But then it is said that opening museums on Sundays means labour for the attendants. I would trust the working classes of this country to take care of themselves in that matter-the masters have not found it so easy to make them work long hours on week-days as to make us fear undue imposition of labour on Sunday-besides, a good deal of the extra work might fall to voluntary unpaid labourers. I would willingly devote an hour on a Sunday afternoon myself to passing the working classes in and out of the Royal Academy, and I could find many a man to join me in such good work. I am quite sure that many clergy would be better employed in so doing than in preaching on a Sunday afternoon to half-a-dozen people half-asleep, as is the case in some of the London churches.

With regard to the opening of places of popular resort on Sundays, you remember the absurd fiasco which took place in Parliament a little while ago about the enforced closing of the Brighton Aquarium on Sundays. The poor, it was proposed, should be shut out from it on the only day that they can go, while the rich are allowed to visit the Horticultural and Botanical

Gardens on Sundays as much as they like, although they, with their abundant leisure, are able to go at any time during the week.

The Acts of Parliament which regulate the observance of Sunday are two; one was passed in the reign of the most dissolute of our kings, Charles II., the other in the reign of that dear, but stupid and bigoted, old king, George III. Acts which bear the impress of dissoluteness and stupidity cannot in these times long remain on the statute book, and it is probable that these two will ere long be repealed. As it is, they are not and cannot be strictly enforced now, even by the Sabbatarian party. Meanwhile, let the people and the people's representatives in Parliament educate themselves upon this question, that when the question of opening the museums on Sunday next comes up for public discussion, we may not have to assist at such an extraordinary exhibition of ignorance and mental confusion as that last presented to the country in the last parliamentary debate upon this subject.

FINIS.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

MUSIC AND MORALS.

With a Portrait of the Author.

Post 8vo. 125.

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By M. E. HAWEIS.

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