PARLIAMENTARY TOURISTS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 409, 14 November 1884, Page 6

PARLIAMENTARY TOURISTS.

DESECRATION OF THE SABBATHSUNDAY GAMES AND SPORTS — NATIONAL GAMES AND SPORTS, &C. &C, TO THE EDITOB. Sib, — What naughty boys those children of Mr and Mrs Vogel-Stout are, and how wicked on the part of their parents to allow them to go boating on a Sunday for the criminal purpose of visiting and admiring the inexhaustible beauties of Nature as shown in the bays and harbors of New Zealand. Besides the ducking and abuse they received I hope their parents thrashed them soundly when they got them home. " O tcmpora f 0 mores hominvm, /" What is the world coming to at last that the children of light should be found giving such public scandal. My meditation. 13 , Sir, upon the above are rather intended to entertain your readers than to be a code of severe morality for their guidance. There are so many guides now-a-days that I believe it is the blind leading the blind, and both iind their salvation in the bottom of the ditch. '■ In med'w stat rirti(s." There is a medium in boiling even cgps. If you are not too busy to-day, Sir, I should wish very much to ask you how comes it that Mr and Mrs Stout do not get up some amusement — even a course of gymnastics for their children and keep theou at home on Sundays ; in fact, ever since I became to bo a naturalised citizen of New Zealand I am more than surprised that iione of our New Zealand ministries ever undertook to form a complete national philosophy and a science of games and sports on the same principle that they have established a system of education. Only think for a moment of the all but innumerable aggregate of observed facts we have respecting games and sports, and how long we have been in generalising them and reducing them to a system. It is to be hoped that the educational powers at Invercargill at least, when conferring the distinguished honor of a High School upon you, will establish a professorship in the various branches of diversion in connection therewith and elevate yourself, O esteemed Editor, to the dignity with a " screw " of LISOO per annum. The thought of the LISQO a year makes you smile I hope, and I wish you may get it. But, Sir, I am more than surprised why there is not at least a Bureau de G-aiete in connection with the House of Parliament — a Public Department of Pastimes, a portfolio of Frolics, and yourself the lucky holder of it at the moderate salary of £25 a week until such times as we get our High School. Only consider the matter calmly and seriously, and you must come to the conclusion that there ought to be such a Department, more especially if you had a good chance of getting the billet. Just see how much of its life and of its money and' its physical energies, of its forethought, andj of its reflections, of its anticipations and its reminiscences, of its skill and its intellectual powers, of its hopes and its fears and its remorses even New Zealand itself expends on its games, pageants, entertainments, shows, processions, recreations, and its sports.' Look at the multitudes who go to the opera, to the theatre, to the circus, to the concerts, to the race-courses, to the football, cricket, rowing, and running matches, to the pugilistic aud athletic encounters, to the dancing saloons and quadrille parties, the art galleries, &c. What multitudes congregate round Punch and Judy I oses and the Merry-go-rounds, and the Aunt Sallys, and the Doodle-em-bucks, and round the Serpentine. Only think of all this, and ten times more than all this, which cannot here be specified, and all the subsidiary and contingent accessories and concomitant appliances and appendages to the games aud sports — such as cabs, 'buses, railway tickets, hotels, gingerbeer and other bottlings, and unbottlings, and the net work of police arrangements rendered necessary by so much cork-drawing —think of all this if you can comprehend the allness of it, and say why a new being should not be added to the Treasury benches for a regular Government Department of Recreations, if it were only to keep our members from going Sabbath breaking — with you Mr Editor or even, your humble servant as Minister of Jollification at the head of it ; me by all means in preference to you, supposing the rate of pay to be on a dignified scale. Leaving this point to the well-known generosity of the Hon. Robert, if your intelligent readers will turn their attention to auy region of the earth they please, east or west, take any of the mighty Caliphates and Satrapes or of the minutest tribe of Esquimaux or Himalayan or Gaelic glen, and take them in the darkest or brightest epoch of their historic existence and you will be sure to find them chiefs and clans, sovereigns, and subjects democratic or autocratic alike intent upon their games and sporls, and often at times when you might expect them to be wholly occupied with their religious concerns or more serious affairs. But sports and games and excursion trips would seem to be Desirable Tonics to the human mind as well as to the body whether in happy or in unfortunate situations. When that rollicking Irishman, Wellington, took command in Portugal and Spain some 70 years ago he found many of his staff officers, especially the Irish ones, sadly depressed in the long intervals between one light and another. Knowing their intrinsic merits he sends home to Tipperary (for the Duke's mother was a Tipperary lady) for a pack of hounds and invited all officers to the chas;. Was thte an ineptitude or an insanity under the circumstances / Not at all. It; was a wise and wholesome, moral expedient. It dissipated his officers' ennui, it raised the spirits of the army, more especially of the Irish regiments, and