid, whisk off the silver paper, delicately develop the dear beaver, and put it on before the glass! The truth must be owned :-he sate in it half supper-time. Never was such a neat fit. All Aldersgate, and the City-road, and the Newroad, and Camden and Kentish towns, glided already before him, as he went along in it,hatted in thought. He could have gone to sleep in it, if it would not have spoiled his nap, and its own.

Then his boots!-Look at him.-There he goes-up Somers-town. Who would suspect, from the ease and superiority of his counte

nance, that he had not had his boots above two hours, that he had been a good fourth part of the time labouring and fetching the blood up in his face with pulling them on with his boothooks, and that at this moment they horribly pinch him! But he has a small foot-has Jack Smith; and he would squeeze, jam, and damn it into a thimble, rather than acknowledge it to be a bit larger than it seems.

Do not think ill of him, especially you that are pinched a little less. Jack has sympathies ; and as long as the admiration of the community runs towards little feet and well-polished boots, he cannot dispense, in those quarters, with the esteem of his fellow-men. As the sympathies enlarge, Jack's boots will grow wider; and we venture to prophesy, that at forty he will care little for little feet, and much for his corns and the public good. We are the more bold in this anticipation, from certain reminiscences we have of boots of our own. We shall not enter into details, for fear of compromising the dignity of literature; but the good-natured may think of them what they please. Non ignara mali (said Dido), miseris succurrere disco: that is, having known what it was to wear shoes too small herself, she should never measure, for her part, the capabilities of a woman's head, by the pettiness of her slippers.

Napoleon was proud of a little foot; and Cæsar, in his youth, was a dandy. So go on, Smith, and bear your tortures like a man ; especially towards one o'clock, when it will be hot and dusty.

Smith does not carry a cane with a twist at the top of it for a handle. That is for an inferior grade of holiday-maker, who pokes about the suburbs, gaping at the new buildings, or treats his fellow-servant to a trip to White Conduit-house, and an orange by the way— always too sour. Smith has a stick or a whanghee; or, if he rides, a switch. He is not a good rider; and we must say it is his own fault, for he rides only on Sundays, and will not scrape acquaintance with the ostler on other days of the week. You may know him on horseback by the brisk forlornness of his steed, the inclined plane of his body, the extreme outwardness or inwardness of his toes, and an expression of face betwixt ardour, fear, and indifference. He is the most without a footman of any man in the world; that is to say, he has the most excessive desire to be taken for a man who ought to have one; and, therefore, the space of road behind him pursues him, as it were, with the reproach of its emptiness.

A word, by the way, as to our use of the generic name 'Smith.' A Correspondent wrote to us the other day, intimating that it would be a good-natured thing if we refrained in future from designating classes of men by the name of Tomkins.' We know not whether he was

a Tomkins himself, or whether he only felt for some friend of that name, or for the whole body of the Tomkinses; all we know is, that he has taken the word out of our mouth for ever. How many paragraphs he may have ruined by it, we cannot say; but the truth is, he has us on our weak side. We can resist no appeal to our good-nature made by a good-natured man. Besides, we like him for the seriousness and good faith with which he took the matter to heart, and for the niceness of his sympathy. Adieu, then, name of Tomkins! Jenkins also, for a like respectful reason, we shall abstain from in future. But let nobody interfere in behalf of Smith; for Smith does not want it. Smith is too universal. Even a John Smith could not regard the use of his name as personal; for John Smith, as far as his name is concerned, has no personality. He is a class, a huge body; he has a good bit of the Directory to himself. You may see for pages together (if our memory does not deceive us) John Smith, John Smith, John Smith, or rather,

Smith, John,

Smith, John,

Smith, John,

Smith, John,

Smith, John,

Smith, John,

and so on, with everlasting Smith-Johnism, like a set of palisades or iron rails; almost as if you could make them clink as you go, with drawing something along them. The repetition is dazzling. The monotony bristles with sameness. It is a cheraux-de-Smith. John Smith in short, is so public and multitudinous a personage, that we do not hesitate to say we know an excellent individual of that name, whose regard we venture thus openly to boast of, without fearing to run any danger of offend ing his modesty for nobody will know whom we mean. An Italian poet says he hates his name of John, because if anybody calls him by it in the street, twenty people look out of window. Now let anybody call "John Smith!" and half Holborn will cry out "Well ?"

:

As to other and famous Smiths, they are too strongly marked out by their fame, sometimes by their Christian names, and partly, indeed, by the uncommon lustre they attain through their very commonness, to make us at all squeamish in helping ourselves to their generic appellation at ordinary times. Who will ever think of confounding Smith, in the abstract, with Adam Smith, or Sir Sydney Smith, or the Reverend Sydney Smith, or James and Horace Smith, or Dr. Southwood Smith, or any other concretion of wit, bravery, or philosophy!

By this time, following, as we talk, our friend Jack up the road, we arrive at the first suburb tea-gardens, which he, for his part, passes with disdain; not our friend, John Smith, be it ob served, for his philosophy is as universal as his