n the Sunday. I have seen pretty well all the typical
phases of religious London and London irreligious; but these would
rather be characterized as non-religious than as irreligious folks. They
do not belong to any of the varied forms of faith; in fact faith is from
their life a thing apart. It is in this negative way that they are
interesting. Sunday is with them only a regularly recurring Bank
Holiday. It would be interesting to know what they do with it. A special
difficulty, however, exists for me in any such inquiry, resulting from
the fact that, in my capacity of clerical casual, I am pretty generally
engaged on the Sunday; and when I am not, my Day of Rest is too valuable
to be devoted to any of the manifold forms of metropolitan
Sabbath-breaking. I have a great idea that parsons ought to be
frequently preached at; and so I generally go to some church or chapel
when out of harness myself; and if "hearing sermons" constitute the
proper carrying out of the things promised and vowed on my behalf at
baptism I must have undergone as complete a course of Christian
discipline as any man in Christendom, for I have been preached at by
everybody from Roman Catholics down to Walworth Jumpers and Plumstead
Peculiars!

But impressed with anxiety to know about the doings of the
non-Church-goers, I have for a long time cast sheep's eyes at the Sunday
League, and more than once definitely promised to join one of their
Sunday outings; but I am strongly of Tom Hood's opinion that--

The man who's fond precociously of stirring
Must be a _spoon_.

The Sunday League commence their excursions at untimely hours; and it is
a cardinal point in my creed that Sunday ought to be a Day of Rest, at
all events in the matter of breakfast in bed. I missed the excursion to
Shakspeare's House in this way, and the paper on the Bard of Avon, full
of the genius loci, must have been as edifying as a sermon. So, too, on
a recent Sunday, when the Sunday League on their way to Southend got
mixed up with the Volunteer Artillery going to Shoebury, I was again
found wanting. But still the old penchant remained, and Sunday was my
last free one for a long time. How could I utilize it? I had it; I would
go to the People's Garden at Willesden. I had heard that certain very
mild forms of Sabbath breaking prevailed there. I would go and see for
myself.

I had been at the People's Garden twice before; once on the occasion of
a spiritualistic picnic, a