it operated ou the enemy as a disheartening intimation to see regiments taking their recreation and jollification in their presence and fight them as well. The almost countless varieties of games and sports with which the wide-wide world delectates itself may be taken as a sign that its inhabitants are rising high on the social as well as the religious ladder, and that they know what is good for them. "Ab uno disce omnes." Consider that agreeable and most innocent of all pastimes, Dancing, Can you name all the kinds of all the dances of all the nations commencing with the Irish jig? going all round the globe,and ending with the Queensland corroboree, and not omitting the Scotch reel, the Highland fling, the English hornpipe, the Spanish saraband, the German waltz, the Hungarian polka, the pas de brabant of France, the pas of every country in the five continents, and including the elaborate diversities of pantomime ballets at all the theatres of Europe and America? How ravenous must be the Luman appetite for amusements, how unquenchable the thirst for such excitement as the dance can furnish when the inventive faculty is thus strained to kcop up the supply ! How imperiously the spirit which is in man cries out for its quadrille and gallop, circuses, and delicate cookery J How the spirit in man repines and frets and sulks I and feels as it were defrauded of a right or a benefit when the supply comes not with the demasd ! Whether wrapped up in furs or eider down at the frostiest end of Lapland, or whether undisguised by any sort of garments at the Equator &fde of the Nyanfla, it is all the same incessant, impatient horse? leech hunger for more, more games and sports or for the cash to get them up. There is perhaps a family likeness in all dances and games and the sports of all nations,, yet there are distinctive foaturoa in each which sufficiently mark a national taste or a tribal peculiarity. The Russian, the Lap, the Swede, the Dane, the Prussian, the Pole, the Turk, the Italian, the Greek, the Spaniard, tho Moor, tho Frenchman, Mexican, the Persian, the Indian of 50 principalities, the Chinee, the Tartar, the Javan, the Japanese, every island group in the South Seas, the isles of the Indian Arohi. pelago, the Malay, the Australian blackfellow and his gin, the West Indian nigger, the Brazilian, the red man of Canada and the nomads of the great prairies, the Malagasy, the Kaffir and the Maori, and though last not least the Irish and the Scotch kq,ye all their pvjrn. dance and,

favorite game and sport, which though in outline bear a resemblance to each other yet are so varied in details as clearly to mark an ethnic variety of temper or trait of national character. If for instance we tike the game of Irish Hubling, which bears some remote likeness to English cricket— for both are played with striking sticks and a ball, and by two opposing teams and wickets or gates or goaJs— but the fiery haste, the impetuous rush, the personal collisions of the Irish hurling match distinguish it sharply off from the slow,fpatient, perseryering'and less animated game of English cricket. And so of all other nations. The strictly national game is always an expression of some leading national characteristic, and the national game of one country is seldom or ever successfully grafted on to* the habits of another . Horse-racing in France is a case in point. At Paris it is clearly an exotic and is assigned to Sunday as its great " Derby day," which is revolting to English feeling. Sunday Games and Sports. An English protestant bishop is credited with the authorship of the distich : " Better plough than play On the Lord's Day." Without arguing the proposition with his lordship I would remark en passant that I do not know what Sabbatarians of -the not very rigid sect have got to do with the Sunday movement. 1 am not one of the extremists, wh > would censure my wife for kissing the baby on. a Sunday or would hang up atom cat for'catching on the Lord's day a rat. What kinds of recreation are allowable depends on the circumstances of each Christian. They who have been pent up in workshops, factories, hotels, railway offices, printing csiablishmonts.fall the week roun.l will be refreshed in body and mind by open air exercise on Sunday. What home and indoor pastime may be innocently resorted to will be determined by the means at people's disposal, common sense, and more especially an enlightened conscience. What different views are held regarding the sanctifying of t^e Sabbath could be well learned J.y travelling over the Continent of Europe. Throughout England, Scotland, and the. North of Ireland there is a rigorous and almost fanatical observance of the Sabbath, whilst on the Continent to sanctify the Sabbath it is considered sufficient to attend church morning and evening and to spend the remainder of the day in healthful recreation and amusements. Protestant as well as Catholic countries are uniform in the observance of the Sunday. They lay down and maintain the principle that the Sabbath was made for man's benefit and not man for the Sabbath. To my mind this view is altogether consonant with the more natural and enlightened observance of the day of rest as advocated by Christ and his followers. All Christians will agree that any riotous, racketyjconviviality would be a gross and unseemly mode of spending the Sabbath. As for dancing, among the educated, wealthy, and aristocratic classes amongst the old pagan Greeks and Romans it was regarded as undignified and derogatory ; and they did not dance, but hired dancers, men and women, to come in after dinner and dance before them. These hired dancers were proficients in the art. and their performances are said to be marvels of grace, agility and all that