ss of the Mamsell
belonging to the house to light a little army of Vienna coffee
machines standing ready on the sideboard, so that coffee could be
served when everyone went back to the drawing-room. The men smoked
their cigars there too, and someone would play the piano, and when no
music was going on there was harmless, rather dull, family
conversation. The spinster cousins got out their embroidery, the
Mamsells disappeared with the children, _die Herren_ either talked to
each other or had a quiet game of _Skat_. The women and some of the
men had been to church in the morning, but this did not prevent them
from spending the rest of the day as it pleased them.

It will be seen that from the English point of view Sunday is not
observed at all in Germany; yet this does not mean, as is often
announced from English pulpits, that the whole nation is without
religion. Un-belief is more widely professed than here, and many
people who call themselves Christians openly reject certain vital
doctrines of Evangelical faith,--are Unitarians, in fact, but will not
say so. But the whole question of religious belief in Germany is a
difficult and contentious one, for according to the people you meet
you will be told that the nation lacks faith or possesses it. If you
use your own judgment you must conclude that there is immensely more
scepticism there than here, and that there is also a good deal of
vague belief, a belief, that is, in a personal God and a life after
death. But you must admit that except in an "evangelical" set belief
sits lightly on both men and women. Certainly it has nothing to do
with the way they spend Sunday, and if they go to church in the
morning they are as likely as not to go to the theatre in the
afternoon. They sew, they dance, they fiddle, they act, they travel on
the day of rest, more on that day than on any other, and when they
come to England there is nothing in our national life they find so
tedious and unprofitable as our Sundays. They cannot understand why a
people with so strong a tendency to drink should make the public-house
the only counter attraction to the church on the working man's day of
leisure; and when they are in a country place, and see our groups of
idle, aimless young louts standing about not knowing what to do, they
ask why in the name of common sense they should not play an outdoor
game. The Idealist expresses the German point of view very well in her
Memoirs, and in so far as she mi