SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY.  
Sonst stuerzte sich der Himmels-Liebe Kuss
Auf mich herab, in ernster Sabbathstille;
Da klang so ahndungsvoll des Glockentones Fuelle,
Und ein Gebet war bruenstiger Genuss:
Ein unbegreiflich holdes Sehnen
Trieb mich durch Wald und Wiesen hinzugehn,
Und unter tausend heissen Thraenen,
Fuehlt’ ich mir eine Welt entstehn.
Faust.
 
In other days, the kiss of heavenly love descended upon me in the solemn stillness of the Sabbath; then the full-toned bell sounded so fraught with mystic meaning, and a prayer was vivid enjoyment. A longing, inconceivably sweet, drove me forth to wander over wood and plain, and amid a thousand burning tears, I felt a world rise up to me.
 
Hayward’s Translation.
 
Goethe, in his Faust, has given a very lively description of a German multitude bursting out of the city to enjoy an Easter Sunday;—mechanics, students, citizens’ daughters, servant-girls, townsmen, beggars, old women ready to tell fortunes, soldiers, and amongst the rest, his hero Faust and his friend Wagner, proceeding to enjoy a country walk. They reach a rising ground; and Faust says—“Turn and look back from this rising ground upon the town. From forth the gloomy portal presses a motley crowd. Every one suns himself delightedly to-day. They celebrate the[556] rising of the Lord, for they themselves have arisen: from the dark rooms of mean houses; from the bondage of mechanical drudgery; from the confinement of gables and roofs; from the stifling narrowness of streets; from the venerable gloom of churches—are they raised up to the open light of day. But look! look! how quickly the mass is scattering itself through the gardens and fields; how the river, broad and long, tosses many a merry bark upon its surface; and how this last wherry, overladen almost to sinking, moves off. Even from the farthest paths of the mountain, gay-coloured dresses glance upon us. I hear already the bustle of the village. This is the true heaven of the multitude; big and little are huzzaing joyously. Here I am a man—here I may be one.”
Making allowance for the difference of national manners, this might serve for a picture of Sunday in the neighbourhood of a large town in England. Human nature is the same everywhere. The girls are looking out for sweethearts; and both mechanics and students are seeking after the best beer and the prettiest girl:
Ein starkes bier, ein beitzender Toback,
Und eine Magd im Putz dass ist nun mein Geschmack.
“Strong beer, stinging tobacco, and a girl all in her best,—that is the taste for me,” cries one: and so it is here and everywhere. See how the multitudes of our large manufacturing towns, and of London spend their Sundays. They pour out into the country in all directions, but it is not to enjoy the country only. They do enjoy the country; but it is because it heightens their wild delight in smoking, drinking, and flirtation. Who does not know what innumerable haunts there are within five, ten, or even twenty miles round London, to which these classes repair on Sundays: tea-houses and tea-gardens, country inns, hedge-alehouses, all the old and noted places where good beer and tobacco, merry company, and noisy politics are to be found? Norwood, Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton-Court, Windsor, the Nore, Herne-Bay, Gravesend, Margate; and those old-fashioned places of resort that Hone gives you glimpses of; such as Copenhagen-House, the Sluice-House, Canonbury, etc.—what swarming votaries have they all.[30] And what an[557] immensity of new regions will the railroads that are now beginning to stretch their lines from the metropolis in different directions, lay open—terr? incognit?, as it were, to the millions that in the dense and ever-growing mass of monstrous London pant after an outburst into the country. Truly may these say, through the medium of this modern and most providential means of occasional dispersion:—
To morrow to fresh fields and pastures new!
[30] The following calculation, made on Whit-Monday 1835, may give some idea of the number of similar pleasure-seekers on a fine summer Sunday. On Monday, between eight in the morning and nine at night, 191 steam-vessels passed through the Pool to and from Margate, Herne-Bay, Sheerness, Southend, the Nore, Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich, including several on their way to and from Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent. Each vessel averaged, at least, 500 persons. The above calculation was made by Mr. Brown, a boat-builder in Wapping, who with his servants, watched them all day. But many passed after nine, swelling the number to upwards of 200; so that more than 100,000 persons must have been afloat in the steamers on Monday, exclusive of the passengers in small boats. Several steam-vessels carried 800 and 900 souls each to the Nore and back, One steam-vessel brought back from Greenwich 1000 persons, another 1300, and a third was actually crowded with 1500 passengers.
