t the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a
cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should
not pass like any other, moderated between the parties. He declared it was
to be observed with strictness only by "persons of quality."[C]

[Footnote A: Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 758.]

[Footnote B: Fuller's "Church History," book xi. p. 149. One of the most
curious books of this class is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath," a work
abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour of Charles's
declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, in the _first_
edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the lady's
speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since
Cromwell's time that _Sunday_ has been made in England a day of gravity
and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of
England little suspects that he is conforming to the _Calvinism_ of an
_English Sunday_." It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads
unfurnished with their own national history, for in the _second edition_
Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted
with the levities and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is
usual on these points, vehemently threw themselves into an opposite
direction; but they perhaps advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day
into a sullen and gloomy reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and
Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken
more enlightened views on this subject.]

[Footnote C: "Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working,
whilst their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had
their cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour,
let such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them; whilst
_persons of quality_, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long--I
mean, who rest from hard labour--are concerned in conscience to observe
the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations."]

One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the revival of
this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that from the circumstance of our
good-tempered monarch discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented,
being debarred from their rustic sports--and, exhorting them, out of his
_bonhomie_ and "fatherly love, which he owed to them all" (as he