Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/164

Rh you recollect that we are now in Protestant Germany, you will be astonished at the laxity of the Sabbath. The German reformers never, I believe, undertook to reform the Continental Sabbath. They probably understood too well the inflexible nature of national customs, and how much more difficult it is to remodel them than to recast faith. We are accustomed to talk of "the horrors of a Continental Sabbath," and are naturally shocked with an aspect of things so different from our own. But, when I remember the dozing congregations I have seen, the domestics stretched half the heavy day in bed, the young people sitting by the half-closed blind, stealing longing looks out of the window, while the Bible was lying idle on their laps; and the merry shouts of the children at the going down of the sun, as if an enemy had disappeared, it does not seem to me that we can say to the poor, ignorant, toil-worn peasant of Europe, "I am holier than thou!"

my journal to go to church. At all these Continental resorts there is service in English, and here the duke permits it to be held in his own church. The service was performed by a clergyman of the Church of England.

At four o'clock we set off for our afternoon walk. The gay shops in the colonnade were all open, but there were few buyers, where buyers most do congregate, at the stalls of the all-coloured,