SUNDAY IN HYDE PARK.
[From tha Newt of the World, July I.]
Hyde Park on Sunday was the scene of a great act of retributive justice. The rough good sense of the community had discerned a difference between profession and practice. Some way or another, it was perceived that it could not be right that a Bishop should roll sbuuton a Sunday in his chariot and pair; that fine gentlemen and finer ladies should make a mall in Hyde Park for the sake of displaying fine bonneta and dresses, the marvels of Parisian art; that club-housed should remain open, and Mivari'a and Thomas's not closed, while poor men were denounced as sacrilegious wretches if they permitted themselves upon that day to indulge in the luxury of a penny shave, to purchase a pennyworth of milk, or a stale halfquartern loaf, or a pound of mutton trimmings, or a pint of questionable beer. If these poor chapmen were in the wrong, certainly the lordly Pharisees could scarcely be in the right. It was difficult indeed for a poor customer who might be excluded from his own peculiar markets to feel that there was not some confusion of ideas existing in the minds of hia superiors, as he watched the stream of rosy boys, with flannel aprons, issuing upon the Sabbath from the half-closed doors of the fashionable fishmongers, with trays upon their heads or under their arms, as the case might be, well filled with placid turbots, beautiful even in dealh, contrasting vividly with the bright hues of the ruddy lobsters, which were destined to adorn the graceful close of their uneventful careers ; with whiting which, after life's fitful fever, awaited the sacrificial bread-crumb with their tails in their innocert mouths, with soles in pairs, and red mullet in their coatly simplicity. Nor was the fishmonger's boy the only Sabbath-breaker in the cause of Lucullus. Behind him followed the greengrocer's familiar imp, laden with the spoils of early spring, or rather of spring imposed by the ait cf the horticulturist upon our wintry June. Surely it must strike as somewhat strange upon a rcind unimbued with the niceties of Parliamentary theology that mns incurred for tho satisfaction of tha epicure were venial, while the culinary transgressions of the poor man, who, in his most Apician flight, never soared upon the wings of fancy beyond a Sunday shoulder of mutton, resting upon an iron triangle, immersed in savoury potatoes, were to be visited with the severest indignation of every " well-regulated mind." If it be impossible to put an end to Sunday entertainments among the rich, to shut up the clubs, to stop all save strictly necessary traffic along the streets on the Sunday, of what avail is it to commence a crusade against the sparse enjoyments and little comforts of tbe poor ? If the law can have universal application, and if public opinion sanction it, it ia well. Nothing could be more sublime than the spectacle of a community such as is comprised in 4he England of the 19th century, which should really, with one heart and one mind, give up one day in seven, in good portion, to holy thoughts and earnest prayer, and the rest to innocent enjoy* inent and relaxation. All men of serious minds, who look a litiie beyond the present faour, are agreed upon the end, but differ sadly as to the means. Some even are bold enough to say that the end in riew can never be reached by a legislative thunderclap. If tbe object is to be attained at all, we must look to the u«ual agencies of enl ghten ment and education. If Lord Robe;t Grosvenor desires to see the Sabbath duly observed, let him not provoke the people to riot by making one Subbath for the rich and nnother for the poor.
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Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XIV, 1 December 1855, Page 4
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639SUNDAY IN HYDE PARK. Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XIV, 1 December 1855, Page 4
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