The Merry Past 



which causes the popularity of so many fads. Com- 

 plete ignorance of the ways of the world is not seldom 

 an appanage of sentimentalism. Mr. George Love, 

 of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to 

 Animals, told a meeting in the early part of the 

 present year that an old lady had written protesting 

 against the horribly cruel practice of scratching horses 

 before a race. One poor animal, she had read with 

 grief, had even been " scratched " on the very day of 

 the race. There is no limit to the absurdities of our 

 national faddism which is constantly seeking to exert 

 its enervating influence, and to dragoon the population 

 at large into an existence of doleful flaccidity. 



In the dark ages of ignorance and superstition, 

 mankind were unfortunately taught to believe that 

 they were never so acceptable to their Maker, as 

 when they not only abstracted themselves from all 

 the pleasures of life, but inflicted upon themselves 

 severe and unnecessary tortures. Human nature was 

 represented as the sink of depravity and wretchedness ; 

 and misery and sorrow the unavoidable lot of human- 

 ity. This disposition to view the dark side of life 

 is not altogether obsolete, there being still in England 

 numbers who advocate solemnity and gloom. The 

 advocates of strict Sunday observance, for instance, 

 in reality foster the most painful feelings, if not the 

 worst passions of the human heart. 



With the introduction of universal education it 

 might have been thought that a more tolerant view 

 of Sabbath observance would have triumphed, and 

 that, as in the Merrie England of Pre-Reformation 



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