I well remember two ladies of high reputation in the literary world, who, after reading Faust, were inspired with a desire to see how the lower classes amused themselves on a Sunday in this country. It was, they thought, a subject of profitable study. They could not divest themselves of the idea that the people must wonderfully enjoy themselves, in their own way; and perhaps they might imagine that they should be received and complimented, as Faust and his friend Wagner were. Well; the experiment was tried. Another gentleman and myself accompanied them; and of all schemes we hit upon that of going by the steam-packet to Richmond. It was a fine morning in May. Our packet and another sailed from St. Katherine’s wharf with crowded decks, and a bright sun over our heads, casting its animating glory upon tower and town, over the majestic river, and the green country to which, anon, we emerged. We swept under bridge after bridge, and saw the mighty metropolis, with its vast wilderness of houses, wharfs, warehouses, and great public buildings, rapidly glide away behind us; above all the towers and spires of churches St. Paul’s lifting its solemn dome and glittering cross; and then the villages, splendid villas, and beautiful gardens, with the tall robinias in[558] their new leaves, and covered with their snow-white masses of flowers, in gay succession;—Lambeth, Vauxhall, Chelsea, Battersea, Fulham, Putney, Barnes, Chiswick, Kew, Richmond!—it was a fair and promising scene.
The people on board were well-dressed. There were some portly, middle-aged dames, with gold watches at their sides, and clad in richest silks; and there were some as lovely young ones as London could shew. You were sure that there were plenty of the very-well-to-do-in-the-world about you, if there were none of the very refined; substantial tradespeople, that would have the best the world could procure in eating, drinking, and dressing. And there was a knot of Germans too; men with great mustachios and laced coats; and damsels from whose tongues the strong, homely, expressive German speech seemed to fall wondrous softly. It was quite an attractive circumstance: for our fair friends, being just in the fresh fervour of studying “Die Deutche Sprache,” and reading Faust, imagined every thing in them interesting, and doubtless fancied them just such characters as Goethe would have drawn much out of. All seemed promising, when lo! we were at Richmond, and every thing had been only orderly, cheerful, and nothing more.
Ah well! this was English decorum on a Sunday; if it were not very piquant, it was at least, very commendable. We stepped on shore, lunched, strolled about on the terrace, amid streams of gay people; sat on one of the seats, and gazed over that vast expanse of rich woodland, meads, and villas; wandered down the green meadows towards Petersham and Twickenham, into the woods below the Star-and-Garter, and back to the packet. And now we were destined to see the character of the common people on a Sunday jaunt. The moment the packet began to move, it began to rain, and all the way it rained! rained! rained! The ladies took refuge in the cabin. What a cabin! There were all the sober, orderly throng of the morning, metamorphosed by the power of strong drink into a rackety, roaring, drinking, smoking, insolent, and jammed-together crew. The cabin was crushing full. The stairs were densely packed with people. One of the ladies made a precipitate retreat upon deck, and there, with only the protection of her parasol, stood with the patience of a martyr and[559] the temper of a saint, all the weary length of the voyage, through dripping, drenching, never-ceasing rain! The other, with more fear of her silks and satins, and determined to see what such a crowd was, persisted in staying below. It was an act which only the highest heroism could have maintained. There was a group taking tea at a side-table, all well, very well-dressed people, and holding a conversation of such language! such sentiments! such anecdotes! and accompanied with such bursts of laughter! at what must have stricken people with any sense of decency, dumb! And then there were those spruce youths, so modest in the morning, now drinking pots of porter and smoking cigars. Yes, smoking cigars, though the laws of the cabin, blazoned aloft, proclaimed—“No smoking allowed in the cabin!”—Spite of all cabin, or cabinet, or parliamentary laws, they drank, they smoked, they rolled voluminous clouds from one to another; and when requested to desist, said—“O, certainly! It is perfectly insufferable for people to smoke in such company; they ought to be turned out.” And then all laughed together at their own wit. The captain was called, and begged to enforce his own law; and they cried, “O yes, captain! certainly, certainly,” and then laughed again; and the captain smiled, and withdrew: for what captain could seriously forbid smoke and drink that were purchased of himself?
These drapers’ apprentices and shopmen, for such they seemed, gloried in annoying the whole company; and for this purpose, they placed themselves by the open window, so that the draft carried the smoke across all the place. There did but prove to be one real gentleman in the whole troop, who accommodated the lady with a seat—for not a soul besides would stir—and said, as he saw her annoyance; for with all her endurance, this was visible—“Madam, what a hell we have got into!”
