pale face with its hectic bloom, the slight distortion of form
which no artifice of dress can wholly conceal, the unhealthy stoop,
and the short cough--the effects of hard work and close application
to a sedentary employment, upon a tender frame. They turn towards
the fields. The girl's countenance brightens, and an unwonted glow
rises in her face. They are going to Hampstead or Highgate, to
spend their holiday afternoon in some place where they can see the
sky, the fields, and trees, and breathe for an hour or two the pure
air, which so seldom plays upon that poor girl's form, or
exhilarates her spirits.

I would to God, that the iron-hearted man who would deprive such
people as these of their only pleasures, could feel the sinking of
heart and soul, the wasting exhaustion of mind and body, the utter
prostration of present strength and future hope, attendant upon
that incessant toil which lasts from day to day, and from month to
month; that toil which is too often protracted until the silence of
midnight, and resumed with the first stir of morning. How
marvellously would his ardent zeal for other men's souls, diminish
after a short probation, and how enlightened and comprehensive
would his views of the real object and meaning of the institution
of the Sabbath become!

The afternoon is far advanced--the parks and public drives are
crowded. Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of
every description, glide smoothly on. The promenades are filled
with loungers on foot, and the road is thronged with loungers on
horseback. Persons of every class are crowded together, here, in
one dense mass. The plebeian, who takes his pleasure on no day but
Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his, from year's end to