A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION 373 



hall, and with argumentative power and literary skill in 

 numerous books and periodicals. The effect of this teach- 

 ing is manifested in the growing opinion among the more 

 thoughtful even of the wealthy and leisured classes, that 

 a life spent in ease and idleness and the pursuit of pleasure 

 is not the admirable and desirable thing it was once 

 thought to be. The vices and frivolity, the extravagance 

 and the barrenness of modern society are now felt, and 

 are being fully exposed by its own members ; and one of 

 these modern prophets, Lady Lyttelton Gell, ably urged, 

 in the Nineteenth Century of November, 1892, "that 

 definite work of some sort should be the law, not merely 

 the accessory of every girl's life," and that it should be 

 the means of bringing about more union between the 

 classes, and a real friendship between the highest and 

 the lowest. 



Now, I venture to think that nothing would tend more 

 to bring about these desirable results than a method of 

 observing Sunday in some way resembling that here 

 advocated, while the beneficial effect on all concerned 

 would be very great. The upper classes would learn, 

 many of them for the first time, how great and how 

 fatiguing is the labour daily expended in securing them the 

 unvarying comfort and aesthetic enjoyment of their 

 surroundings, and how often they cause unnecessary work 

 by their thoughtlessness or extravagance. The need they 

 would have, at first, of learning the duties of the par- 

 ticular department they were going to undertake, would 

 bring them into friendly and intimate relations with their 

 servants; and, in seeing how much care was often 

 required to secure the comfort of the family, they might 

 begin to appreciate that " dignity of labour " which is 

 so often preached to the poor but so seldom practised by 

 the rich. To many this " Sunday service " in their own 

 families, or in that of some of their friends, would be 

 the introduction to some serious occupation for their week- 

 day lives, and thus inaugurate the great reform which 

 the more thoughtful leaders of society see to be of 

 imperative necessity. 



On the whole body of the workers the effect would be 



