SUNDAY ON THE CONTINENT. 489 



tion is looked upon as vulgar. Having been a 

 wanderer over the face of the globe for many 

 years, the unnatural constraints imposed upon 

 society by subservience to priestcraft to me are 

 intolerable; and I cannot understand how it is 

 that the most enterprising people in the world, 

 blessed with freedom of thought and liberty of 

 action above other nations, should allow them- 

 selves to be oppressed and rendered miserable 

 one day in seven, or a seventh part of their 

 existence, by the chilling atmosphere of puri- 

 tanism. Are we infallible, and all the rest of 

 the world in the wrong'? I do not believe it; 

 and at the risk of being consigned to perdition 

 by the Evangelical order, I go to Nature for my 

 creed, and there read the lessons inculcated in 

 plain and unmistakable language. I believe with 

 the immortal poet that there are 



'• Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 



Looking round upon Creation, I cannot find 

 that anything remains in a state of inaction upon 