And such, thought I, is a specimen of the populace of the mighty and enlightened London! Truly the schoolmaster has work enough yet before him.
It was a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on land are crammed;
Some sipping punch, some sipping tea,
All noisy, and all damned!
Our fair friends wished to see the character of the common[560] people in their Sunday recreations, and they saw here a specimen that, I feel persuaded, will satisfy them for life. One, at least, saw this; for the other stood stoically silent upon deck, and saw nothing but rain! rain! rain! O the weary time of that voyage! amid oaths and clamour, vulgarity in all its shapes of swaggering, or maudlin foolishness, riot of action, and indecorum of speech, drinking, smoking, crushing, laughing, swearing,—a confusion carried along the fair Thames, and into the heart of London, worse than that of Babel, and worthy of Pandemonium. How many thousands of such Sunday revellers, steeped in drink, and roystering vulgarity, were pouring into that mighty heart of civilization and Christian knowledge, at the moment we joyfully skipped up Westminster-stairs, and thanked heaven that the Goethe experiment was over.
What London exhibits on its own great scale, all our populous manufacturing towns exhibit, each in its own degree. It is curious to observe from the earliest hour of a Sunday morning, in fine weather, what groups are pouring out into the country. There are mechanics who, in their shops and factories,—while they have been caged up by their imperious necessities during the week, and have only obtained thence sights of the clear blue sky above, of the green fields laughing far away, or have only caught the wafting of a refreshing gale on their fevered cheek as they hurried homeward to a hasty meal, or back again to the incarceration of Mammon,—have had their souls inflamed with desires for breaking away into the free country. These have been planning, day after day, whither they shall go on Sunday. To what distant village; to what object of attraction. There have come visions of a neat country alehouse to them; its clean hearth, sanded floor; its capital ale, and aromatic pipe after a long walk; its pure unadulterated fare, sweet bread, savoury rashers of bacon, beef steaks and onions, and all with most mouth-watering odours. Others have seen clear hurrying trout-streams, or deep still fish-ponds, lying all along wild moors, or amid tangled woods; and they have determined to be with them. They will take angle and net; they will strip off clothes, and take the trout with their hands, from under the grassy banks of their little swift streams. They will have a dash at the squire’s carp, when he and all his people are at church.[561] And, in other seasons, mushroom gathering, and nutting, and all kinds of what is called Sabbath-breaking, come before them with an unconquerable impetus. For to their minds—neglected, but full of strong desires and pent-up energies—nature’s delights, wild pursuits, bodily refreshments, and the enjoyment of one day’s full freedom from towns, red walls, dry pavements, shops, masters, and even wives and children, are mixed up into a strange, but wonderfully bewitching excitement. These are going off, before the world in general is awake, at four, five, or six o’clock in a morning, in clusters of twos and threes, sixes and sevens, with long and eager strides, stout sticks in their hands, and faces set towards the country with a determined expression of fresh-air hungriness. And there, again, are going the bird-catchers; two or three of them, with two or three children with them, perhaps. They have some far-off green lane, or furzy common, or airy down in their mind, to which they are hastening with their cages, carried under a piece of green baize, or blinded with a handkerchief. All the way will they stalk on at a four-mile rate, and these little lads—the least not more than five years old—will go on trotting after them, and never think of weariness till all the sport is over, and they are making their way homeward in the evening. Then shall you see them dragged along by one of their father’s hands; for the men will not slacken pace for them, but pull them along with them; and you will see those little legs go on, trot, trot, trot, till you think they will actually be worn to the stumps before they reach home. These men and eager lads you will find in some solitary spot seven or eight miles off, if you go out so far, seated silently under a tall hedge or old tree, or in some moorland thicket, watching their apparatus, which is placed at a distance; their tame bird, of the species they are seeking to take, chained by its leg to a crossed stick, or a bough thrust into the ground. There it is, hopping about and chirping in the sunshine; and around stand cages containing other decoy birds, and other cages ready to receive the unsuspicious birds, that, attracted by the hopping and chirping of their captive kinsmen, will presently come and alight near them, and speedily get entangled in the limed twigs that are disposed about, or will find the net that is ready spread for them, come swoop over them. Every person who has walked the streets[562] of London, has seen the crowds of these little captives, larks, woodlarks, linnets, goldfinches, nightingales, etc., in the shops, which have been thus caught on all the great heaths and downs, for twenty miles round the metropolis, by fowlers, who are nearly always thus employed there.
