40 THE SABBATH. 



are classed together and condemned. Bishop Bloom- 

 field, for example, seriously injures his case when he 

 places drinking in gin-shops and sailing in steamboats 

 in the same category. I remember some years ago 

 standing by the Thames at Putney with my lamented 

 friend Dr. Bence Jones, when a steamboat on the river 

 with its living freight passed us. Practically acquainted 

 with the moral and physical influence of pure oxygen, 

 my friend exclaimed, 4 What a blessing for these people 

 to be able thus to escape from London into the fresh 

 air of the country ! ' I hold the physician to have been 

 right and, with all respect, the Bishop to have been 

 wrong. 



Bishop Bloomfield also condemns resorting to tea- 

 gardens on Sunday. But we may be sure that it is not 

 the tea-gardens, but the minds which the people bring 

 to them, which produce disorder. These minds already 

 possess the culture of the city, to which the Bishop 

 seems disposed to confine them. Wisely and soberly 

 conducted — and it is perfectly possible to conduct them 

 wisely and soberly — such gardens might be converted 

 into aids towards a life which the Bishop would com- 

 mend. Purification and improvement are often possible, 

 where extinction is neither possible nor desirable. I 

 have spent many a Sunday afternoon in the tea-gardens 

 of the little university town of Marburg, in the company 

 of intellectual men and cultivated women, without 

 observing a single occurrence which, as regards morality, 

 might not be permitted in the Bishop's drawing-room. 

 I will add to this another observation made at Dresden 

 on a Sunday, immediately after the suppression of the 

 insurrection by the Prussian soldiery in 1849. The 

 victorious troops were encamped in some meadows on 

 the banks of the Elbe, and I went among them and saw 

 how they occupied themselves. Some were engaged in 



