DEDICATION
To The Right Reverend
THE BISHOP OF LONDON
MY LORD,
You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on the
vicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday
excursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forth occasional
demonstrations of those extreme opinions on the subject, which are
very generally received with derision, if not with contempt.
Your elevated station, my Lord, affords you countless opportunities
of increasing the comforts and pleasures of the humbler classes of
society--not by the expenditure of the smallest portion of your
princely income, but by merely sanctioning with the influence of
your example, their harmless pastimes, and innocent recreations.
That your Lordship would ever have contemplated Sunday recreations
with so much horror, if you had been at all acquainted with the
wants and necessities of the people who indulged in them, I cannot
imagine possible. That a Prelate of your elevated rank has the
faintest conception of the extent of those wants, and the nature of
those necessities, I do not believe.
For these reasons, I venture to address this little Pamphlet to
your Lordship's consideration. I am quite conscious that the
outlines I have drawn, afford but a very imperfect description of
the feelings they are intended to illustrate; but I claim for them
one merit--their truth and freedom from exaggeration. I may have
fallen short of the mark, but I have never overshot it: and while
I have pointed out what appears to me, to be injustice on the part
of others, I hope I have carefully abstained from committing it
myself.
I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
Humble Servant,
TIMOTHY SPARKS.
June, 1836.
CHAPTER I--AS IT IS
There are few things from which I derive greater pleasure, than
walking through some of the principal streets of London on a fine
Sunday, in summer, and watching the cheerful faces of the lively
groups with which they are thronged. There is something, to my
eyes at least, exceedingly pleasing in the general desire evinced
by the humbler classes of society, to appear neat and clean on this
their only holiday. There are many grave old persons, I know, who
shake their heads with an air of profound wisdom, and tell you that
poor people dress too well now-a-days; that when they were
children, folks knew their stations in life better; that you may
depend upon it, no good will come of this sort of thing in the
end,--and so forth: but I fancy I can discern in the fine bonnet
of the working-man's wife, or the feather-bedizened hat of his
child, no inconsiderable evidence of good feeling on the part of
the man himself, and an affectionate desire to expend the few
shillings he can spare from his week's wages, in improving the
appearance and adding to the happiness of those who are nearest and
dearest to him.