constitutes the " poetry of motion." The Jews were not a dancing people, like the Romans and Greeks ; they patronised dancing men and women who also were acrobats and what we sometimes call jugglers and minstrels. These were regular professions in Syria, Palestine and most Eastern, countries. They are referred to in the gospels and were a popular institution, among the Romans of Italy and the Gauls and continued to be through all political vicissitudes down to the disruption of the feudal system 300 years ago. The troubadours of those times travelled from city to city and from castle to castle like our opera companies. They sang occasional songs composed by themselves at feasts, banquets, royal weddings tournaments and civic festivals and were amply rewarded by presents of jewellery, embroidered robes and cloths of gold and silver. These they sold and retired from the profession With large fortunes. The jugglers of the middle ages performed extraordinary somersaults and surprising feats of strength and were adepts in all sleight of hand tricks played with sharp brass balls which they threw up with astonishing dexteritg ; stood on their heals looking through between their legs, and posed upon one another's shoulders up to an immense height. Judging by the accounts left us the acrobats, tumblers, vaulters, prestidigitators five hundred years ago have never been equalled in modern times. No baronial wedding, ducal christening, or Christmas revel was considered properly supplemented without minstrels and juggler. I presume most of your readers have seen the celebrated M. BLONDIN, TIGHT-ROPE ARTIST, and our own remarkable New Zealaud Blondin go through their perilous and terrifying display of adventurous rope walking. But daring as these are they were exceeded. At Milan, 400 j ears ago the Duke engaged a young Portuguese rope walker named Moler to perform a grand entertainment. The rope was stretched across a space of 450 yards wide, at a height of 200 feet from the ground. At^the appointo. I moment the youthful artist stepped on to the rope from the roof of the church tower, across which it was drawn j and crossed backwards and forwards on his narrow bridge over the heads of thousands of spectator?, Like our Blondin, he pretended to stumble and fall, held on to the rope with his hands and let his body hang down then jerked hims 'If up to tne rope, soon stumbled again, seized the rope with his teeth and hung suspended by this grip alone for some seconds. Many ladies fainted at the sight. We read in French history that when the Queen of Bavaria made her entrance into Paris 450 years ago King Philip thrived and delighted the citizens wjth a similar performanoo, which also, afforded the Queen '•' un grande sensation." So early as the 6th century we find that the Church had influence enough in France to put a stop to, the brutal a7id sanguinary shows Qf the oiycus and the amphitheatre in \\<h.ioh wild beasts \VQve lot loqse upon each other, and men fought for their lives with the King's lions, leopards and bears. All nations are, or were more or less infected with the same love of shows and pageants as, for instance, tne English in the 16th century when Queen Elizabeth visited the Earl Qf Leicester at Kenil worth Cattle, Warwickshire, as Sir Walter- Scott has described in his interesting aovel. ° Funeral Games !!! Only think of all the games tae AYoyld has gone to. Field games, and forest gam.es,and garden games, and moonlight games (as hideand^oek, on harvest home night), and midnight sports (as eel spearing and wild duck shooting), and winter sports, and autumn sports, and summer sports, sports with the gun and sports with the rod. and sports in the saddle (to all but the' poor cre.atu.res hunted, caught and shot-*b,arohaa included) kitchen games and parlor games, games on the ice, and games with the snow when squeezed iuto hard ballsj games with the water (when you fill your squirt aud discharge it into your sister's eye), and the very young lady's game o,f \\<h}ch she never tires —her doll, Then there all the extinct aud forgotten games of the last 400.0 years, such as croquet and polo and the flying hoop, or any of the 20,000 dead donees, us the "• Gqiw,try " dance or the lighted, tapoi- dance, i v which overy dancer received a lighted taper, and the sport \yas. for 'everyone to try aivl blow out his ueighbor's taper as they pa^sod each other in the dance. And then, cloar MiEditor (I am afraid you w ill think I a.m playing q, long handed gam." with 3-011), as the \vqrld begins life with games and sports so with a game and a sport it ends with a funeral recreation, a.s yon, esteemed a.nd lem-nod Siv, f.will And in Homer, -whore he says how Achilles buried his friend Putracles iii that " lone and nameless barren " between the Hellespont and the walls or Troy, We read, too, that the son of Thetis, in honor of his dead squiro in arms, slew many score of ! oxen, sheep, and horses at his tomb, along I > with half a Hecatomb of captives or slaves as ' i

I a solatium to the manes of Patrocles. As I will have a holiday next Prince of Wale3's birthday, I intend to write you a full catalogue of all the games and sports, dances and amusements, numbering about 70,000 or 80,000 for insertion in the Ensign. What I have written for the present is to prove that games and sports and amusements, and more especially dancing and sights and shows and pastimes and balls and quadrille parties and entertaiments of every kind and processions, and recreatioas and picnics and small . tea parties |and love feasts are the real sober solemn business of our lives in this world. The world and life were made for man's use, and enjoyment so long as we enjoy them rationally, moderately and edifyinely.— l am, etc.,