cordials; and when
the evening drew near, we re-embarked, and, under the safe conduct of our
female commodore--who was skilled in the difficult navigation of the
shallow river--returned soberly home. The environs of Berlin are of no
great beauty, the city being built on a sandy plain, with the single
eminence of the Kreutzberg, from which it can be viewed with advantage;
but in and about the city there are beautiful gardens, private and of
royal foundation, and these are invariably open to the public. One happy
Sunday afternoon we spent in Charlottenburg, the pleasure-palace of the
king; and one other in the noble botanical gardens in the city; while on
a fine day the avenue of lime trees, Unter-den-Linden, in its crowd of
promenaders, and social groups at the refreshment tables, presented an
animated, and, to my mind, a recreative and humanising spectacle. Music
was everywhere; and in the theatres, in the display of pyrotechnic
eccentricities, or perhaps in ballooning--but that was English--the
evening was variously spent. There may be dance-houses and other
abominations in Berlin, as in Hamburg, but I never heard of them, and if
they existed, more was the pity. For my own part, I was happy in
enjoying the moderate pleasures of life in company with the majority of
my fellow-workmen, who, I must again say, and insist upon, were not at
work, but at rest, on the Sunday. It is true that here, as elsewhere,
tailors and boot-makers (master-men) were content to take measures, and
receive orders from the workmen, for very little other opportunity
presented itself for such necessary service.

A few hours' whirl on the railway on a Sunday saw us in Leipsic. This
was at the Easter festival; and we stayed two months in this Saxon market
of the world, embracing in their course the most important of the three
great markets in the year. If ever there was a fair opportunity of
judging the question of Sunday labour and Sunday rest, it was in Leipsic,
at this period. If Sunday work be a necessary consequence of Sunday
recreation--an absurd paradox, surely--it would have been exhibited in a
commercial town, at a period when all the elements of frivolity, as
gathered together at a fair; and all the wants of commerce compressed
into a few brief weeks, were brought into co-existence. Yet in no town
in Germany did I witness so complete a cessation from labour on the
Sunday. There was no question of working. Early in the morning th