Then, again, you see another Sunday class; tradesmen, shopkeepers, and their assistants and apprentices,—all those who have friends in the country,—on horseback or in gigs, driving off to spend the day with those that come occasionally and pay them a visit at markets and fairs. The faces of these are set for farm and other country-houses within twenty miles round. There is not a horse or gig to be had for love or money at any of the livery-stables on a Sunday. These hebdomadal rusticators,—these good dinner-eaters, fruit-devourers, curd-and-cream-consumers, pipe-smokers, and loungers in gardens, garden-arbours, crofts, orchards,—these soi-disant judges of cattle, crops, dogs, guns, game,—these haunters of country-houses, complimenters of country beauties, and lovers of good country fare,—have got them all. Yes, yes, many a pleasant Sunday in the country do these men spend after their fashion,—none of the worst, if none of the holiest; and yet they go to the village church too sometimes, and wonder that so fine a preacher should be hidden in such a place. Towards nine or ten o’clock in the evening, they will be pouring back into the town as blithely as they rolled out in the morning, being now primed with all those good things that lured them away so sharply after breakfast.
And, when they were gone, how sunnily and cheerily passed the day in the town; the merry bells all ringing, the gay people all abroad, streaming along the smooth pavements to church or chapel, or for the forenoon and evening promenade, in their fresh and handsome attire. Such troops of lovely women, such counterpoising numbers of goodly and well-dressed men: all squalor, and poverty, and trouble, and distress, shrunk backward into the alleys and dens out of sight; all cares and tradesmanship shut up in the closed shops and warehouses; and nothing but ease, leisure, bravery of equipment, and shew of wealth, walking in the face of the sun, as if there was no reason why they should not walk there for ever. The very beggars are gone, like swallows in autumn—not one to[563] be seen, except in the secret rendezvous where they pass one long day of luxurious idleness. The barrack has sent forth its troop of soldiers in their rich full-dress. They have marched with sounding music to the great church, with their usual crowd of boys and idle men after them. And then, morning, noon, or evening, you have seen a group of people collect in the market-place, or some open street, that has grown and grown into a large, dense crowd; and then you have seen a man suddenly appear, with bare head, and book in hand, in the centre. This is some field-preacher; one of many hundreds that on this day, in towns, villages, rural lanes, or on heaths and commons, go out to preach to them who are too indifferent, or too shabby, to come into a respectable place of worship.
We often think how strange it would have been to have lived in the days of the Reformation, or of the Puritans, when men full of zeal went to and fro, through the length and breadth of the land, to denounce the dominant form of religion, and preach repentance and salvation from the Bible. We have not the opposition and the persecution now, or we should have just such men and such scenes. There is such freedom for every man to choose his own mode of worship, and the religiously inclined have so many modes to choose from, and to associate them with a circle of people so much after their own hearts, that they have no impulse to seek further; no, not to seek after those who have no particular desire to be found; they think it enough that they have chapel-room and open doors for those who will come. It is chiefly, therefore, the poor that are left to seek after the poor; that feel it incumbent to “go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.” The mechanic, who has been labouring hard all the week in his worldly vocation, now shaves and washes, and dresses the best he may, and goes forth, fearing not the sneers and the scorn of the great and learned, of the worldly-wise and genteel, but comes into the very face of them, and before their gay windows in the open square; often before the lofty church and majestic cathedral, whose organ-tones are deeply pealing in his ears. There he lifts up his homely features, his rudely clipped head; there he lifts up his horny hand, that has for many a year dealt sturdy strokes to inanimate matter, and now deals, with tenfold zeal,[564] strokes as hard to hearts as hard. There he lifts up his voice in no finely modulated or practised tones, but with earnest pleadings and awful threatenings and unfoldings of God’s judgments on the wicked and careless; and then, with as earnest and affectionate expositions of his mercies, arrests, terrifies, melts, and fills with new sensations and desires the hearts of his fellows in the lowest regions of human life, who have lived beyond the sound of heavenly promises, and of God’s love and fear in a great measure, “because no one cared for their souls.”
The wise may wonder; the learned may curl the lip of classical pride; the gay and the happy, who live in splendid houses, and worship in splendid pews and beneath high and arched roofs, may pass by, and not even glance on the poor illiterate preacher and his spell-bound audience; but that man is, after all, a patriot and a scholar; a good subject of the realm—a good servant of heaven; and will probably effect more real benefit in one day, than a dozen of us, who think suff............