Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, February 19, 1831 by Various
page 19 of 52 (36%)
out-of-door recreation, or in idleness. In the former and better manner
it is passed by the majority of the middle classes; it is the day on
which friends and relations meet, whom business keeps apart during six
days of the week; and the stoppage of stage-coaches within twenty miles
of London on the Sunday would take away more moral and wholesome
enjoyment than any act of the legislature can produce. But supposing
public worship were duly attended by all persons, as, according to what
has now become a fiction of the law, it is designed to be, how are the
remaining portions of the day to be disposed of by those who have no
domestic circle to which they can repair--no opportunities for that
refreshment both of body and mind, which the Sabbath, when wisely and
properly observed, affords? Or who, if belonging to or placed in
religious families, are not yet at years of such discretion as suffices
to repress their natural activity and the instinctive desire of
recreation? Rigorous gamelaws do not more certainly encourage poaching,
than the puritanical observance of the Sabbath leads to
Sabbath-breaking.--_Quarterly Review._

* * * * *


BURNS.

This extraordinary man, before he produced any of the pieces on which
his fame is built, had educated himself abundantly; and when he died,
at the age of thirty-seven, knew more of books, as well as of men, than
fifty out of a hundred in any of the learned professions in any country
of the world are ever likely to do.--_Ibid._

* * * * *
DigitalOcean Referral Badge