sunderstands our English point of view
she is only on a line with those amongst us who denounce the
continental Sunday as an orgy of noisy and godless pleasures. She
says: "I had a thousand opportunities of noticing that the religious
life did not mean a deep life-sanctifying belief, but simply one of
those formulas that are a part of 'respectability,' as they understand
it both in the family and in society." Nothing proves this better than
their truly shocking way of keeping holy the Sabbath day, which is the
very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it paves the way to the heaviest
boredom and slackness of spirit. I have been in English houses on
Sundays where the gentlemen threw themselves from one easy chair to
the other, and proclaimed their empty state of mind by their awful
yawns; where the children wandered about hopelessly depressed, because
they might neither play nor read an amusing book, not even Grimm's
_Fairy Tales_; where all the mental enjoyment of the household
consisted of so-called 'sacred music,' which some young miss strummed
on the piano or, worse still, sang. A young girl once spoke to me in
severe terms about the Germans who visit theatres and concerts on
Sundays. I asked her whether, if she put it to her conscience, she
could honestly say that she had holier feelings and higher thoughts,
whether, in fact, she felt herself a better human being on her quiet
Sunday, than when she heard a Beethoven Symphony, saw a Shakespeare
play, or any other noble work of art. She confessed with embarrassment
that she could not say so, but nevertheless arrived at the logical
conclusion that, for all that, it was very wicked of the Germans not
to keep Sunday more holy. Another lady, a cultured liberal-minded
person, invited me once to go with her to the Temple Church, one of
the oldest and most beautiful London churches in the city, belonging
to the great labyrinth of Temple Bar where English justice has its
seat. The music of the Temple Church is famous, and I had expressed a
wish to hear it. So I went with my house-mate and the lady in
question, and sat between them. During the sermon I had great trouble
not to fall asleep, but fought against it for the sake of decorum. To
my surprise, when I glanced at my right-hand neighbour I saw that she
was fast asleep, and when I glanced at the one on my left I saw that
she was asleep too. I looked about at other people, and saw more than
one sunk in a pious Nirvana. As we left the